Interview: Liam Ryan, Shorts Programmer @ Jameson Dublin International Film Festival

2015 Short Film Oscar Winner, The Phone Call

This year’s Jameson Dublin International Film Festival features three outstanding programmes of Irish and International short films. Selected from around 200 submissions these programmes offer a broad range of genres and narratives. Short films from Mexico, United Kingdom, Belgium, Finland, Switzerland, and the United States will screen alongside the cream of Irish live action and animation in a programme that includes both Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning short films. Ian Maleney spoke to Shorts Programmer Liam Ryan about putting together this year’s programmes.

You’ve changed the structure of the short film programmes this year.

Well, in previous years, shorts were a smaller section in the festival and was more built through invitation We expanded on that last year and invited submissions, which we’ve done again this year, opening submissions over a longer period to cast a wider net. We got in close to 200 films over and from the end of November – I started making my way through the all the submissions and shortlisted them from there. We’ve ended up with three really strong programmes spread over the festival – opening week, midweek and closing weekend.

What’s going through your mind when you put the schedule together?

First and foremost I’m thinking of what the audience is for short films. Very often it’s the cast and crew and their aunties and uncles. I wanted to try and draw in a non-industry crowd so that anyone with an interest in film could come along and enjoy them. I didn’t want to make the programmes too long, so they’re all in and around 80 minutes, which I think is a nice length. And spreading them over the festival means that people don’t have to watch them over three days back to back. So hopefully that’s more inviting to a broader audience.

Any particular themes running through the programmes?

The programmes are individually themed, broadly, but there’s a good mix in there. In the past, we did an Irish shorts programme and a separate international programme. I wanted to mix the Irish stuff in with what I had coming in internationally – as a short filmmaker myself at festivals abroad, it’s always great to see your short alongside shorts from all over the world. I gave each programme a broad strokes theme, but it’s still quite varied. I think it’s nice when you don’t know what’s coming next and I kind of wanted to keep an audience guessing and have a good mix of films. But in the end for me – it’s all about characters and stories

The quality of the films this year is really good. One of the shorts we’re showing, The Phone Call, won the Oscar this year for Best Short Film; we also have the Irish film Boogaloo and Graham, which was on the Oscar nominee list. Both films are fantastic.

I think there’s a really good range of different genres this year – different stories – it’s great the imagination that goes into these stories. I certainly found myself leaning towards strong stories and strong characters when I was programming. Also, going back to what I was saying earlier about thinking about the audience – one of the great things about the festival is not only the opportunity to watch these films that you maybe wouldn’t normally get a chance to see but also to meet and put questions to the filmmakers, many of whom will be at the festival. I’m really looking forward to it this year.

International Shorts 1