New EFP Board with Renate Rose, EFP Managing Director. From left to right: Françoise Lentz, Rafael Cabrera, Renate Rose, Christian J. Lemche, Teresa McGrane, Cristian Hordila, Martin Schweighofer. Not pictured: Mariette Rissenbeek.
Photo: EFP/ Kurt Krieger.

The members of European Film Promotion (EFP) have elected a new Board of Directors at their recent EFP General Assembly during the Cannes Film Festival. The Board is composed of seven members and the term of office lasts for two years. Christian J. Lemche (Danish Film Institute) has been confirmed as EFP President. Martin Schweighofer (Austrian Film Commission) has been elected as EFP Vice President. New representatives on the board are Cristian Hordila (Romanian Film Promotion), Françoise Lentz (Film Fund Luxembourg) and Teresa McGrane (Irish Film Board).

Illustration: Adeline Pericart

Actress (18-27) required for Elevate, a short student art film
 

Work is unpaid, however actors will receive the short film to add to their show-reel upon completion as well as food and travel cost paid.

The IFI presents a Pre-Tour Dress Rehearsal of Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn, accompanied by the CinéTheatre Ensemble, before a major international tour of three EU capital cities.

The IFI is giving Dublin audiences a unique opportunity to see the eleven-piece CinéTheatre Ensemble performing the Pre-Tour Dress Rehearsal of Bernard Reilly’s magnificent new score for one of the few Irish films to survive from the silent era, Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn, at the IFI on June 5^th at 18.30. The CinéTheatre Ensemble then embarks on a tour of three prestigious cinemas in Paris (Cinema Le Balzac, 10^th June 8.30pm), Berlin (Kino Babylon, 8^thJune 8pm) and Madrid (Ciné Dore, 12^th June 7.30pm). The tour is presented by the Irish Film Institute as part of the International Culture Programme, Culture Connects, to celebrate Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union, and is supported by Culture Ireland and the Arts Council.

Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn, a Romeo-and-Juliet-style tale set in 18^th century Ireland tells the story of Willy Reilly, a Catholic gentleman in love with Helen Folliard, the ‘Colleen Bawn’. She loves him in return but she is the daughter of the local Protestant squire, and so their love is thwarted by the plotting of the film’s villain, Sir Robert Whitecraft, who wants the Colleen Bawn and Willy Reilly’s land for himself.

Directed by John MacDonagh, brother of Thomas, one of the executed leaders of the 1916 Rising, the film is filled with historical and political resonance, and was filmed in the grounds of St. Enda’s School where Thomas had taught alongside its founder Patrick Pearse. The film is now preserved in the IFI Irish Film Archive.

Composer and conductor of the CinéTheatre Ensemble, Bernard Reilly, has recorded with many international names, including the London Philharmonic, Andrew Lloyd Webber and The Corrs. As a composer his music feature in a number of acclaimed films and documentaries, including A Soldier’s Song, The Gamble and The State We’re In for RTÉ Television. Bernard has composed and orchestrated for the RTÉ Concert Orchestra including Gráinne, performed in major venues across the USA. He also spent many years in London’s West End playing in shows including Blood Brothers (original company), Cats, The Phantom of the Opera and Starlight Express.

Tickets for the Pre-Tour Dress Rehearsal of Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn are available at usual IFI prices now from the IFI Box Office in person, by telephone on 01 679 3477 or online at www.ifi.ie.

John Doran as Vaughan and Eddie Murphy as Teddy Boy in Swerve.

Filming recently finished on Swerve, a new crime comedy produced by Mycrofilms. The film is a fast paced, violent crime comedy about a group of criminals competing for a mysterious bag in a game where only the smartest survive. But the question is, what’s in the bag?

The film is directed by Ross Costigan and written by John Morton. It was produced by Alan Slattery and John Morton of Mycrofilms. The making of the film was supported by Artlinks which enabled the team to undertake a 6 day shoot in and around Kilkenny City over April and May.

The cast of the film includes Eddie Murphy, David Thompson, John Doran, Brendan Corcoran, Joe Murray, Ger Cody, Niall Morrissey, John Morton, Stephen Colfer, Ken McGuire, James McHale, Niall Sheehy, Paul Young and Adrian Kavanagh, amongst others.

Previous short movies from Mycrofilms include John Morton’s Hot Water Bottle which premiered at last years Cork Film Festival and Terrence White’s Baby Love which last screened at the Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival this past March. Both films have continued to screen nationally and internationally since they premiered last year. The team behind Swerve are hoping that the film will achieve the same success when it is released early in 2014.

