JDIFF: Living Colour
Jameson Dublin International Film Festival
IFI 18.30 Monday, 21st February 2011
Living Colour is a wonderful documentary that focuses on the KCAT (Kilkenny Collective for Arts Talent) Art & Study Centre and the art that is created there. The centre encourages artistic development and, through drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, animation, combined materials and communication, seeks to enable students to reach their full potential. The documentary provides an intimate portrayal of a group of artists as they go about bringing art into being and it is the act of creative expression that is central to the art – as one character says in the process of making a work of a bird – ‘I feel like God’.
The screening was attended by the film’s director Éamon Little and by a number of the artists involved. Little spoke of his initial inspiration being in 2008 when he made a promotional film for the centre saying that the experience never left him and that he had always felt that there was something there that could be made into cinema. Wildfire Films became involved and, after getting the thumbs up from RTÉ, the BAI and Bord Scannán na hÉireann/The Irish Film Board in September 2009, the film started shooting in January 2010.
The documentary is marked by the closeness it brings us to the artists and their own comfort in front of the camera. Little achieves that precious goal of managing to make it feel as if there is no camera present and that things are occurring naturally before us. Little spoke of his methods insisting that the film avoided straight interviews and voiceovers and instead that he simply filmed things as they happened. In this way he is able to achieve a greater level of intimacy, which stands the finished product to fine stead. He ended up with over 135 hours of footage that he and his editor Tadhg O’Sullivan expertly whittled down to its final running time of 82 minutes that is able to reflect the colourful mix of the individual artists’ abilities and personalities. The film’s gentle, meditative pace catches the mood of much of the art and the artists involved in the film, and its moments of humour, insight and joy come together to define this uplifting and enlightening piece of cinema and its extraordinary tale of people communicating through art.
Steven Galvin
Director Eamonn Little tells us 5 things he learned from making Living Colour, which will be broadcast on RTÉ 1 on Tuesday March 20th 2012 at 10:15pm.
[...] “Living Colour is a wonderful documentary … its moments of humour, insight and joy come together to define this uplifting and enlightening piece of cinema and its extraordinary tale of people communicating through art.” FILM IRELAND (for full review see filmireland.net/2011/02/22/jdiff-living-colour/) [...]
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