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The IFI Documentary Festival Roundtable Podcast

L-R Paul Webster, Peter Kilmartin, Nodlag Houlihan

 

Ahead of the 2019 IFI Documentary Festival (25-29 September) Gemma Creagh talks to three filmmakers whose films feature in the Shorts Programme, which takes place on the 28th September. Nodlag Houlihan (Reality Baby ), Paul Webster (The Vasectomy Doctor ) and Peter Kilmartin (Sunny Side Up) join Gemma to talk about their films and what it takes to put together a documentary.

Reality Baby (Nodlag Houlihan)

A group of friends are given lifelike baby dolls to care for over twenty four hours, but how will they rise to the challenges of teenage motherhood?

The Vasectomy Doctor (Paul Webster)

Dr Andrew Rynne was the first doctor to perform vasectomies in Ireland, estimating that he has performed over 35,000. Persevering in the face of opposition from the Church and State in Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s, Dr Rynne continued to challenge the laws governing sexuality, eventually forcing the government to change policy.

Sunny Side Up (Peter Kilmartin)

 

Peter Pringle and Sunny Jacobs both served years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. After being exonerated, what are the chances they both met and fell in love?

The 2019 IFI Documentary Festival Shorts Programme takes place on Saturday, 28th September 2019 at 13.30

Tickets

 

Filmmakers’ Bios

Nodlag Houlihan is an Irish film director, producer and writer. Her short documentary Reality Baby premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and won Best Documentary at the Fastnet Film Festival 2019. She is the writer and producer of the RTE series My Trans Life (2018), nominated for the prestigious Prix Europa and the MIPCOM Diversity Award. She produced the feature documentary Broken Song and a number of Screen Ireland funded short films which have played at festivals around the world and won many prizes. Nodlag also teaches filmmaking at the School of Creative Arts, Trinity College Dublin and has facilitated numerous film projects for young people. She is currently working on The Francis St Photographer, an hour-long documentary for RTE about the work of Dublin photographer John Walsh.

www.zuccafilms.ie

Paul Webster is an award-winning producer, writer and director. He is a graduate of Galway Mayo Institute of Technology and the MA program in Production and Direction at the John Huston School of Film and Media in Galway.  He went on to work in production for Element Pictures and later as a script editor on Fair City, he is now a regular writer on the popular soap. Paul was the winner of the Físín Pitching Award at the Dingle International Film Festival 2012 from which his film Stuama received its funding. He directed the drama which won Best Irish Film at The Cork Underground Film Festival 2013. Let Those Blues In, Paul’s documentary about Irish Blues musician, Paddy Smith, was the winner of Best Short Documentary in association with RTE at The Sky Road Film Festival, Clifden, Co. Galway. He was one of the filmmakers chosen by Science Foundation Ireland and The Galway Film Centre as part of their Science On Screen documentary scheme. Written and directed by Paul, Mending Legends goes behind the scenes of Irish sport to explore the unseen drama caused by injuries for our top athletes. It screened on Tg4 in Autumn 2017 and was the third most-watched independent production for that year. Paul co-directed Borderland, a 26-minute documentary exploring the refugee crisis along Europe’s Borders. Under the 2018 Real Shorts scheme, Paul received €20,000 from the Irish Film Board for his docu-drama The Vasectomy Doctor, produced by Carbonated Comet Productions. The film premiered at the Cork Film Festival in November 2018 and went on to win the Audience Award for Best Short at the Dingle International Film Festival 2019, Best Short Film at The Still Voices Short Film Festival and Best Short Documentary at The Louth Film Festival.

Peter Kilmartin is from the Wild Wild West of county Roscommon in Ireland and is a recent graduate from the National Film School of Ireland . He has an avid interest in documentary filmmaking, alongside this he also runs his own successful award winning production company, Spicy Dog Media. This year he directed his debut short The Sunny Side Up, a short documentary about two exonerated prisoners finding love, hope and acceptance in each other.

www.facebook.com/spicydogmedia

 

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Mike Ahern & Enda Loughman, Co-Directors/Co-Writers of ‘Extra Ordinary’

In this podcast, Paul Farren talks to Mike Ahern & Enda Loughman, Co-Directors/Co-Writers of Extra Ordinary, a supernatural comedy which tells the story of Rose, a sweet and lonely small town driving instructor who must use her supernatural ‘talent’ to save the daughter of a local man from a washed up rock-star looking to use her in a satanic pact that will reignite his fame.

