IFTN caught up with promising young talent Sean Murphy, recently crowned Ireland’s Young Filmmaker of the Year 2011 at the Fresh Film Festival in Limerick. Murphy won the award at the event’s closing ceremony on Wednesday, March 30th on the back of his short film ‘4:27am’. His previous short, ‘Run’ was highly commended at the festival in 2010.
“Home alone, or so she thinks” is the tagline chosen to describe ‘4:27am’, the short thriller, written and directed by Sean Murphy. 18 year old Sean, currently studying for his Leaving Cert oral exams in Wexford's St Peter's College, hopes to study filmmaking in Dun Laoghaire College of Further Education. Though still in school, Sean is a weathered filmmaker; he entered a short film called ‘Run’ in the Fresh Film Festival last year and won a Highly Commended Award.
The win led to the opportunity to travel to a filmmaking camp in South Korea with three other young filmmakers and ‘Run’ was also screened in Berlin in May 2010. ”It was absolutely amazing because we were able to do so may workshops and they really helped me,” he says. ”I used a lot of the stuff I learned there in ‘4:27am”
Sean’s win as Fresh Festival’s Young Filmmaker of the Year has scooped him a €1,000 cash prize and the festival will now submit the short into film festivals on Seán’s behalf. Not bad for a film with very humble beginnings: ”I saved my wages to buy a DSLR camera,”Sean tells us. ”And then my friends Alex Miller, Jacqlyn Murphy and Emma Shanley met up and shot the film. I was able to edit it on my Windows Movie Maker then.”
Asked what Irish filmmakers have influenced him over the [short] years, Sean cites Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan and lists Irish feature, ‘Shrooms’ as a big inspiration for the six minute short, ‘4:27am’.
Limerick’s Fresh Film Festival has been running for 15 years and has gone from strength to strength. Each year the festival is host to the premier accolade in Ireland for filmmakers aged 18 and under and also offers a forum for young filmmakers, workshops, screening of features and other events. For a full list of this year’s winners visit www.freshfilmfestival.net