For more on the film, please visit www.mycrofilms.com/swerve

The Company of Wolves was one of the darkest, most daring, and deeply layered cinematic fairy tales ever created. Pavel Barter talks to director Neil Jordan about the making of his 1984 cult classic.

Clapham, London, 1983. Director Neil Jordan and writer Angela Carter are seated beside one another, pens and paper at the ready, dreaming out loud. And their dream is this: monster toadstools and swaying redwoods, giant teddy bears and life-sized dollhouses; a childhood Neverland narrated by a kindly grandma, a storybook snapshot brought to life. But if you go down to the woods today, be sure of a big surprise, for behind the pastoral toys and playful shanties lurks something quite terrible. The beast. Suddenly the dollhouse collapses beneath the weight of a rustic nightmare and with a single howl all your worst fears are realised. You are a child trapped in a storybook. You are the prey and your grandma has become worryingly hairy. And Jordan and Carter keep dreaming.

“Every morning we would meet in Angela’s house to imagine these extraordinary scenes, we would think about them every night, then meet the next day and create more,” recalls Neil Jordan today, fresh from the final edit of Breakfast on Pluto. “We had total freedom playing with different genres, multiple meanings, and ideas of reality and fantasy. We had a ball with it.” The fact that the pair sang from the same literary hymn sheet helped matters hugely. In 1967, Angela Carter was awarded the Somerset Maugham prize for her second novel and throughout the rest of that decade and the 1970’s she cemented a reputation as a formidable feminist critic and novelist. Neil Jordan, 33 years old at the time, also began his career as an award winning novelist, and was fresh from his directorial debut, Angel (1982).

“Angel was shot on real landscapes; no studio work involved at all. After that, I wanted to go the opposite direction and create a story in an entirely imaginary environment. I met Angela Carter at a writer’s conference in Dublin and she showed me a small radio play she had written based on a collection of her stories called the Bloody Chamber. She suggested that it might make a small movie so I read it. Angela’s message in the Bloody Chamber was that behind these saccharine kids bedtime stories was real blood, flesh, hair, and a seething torrent of sexuality. I had a fascination with fairy tales and understood where she was coming from immediately.”

Jordan suggested that The Company of Wolves, a Bloody Chamber tale inspired by Little Red Hood, might provide a starting point for the other stories. “If there were various storytellers alongside a central grandma narrator we could create a branching structure, from one story to another and back to the granny. This would allow me to make a movie based on all the tales in Angela’s collection.” Bloody Chamber stories The Werewolf and Wolf-Alice worked their way into the finished screenplay and further tales-within-tales, from Angela’s original, inspired bravura sequences like a werewolf-infected wedding. A snoozing protagonist allowed the filmmaker freedom to move dream-like from story to story.

Next stop: fill the characters’ shoes. “This was a wonderful film to cast,” Jordan smiles. Angela Lansbury [The Manchurian Candidate, Murder She Wrote] starred as the grandmother; old-faithful Stephen Rea [V for Vendetta, The Crying Game] appeared as a werewolf who loses his head; and Terence Stamp [Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Star Wars Episode I] even stopped by the set one afternoon for an uncredited appearance. “We chose a ballet dancer, Micha Bergese, for the Prince of Darkness [lead werewolf]. He had never acted before but was quite wonderful. Danielle Dax, an underground star in an extreme rock band, played the role of a strange wolf girl who emerges from the village well.” Stealing the show was Sarah Patterson, a 12-year old actor whose uncanny balance of childhood innocence and adulthood experience makes The Company of Wolves one of cinema’s most memorable coming of age treats.

“Sarah accompanied a friend to auditions,” Jordan recalls. “I spotted her waiting, auditioned her and gave her the role. When you write a part for a child, you either end up with a child actress, which is generally bad news, or with someone who has never acted before. That was the first time I gave a role to someone inexperienced, but I’ve done it subsequently in The Butcher Boy and other films like The Miracle. In The Crying Game, Jay Davidson’s character could not have been played by an actor because you would have recognised him and known he was a man. Sarah had this particular kind of beauty and was very anxious to do it. Her parents were enlightened enough to let her play in this quite disturbing film.”