Mike & Enda discuss things that go bump in the night, getting the project from script to screen, and working with Maeve Higgins, Will Forte, Barry Ward and Terri Chandler. They also talk about their early days in IADT and experimenting on mini-VHS tape, making music videos, ads, the influences behind their work and being practical with visual effects .

Extra Ordinary is released in Irish cinemas 13th September

 

 

vimeo.com/teamdaddy

 

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Reel Horror Show: Episode 13

Reel Horror Show’s Mark Sheridan is joined by Dr Sarah Cleary in this special episode to explore the cobwebbed tunnels of horror.

Sarah and Mark discuss how the horror genre is being controlled, regulated and restricted in response to its alleged effect on children. Other topics include horror as the messenger. Trump horror.  A take-down of Stranger Things and the comfort blanket of ’80s nostalgia. Franchises! Zombies!! – watching Diary of the Dead in the context of Love Island. The Exorcist as a conservative narrative. Is there ever a cause for censorship? An examination of I Spit on Your Grave. The discomfort of seeing the human in the monster. A look at Midsommar‘s folk horror. The condition of Irish horror and where it can go. Plus a Rob Zombie love-in.

And to quote Sarah – “a good horror should always leave us a little bit looking over our shoulder as we leave the cinema”

 

 

Dr Sarah Cleary

Awarded her PhD in Horror, Sarah has dedicated her studies to exploring the juxtaposition between the media and the alleged negative effects of popular culture on children. Having published and given talks on a wide variety of horror and pop culture subjects, from eco-zombies to satanic panic, Sarah splits her time between lecturing and academic consultancy in the media. 

With her first book on horror and censorship forthcoming in 2019, when she is not nose deep in books and film, Sarah is also a horror specialist and pop culture panellist on a day time current affairs TV show, Creative Director of Horror Expo Ireland which seeks to unite academia and pop culture and producer of The Rocky Horror Picture Show Ireland, now in its 15th year.

sarahcmcleary@gmail.com

@sarah_clearysc

https://www.facebook.com/horrorexpoireland

www.linkedin.com/in/drsarahcleary

Reel Horror Show, Irish Film Podcast

 

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The Bleeding Pig Film Festival Roundtable Podcast

L-R Emma Fagan, Laura O’Shea, Gemma Creagh, Mia Mullarky

In this podcast Gemma Creagh is joined by Emma Fagan, programme manager of The Bleeding Pig Film Festival (9-11 September) and filmmakers Mia Mullarky (Mother & Baby) and Laura O’Shea (Hold the Line), whose films are screening at the festival.

46′ 03″

Mother & Baby (Mia Mullarky)

Mother & Baby explores the memories of Mother & Baby Home survivors who were sold or fostered out by the Irish church and state if their mothers conceived them out of wedlock.

Mia Mullarkey is a film director based in Dublin, Ireland. She
directed several successful shorts, receiving 35 awards globally, and screening at major international short film festivals such as Palm Springs, Aesthetica, São Paulo, Valladolid, Tehran and Helsinki. In 2018 Mia received the Discovery Award at Dublin International Film Festival for her body of work, and was made the 2018/2019 Filmmaker-in-Residence with Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival and The Digital Hub.

http://motherandbabyfilm.com
http://miamullarkey.com
http://ishkafilms.com/

Hold the Line (Laura O’Shea)

Em works in a call centre. She faces a day that’s more difficult than the usual ‘customer care queries’ and is on the brink. That’s until: she picks up the phone to Patsy.

