Darren, when you're ready there, we'll get cracking with a bit of background on the festival. Tell us a little bit about it first - how long it's been running, who's behind it etc...
This is our second year, we started last year with five nights of screenings, where we screened 70 shorts. We are currently privately funded and the festival comittee is made up of film makers like myself and people who just have a real love of film
You've ramped up a lot this year haven't you; how many films will be screened? And crucially, can you whet our appetites with a few clips?
Yes, our goal really is to grow the festival year by year. With that in mind, we have increased our number of screenings from five to fourteen this year, we have also increased the number of categories substantially and we are now screening 110 shorts over the course of the festival
Last Year's Grand Prize Winner came to us from New York from filmmaker Pierre Stefanos. Heres a trailer for BEDFELLOWS, a touching love story about two gay men in New York
@Darren OMahony Even the trailer sets this up as one for the romantics Darren - lovely work.
It was! Bedfellows has since gone on to win at over 50 festivals around the world!
So you'll be hoping for more of the same quality this year - we've made the tay and sandwiches and are ready for more clips sir! (Tough job, this...)
We are quite lucky to have a short this year that is actually in the Guiness Book of Records for most festival victories; over 100. "There are some things you never forget". a great little Spanish short set in Italy. The link sadly is only in Spanish, but, I think it still shows its quality!
as an interesting side note: the football advisor on the film was none other then world cup winner Fabio Cannavaro!
Back to home shores: a very prolific Dublin filmmaker has not 1 but 4 entries in this year, Robert Manson should be a name to watch. here's his trailer for "
Rickshaw Rick"
@Darren OMahony Is that a documentary Darren, or acted? Is there a documentary category in the festival?
That is acted, and very well acted at that. Yes, we have Documentary/ Experimental, we also have categories for GLBT, Polish, Spanish, International, National, Comedy, Local, Drama and Music Video! A bit of everything really!
One of our local filmmakers Damian McCarthy has this entry in this year "Never Ever Open It"
@Darren OMahony Well acted indeed, very natural.
When the clips are done, you must tell us about the venues and tickets into, so we get the house-keeping out of the way.
Readers, just to let you know a discussion about film and film-making in Ireland will follow a little later. Do keep your comments coming - we'll bring them into the blog nearer the end. Thanks!
Another great local entrant is David Bickley and his entry The Deep
@Darren OMahony I love the description on this one:
"Working late, a bored nightwatchman goes to investigate a strange noise. Mistake number one."
The silence is creepy...So too are the occasional effects. Think I'll have to see this one on the big screen for full effect cos I do like a good scare!
@BreakingNews Definitely! Damian has gotten himself quite a reputation as a master of suspense!
Darren, quick q relevant to the festival to follow from a reader...
In terms of the "housecleaning", we have a wide variety of venues this year, it all kicks off in Cork city's Triskel Arts Centre tomorrow night at 8pm with a wine reception followed by an official opening by Deputy Lord Mayor Cllr Emmet O'Halloran. Then, we have a selection of both last year's winners and highlights from this years entries.
@Blacklungs No, im not familiar with Nartystation? is that a band or film?
Darren, there are special sections this year for Polish and I think Spanish entries. Why is that?
@BreakingNews I'm asked this a lot..Basically, we recieve a very large amount of entries from Spain. The quality is always of a very high standard so we felt that they deserved their own section.
We also felt that as the Polish community in Ireland is huge at the moment, with (I believe) over 200,000 across the country, it was a case of getting a section in there that people would appreciate and hopefully connect with.
Should circumstances be permitting, next year I very much would like to have an Irish language section as well, but unfortunately it seems to be quite difficult to put together
@Blacklungs Thanks, thats good to know! I'll check it out! maybe next year their work will be in there!
Darren, before we move to the general discussion on film making in Ireland, we have a couple more questions to put your way from readers if that's ok.
Any questions that relate to film making and the date of the industry in Ireland, we'll hold back to the end. So, from Brian...
@Brian12 quite frankly Brian, its all a matter of funds! At the moment, we are quite small, we have no funding from any public entity as yet so we are very much limited in terms of what advertising we can do. fingers crossed we can grow as a festival and in time we'll be able to advertise as much as the more established festivals
@Brian12 I would consider myself a film maker, but nothing of any substantial note unfortunately! its been awhile since i last made anything but seeing others work really makes me want to get back into it!
@Derek Nagle Thanks very much Derek!
Ok Darren, we might move on now to a more general discussion of film-making in Ireland.
Just to also mention that Cork Screen Commissioner Niall O'Mahony was unable to join us today due to another commitment, but was keen to participate by way of some comments which he let us have in advance. We'll pepper Niall's comments into the conversation as we go, using 'NOM' before each post so you know it's him doing the talking!
First off Darren, and since yours is a short film festival, can you take us back to basics and tell us what defines a 'short'?
@BreakingNews A "short" film generally is an film which is under 45 mins in duration. That said, for most festivals, a half hour or under is normally the time allowed.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