Jordan had always enjoyed horror and gothic movies, and although he was aware of the 1980’s post-modern werewolf revival led by The Howling and An American Werewolf in London, The Company of Wolves was more influenced by filmmakers like Jean Cocteau (Beauty and the Beast) and 1970’s Parisian pornographic art movies that embedded fairy tales with a salacious twist. The result is a film drenched in sensuality, richer than chocolate cake, and sporting enough themes and allegory to keep film students occupied indefinitely. At one point, Rosaleen climbs a large tree. When she reaches the top, a bird flies away leaving a nest with three eggs. An egg hatches, revealing tiny statuettes of human babies. She takes one home, but when she shows it to her parents the statuette cries. Help! Is there a Dr. Freud in the house?

The Company of Wolves played a part in the mid-80’s return to artificially designed sets. This was a time of spectacular children’s stories filmed in studio-constructed environments: Ridley Scott’s Legend, Wolfgang Peterson’s Neverending Story, Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal, amongst others. “Apart from the opening scenes at a house, the entire movie was filmed on set,” says Jordan. “I was lucky to discover a great designer called Anton Furst who realised the potential for the project. Anton’s instincts and talents were for those heavily designed expressionistic movies that were being made at the time. Anton created an adept way of creating a village and a series of forests using trees on rollers. We built a forest that could be transformed into another forest into another, until it became an endless forest even though we were only shooting at two stages in Shepperton [Middlesex, England].”

Eschewing that old chestnut about working with children or animals, Jordan’s cast of dogs, cats, pigeons, hedgehogs, chickens, rabbits, frogs and snakes, was enough to make a toddler look like a Laurence Olivier. Then, of course, there were the wolves. “Wolves, as you can understand, are very difficult to deal with. They’re wild animals and we had to adroitly combine real wolves with Malamutes. A Malamute is a cross between a husky and an Alsatian – it has a ridged spines which makes it look like a wolf,” explains Jordan.

Many of the film’s English crew had graduated from the Star Wars movies and considered Neil a complete lunatic. Let’s create a spring to summer to winter transformation in one shot, he would eagerly tell them – cue a mass rolling of crew eyes toward the heavens – but this was a young director at his most inventive, using all the tools at his disposal to create magical, crazy effects. These were pre-CG days of animatronics and although “special effects were fun”, limited finances [an estimated $2m budget for the entire shoot] posed challenges. “Some effects turned out great, others were ponderous, and I would perhaps change some of the editing of these scenes. I can now see the machinery working in the transformation sequence where Stephen Rea turns into a wolf, but the most spectacular effect was when the wolf came out of Micha Bergese’s mouth. Very simple, very graphic, but very visceral.”

As it stands, the ending of The Company of Wolves was not what Carter and Jordan had envisaged. “We constructed an ending that was absolutely beautiful but one which ultimately we could not deliver. Rosaleen was to awaken after all these dreams and stand upon her bed. Her mother and sister are outside the door and she bounces up and down then dives through the floor and vanishes, the ground rippling in her wake. We built a wax floor over a swimming pool but it was an impossible effect for us to realise with the resources we had, so we came up with the idea of an endless succession of beasts diving through a canvas. It was interesting, but it didn’t have the liberating effect of the ending we wanted. It’s something you could do quite easily today… you see it in commercials all the time.”

The Company of Wolves marked the beginning of a long relationship between Neil Jordan and producer Stephen Woolley, whose Palace Pictures (co-partnered by Nik Powell and Chris Brown) financed the film. Canon released it in America as a late-night gross-out feature, which was never going to work given the film’s aesthetic leanings, but in Europe the movie was a bona fide hit. Only when Neil toured the various continental countries with Mona Lisa did the cult success of Wolves strike home. An award for Best Film and Best Director from the London Critics Circle rubber-stamped the movie’s accomplishment.

Without The Company of Wolves, Neil Jordan’s grandest Hollywood foray to date – the Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise combo of Interview with a Vampire (1994) – may never have happened. Turn to page 105 of Anne Rice’s novel Tale of the Body Thief and you’ll discover that Louis (Interview with the Vampire’s hero) and prince of darkness Lestat watch Jordan’s film repeatedly. “Anne said that she wanted me to make Interview With A Vampire because The Company of Wolves was Lestat’s favourite movie,” Jordan says. The director was also ready to adapt Rice’s novel to the big screen for another reason.

“Angela wanted to make a vampire film, a similar treatment to her earlier fairy tale and werewolf themes. When I finished The Crying Game [1992] I was going to call her and return to the story but she died of lung cancer that year. I still have the outline she wrote and would love to return to it one day. It’s called Vampirella. So in the early 1990’s I was already thinking of doing a film about vampires and when [producer and record company mogul] David Geffen sent me the book Interview With A Vampire I was already primed to do it.”