Laura O’Shea is an award winning actor/writer/filmmaker from Limerick City. Her filmmaking-debut was a Short Film titled Hold the Line. This was the Winner of the ‘Best Short Film’ award at the 2019 Belfast Film Festival and it also won the ‘Audience Award’ at the 2019 Chicago Irish Film Festival. Laura won the award for ‘Best Actress’ at the 2018 Richard Harris International Film Festival for her performance in Hold the Line and also received a Special Mention at IndieCork 2018 for ‘Best Emerging Irish Female Director’. In the theatre world, her play Knowing Nathan that she co-wrote as well as acted in was the Winner of the ‘Judge’s Choice Award’ at the 2018 Galway Fringe Festival. Laura comes from a musical background and holds an MA in Music Technology.

Emma Fagan has a background in marketing and project management but her life-long passion for film led her away from office life and, for the last six years, she has worked with a number of Irish film festivals in various capacities. In 2016, in association with the Bleeding Pig Cultural Festival in Donabate, Co. Dublin she set up the Bleeding Pig Film Festival, platforming independent Irish film to the local community there. Emma also runs a PR & Marketing agency, Fillum, which promotes independent filmmakers in Ireland.

 

Mother & Baby and Hold the Line screen as part of a selection of short films all written/and or directed by women on Tuesday, 10th September: 7.30pm to 9pm – followed by a Q&A.

The 2019 Bleeding Pig Film Festival takes place 9-11 September in Keelings of Donabate, Co. Dublin.

The full programme is here.

 

 

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Ivan Kavanagh, Writer/Director of ‘Never Grow Old’

In this podcast, Paul Farren talks to Ivan Kavanagh about his latest feature Never Grow Old and the influences behind it, and discusses the Western genre in general and its enduring appeal. Ivan also talks about working with John Cusack, Emile Hirsch and Déborah François and the craft of filmmaking itself.

In Never Grow Old, Irish carpenter and undertaker Patrick Tate (Hirsch) lives with his young family on the outskirts of a small frontier town on the California trail during the 1849 gold rush. It’s a tough but relatively peaceful place, until outlaw Dutch Albert (Cusack) and his gang take over, killing anyone who stands up to them. Patrick initially plays a dangerous game, profiting from the outlaws’ mayhem, but it is only a matter of time before he must protect his own from the bloodshed.

Starring Emile Hirsch (Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, Into The Wild), Déborah François (L’Enfant) and John Cusack (High Fidelity, Being John Malkovich), Never Grow Old was filmed in Galway and Luxembourg and was produced by Dominic Wright and Jacqueline Kerrin for Ripple World Pictures and Nicolas Steil for the Iris Productions Group.

Never Grow Old is released in Irish cinemas Friday, 23rd August.

40′ 16″

 

 

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Film Ireland Podcast: Episode 37- Sexy Thrillers… There’s No Buckets Involved

 

Sarah Cullen and Richard Drumm return to give us their latest contemplations and ruminations on film.

This episode’s reviews include The Lonely Battle of Thomas Reid, Never Grow Old and Toy Story 4. Netflix fodder Secret Obsession and Kidnapping Stella, plus a daylit look at MidSommar, Woman at War, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Good Boys.

 

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The Dublin Feminist Festival: Filmmaker Carmen García & Programme Manager Dr Jennifer O’Meara

In this podcast, Gemma Creagh is joined by Carmen García and Dr Jennifer O’Meara to talk about the Dublin Feminist Film Festival, which runs 22 – 24 August 2019.

Carmen García is a feminist videojournalist, journalist and filmmaker. Her film Tra na mban / Ladies Beach screens at the festival as part of the shorts programme on Thursday, 22nd August.

Dr Jennifer O’Meara is an Assistant Professor in Film Studies at Trinity College Dublin, and a programming manager for the Dublin Feminist Film Festival.

Full programme here
Buy tickets here
Tra na mban / Ladies Beach (2019) Mexico (6.36)
Dir. Carmen Garcia Gonzalez

 

 

In the west coast of Ireland, a group of Irish women 40 to 80 years old swim every morning in the Atlantic cold waters come rain or shine. Martell, who hasn’t missed a day in 10 years now, let us know how is it for her and the swimmers to meet at the Ladies Beach in Galway, vent together under the cold water and share a hot coffee and a warm chat afterwards. A tight-knit bunch brought together by their love to the sea.

 

Instagram: @carmengarxia
Twitter: @carmengarxia

 

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