Seeing
as how half the Dublin film crew I meet seem to spend their summer
week-ends in Galway or Roundstone I thought I'd give this instalment
of the production news over to what's going on West of the Shannon
at the moment, so those of you considering a life change can get
your C.V.'s out…..
Starting shooting in
July is Dublin born director (and Colaiste Dhulaigh graduate) Eoin
Moore's follow up to his gritty debut Breaking Even. Provisionally
entitled 'Connemara' it's a love triangle tale about a German who
moves to said province. Confirmed casting to date includes Rosaleen
Linehan, and the feature length drama will be shot on Super 16mm.
Concorde Anois Teo have
been quite since finishing up 'The Club', a period drama starring
Jonathan Pryce based on the tale by Robert Louis Stevenson. They
had originally intended to re shoot one of their earlier Galway
epics, 'Spectre', but that seems to have fallen by the wayside and
now the rumour mill suggests an 'action film' that will be shot
on Digi Beta as an 'experiment'…
Magma Teo are also prepping
for a feature being shot for German T.V.in July; 'Downshifting'or
'Caislain Claus' depending on who you talk to. A romantic comedy
about a German who moves to rural Ireland (look on the bright side;
if either this or Eoin Moore's film are a huge success the West
will be owned by Germans by 2002.). It's to be directed by Trevor
O'Clochartaigh and produced by Ralph Christians and Kate Ni Fhlatharta.
Magma recently achieved a major success by flogging all 26 half
hour episodes of their animation series 'Pigs Next Door' to the
US Fox channel in a prime time slot…
Hofnaflus Teo have been
busy also. They recently completed some Irish location work on a
pilot for a British series called 'Dreamers', allegedly an X-Files
type scenario and are currently prepping 'Finklestein', which starts
shooting on July 12th for 8 weeks. It's a story about a movie producer
who arrives to film in the West with notions of Irish stereotypes
and finds himself 'Irish R.M'd' out of it, and they're shooting
it on Super 35mm !
Meanwhile the documentary
scene is flourishing also. Power Pictures and Pat Comer are teaming
up again to follow on the success of their 'A Year 'Til Sunday'
documentary with a six part commission for RTE called "The Green
Green Grass of Home", which takes six different Irish comedien(nes)
to the home towns they were reared in to look for the source of
their stand up, so to speak. Included to date are the d'Unbelievables,
Pauline McGlynn and Tommy Tiernan and the series airs in the Autumn.
Director Paddy O'Connor's
True Lives documentary "The Gamble", about his elderly parents raising
a litter of greyhounds, won the Best Documentary Award at the Arizona
International Film Festival in April and Paddy is currently shooting
his fly-on-the-wall documentary on the Galway Rowing Club. Also
on the award scene, director Pat Collins's documentary 'Michael
Hartnett: Necklace of Wrens' picked up the Bronze Award for Biographical
Documentary at the Worldfest in Hueston.
And Parzival Productions
having picked up the Best First Time Director Award for P.J. Dillon's
'Most Important' at the Celtic Film & T.V. Festival have seen their
'Short Cut' nominated in the Best Short Film Category for the forthcoming
BANFF Television Festival. To celebrate, writer directing P.J.Dillon
is shooting a 2 minute 35mm drama called 'Headwrecker'; a two hander
with Frankie McCafferty and Billy Roche, to be co-produced by Parzival.
Parzival's Tomas Hardiman
has teamed up with Power Pictures Dave Power and director Louis
Lentin on a project called 'Mission to Israel', a one hour Beta
documentary that follows ten of Ireland's foremost visual artists
on a trip to Israel this May.
Director Donal Haughey
has just completed his one hour documentary 'Books In the Blood',
a history of Kenny's book shop, with Hardiman producing and is currently
working on a one hour piece entitled 'Silent City', a history of
Glasnevin cemetery. Director Eamon Little is busy cutting his half
hour documentary "The Furious Walls of Mikuyu Prison', which follows
the life of Malawian poet Jack Mapanje from imprisonment for three
years under the dictator Dr Hastings Banda to his current life in
exile as writer-in-residence at NUI Cork.
On top of that, all
three winners of the R.T.E./Galway Film Centre Shorts Awards will
be screened at the Galway Film Fleadh this June, a festival for
which there should be plenty of empty seats as it appears that the
entire film community in the West will be too busy working to attend….
Nicky Fennell