While Jordan built on Wolves’ success with Mona Lisa (1985), the film’s star Sarah Patterson appeared in one typecast role (1988’s Snow White) before dropping from the radar. “Sarah lives in London,” says Neil. “Acting is something she didn’t really pursue but I have been in touch with her several times during the years. Now that you mention it, I must get in touch with her again.” Comfortable obscurity is a far better fate than that of production designer Anton Furst. After working on Full Metal Jacket and winning an Oscar for his fabulous depiction of Gotham City in Batman (1990), Furst tried in vain to find directing work before committing suicide in 1991.

Furst’s haunting landscapes live on in Jordan’s 1984 feature. The Company of Wolves’ ferret glove puppets, butterflies on strings, and other artistic flourishes has made the movie appear more quaintly theatrical with every passing year – an aesthetic foundation which time leaves untrammelled. This is no superficial horror flick, but a movie best watched with the analytical, creative mind one uses when reading a book. For Neil Jordan, “The Company of Wolves is a coming of age film about a young girl overcoming her imagined fears that were given to her by her grandmother and, by implication, society. She realises that these cautionary tales are hiding something that is in fact liberating.”

As a result of Angela and Neil’s creative partnership, The Company of Wolves transcends artificial category. It is neither horror, nor fantasy, nor a children’s film. At times it doesn’t even feel like a fairy tale. Instead it assumes the guise of a timeless and psychedelic daydream/nightmare, undulating and shifting beneath the audience’s gaze like the werewolves at the heart of the tale. For a moment at least, The Company of Wolves can transport you back in time to that Clapham house in 1983, dreaming of monster toadstools, swaying redwoods, and the big, bad wolf, with Neil Jordan and Angela Carter.

This article originally appeared in Film Ireland Magazine, Issue 105 in 2005.

Maggie Donovan (left) and Aoife Spratt (right) as Jenny and Angie

 

Post-production is currently underway on the new, upcoming Irish feature film Trampoline.

 
Written and directed by Tom Ryan and produced by Claire Gormley, Trampoline tells the story of Angie, a girl in her early twenties who returns to her home town to become a teacher at her local school while also dealing with the absence of her father from her family.

The film was produced independently and financed by local businesses in Nenagh, Tipperary where it was also shot. Aoife Spratt stars in the lead role as Angie, with support from Audrey Hamilton, Maggie Donovan, Eddie Murphy and Niamh Algar.

Trampoline is a contemporary drama which deals with relevant issues that many people in their mid twenties are forced to deal with after finishing college.

The movie is currently in post-production with the aim of being completed by the end of the summer for festival entries.

follow on facebook- https://www.facebook.com/pages/Trampoline-Movie/501194433232158

Irish horror feature film Citadel has confirmed its Irish cinema release date for the 14th June. The announcement comes from Irish film distributor Wildcard Distribution. The film received its world premiere at the internationally renowned SXSW last year, where it won the Midnighters Audience Award. The film’s Irish premiere was at the Galway Film Fleadh last year, where it won Best First Feature. It has received numerous awards, along with significant critical acclaim at film festivals worldwide and on its US release with industry bible Variety calling the film “intensely suspenseful” and “breathtakingly lyrical”. Citadel has also been a commercial success upon its US release last Halloween, and has been sold worldwide.

Tommy Cowley is a young father inflicted with chronic agoraphobia since his wife was brutally attacked by a gang of twisted feral children. Trapped in a dilapidated suburb, he finds himself terrorised by the same gang, who now seem intent on taking his baby daughter. Torn between the help of an understanding nurse and a vigilante priest, Tommy sets out to learn the nightmarish truth surrounding these hooded children. He also discovers that to be free of his fears, he must finally face the demons of his past and enter the one place that he fears the most – the abandoned tower block known as the Citadel.

Ciaran Foy, director of Citadel commented: “It’s really great that my debut feature film Citadel is finally being released in Ireland, particularly in Dublin, the city that in many ways gave birth to the story. This comes after the film has literally traveled around the globe and the response it has received has been amazingly positive. It received a theatrical release in the US last November and is doing really well on DVD and digital platforms over there. All the same, there’s a sense of satisfying completion about showing it on home ground and I can’t wait for audiences to experience the terror.”

Patrick O’Neill of Wildcard Distribution commented, “Ciaran Foy’s Citadel is a unique film from a visionary new Irish directing talent that has been exciting, shocking, and terrifying audiences worldwide. I’m really looking forward to Irish audiences getting the opportunity to see this brilliant horror film.”

The film was produced by Katie Holly of Dublin based Blinder Films, with the support of The Irish Film Board / Bord Scannán na hÉireann and Scottish Screen.

Illustration: Adeline Pericart

The  7th Annual Waterford Film Festival will be held between the 8th -10th of November 2013 at the Greyfriars Art Gallery and is currently Open For Submissions!

We are open to all kinds of film genres up to 20 minutes in length. We are also seeking short screenplays up to 15 pages for un-filmed short films. 

Deadlines for submissions are:

Short Films:

REGULAR DEADLINE:  Friday 19th of July

LATE DEADLINE:  Monday 5^th of August 

SCREENPLAYS

REGULAR DEADLINE:  Friday 28 of June

LATE DEADLINE:  Friday 19th^th of July

 For more information please go to: www.waterfordfilmfestival.com

Steve Redmond

The Light keeper: A Memoir. Gerald Butler one of Ireland’s last Lighthouse keepers will present his slide show at the Bunratty Pub at 3pm on Saturday 25th of May. Gerald spent over 21 years tending to many lighthouses around the coast of Ireland such as Bull Rock, Mizen Head and the famous Fastnet Rock. He describes in detail the tragic 1979 Fastnet Yacht Race of 3,000 competitors and more than 4,000 rescuers. Gerald played a vital role as a lighthouse keeper on the forbidding Fastnet Rock towering over the storm-struck vessels as they struggled for survival. Get a unique insight into the lives and characters of lighthouse keepers their families and the wider seafaring community. Gerald will be in conversation with Jeff McCarthy (Last lighthouse Keeper at Mizen Head), Fisherman Michael O’Driscoll and Tom McCarthy.

World Premiere of Defeating Oceans Seven, (2013) 58m, produced by Red Bull and Directed by Rouven Blankenfeld, will be screened at the Village Hall at 6pm on Friday 24th of May. Steve Redmond will be in conversation with Aidan Stanley following the screening.

The ocean’s seven swim challenge includes, the Irish Channel, the Cook Strait between the North and South Islands of New Zealand, the Moloka’i Channel between Oahu and Moloka’i Islands in Hawaii, the English Channel, 
the Catalina Channel near Los Angeles, the Tsugaru Channel between Honshu and Hokkaido in Japan, and the strait of Gibraltar between Europe and Africa. In 2012, ocean swimmer Steve Redmond became the first man ever to swim all seven channels.

The Festival Gathering Project invited second level students to collect stories of emigration from their Grandparents generation and to record their chosen story in a short film. The two winning films will be shown, and the directors will be presented with their prizes at the Grain Store Gallery at 12 noon on Saturday 25th. Distant Shores’ by Members of the Cope Foundation and Gone, directed by Olive Maher.

A Day for the Fire, directed by Maurice O’Callaghan (30min) and starring Jon Kenny, will be screened at the Grain Store Gallery on Saturday 25th at 4.40pm. Includes some beautiful images from Ballydehob.

Thousand Words in a Bottle, directed by Jason Lee will be screened at the Grain Store Gallery at 4.30pm on Saturday 25th. Music video of Mick O’Callaghan performing his own song.

Check out www.fastnetshortfilmfestival.com for full details.

Tara Breathnach

An impressive cast has just been confirmed for a new feature film shooting this July in County Offaly. A Nightingale Falling, based on the novel by PJ Curtis, is set against the backdrop of a turbulent, war-torn Ireland in the early 1920s.

The film will star Tara Breathnach, Muireann Bird and Gerard McCarthy.

Tara is currently starring in The Last Days of Anne Boleyn on BBC2. Muireann Bird has just completed a UK and Irish tour of Brian Friel’s Translations, while Gerard McCarthy is currently on our screens in the hugely successful BBC series The Fall.

A Nightingale Falling is a story of a household and its inhabitants caught in the crucible of the merciless politics, cruelties and hardships of the period. It is also a story of love, and the dark secrets that lead to broken hearts.

The film will be produced by Mixed Bag Media, the company behind the award winning feature documentary Who is Dervla Murphy, the recent documentary A Grand Experience broadcast on RTE, and the award winning short films Bogman and The Road of Souls.

Filming commences on the low budget feature this July in Daingean, County Offaly, and will be directed by Garret Daly and produced by Martina McGlynn.

‘We are so excited to have such an exciting group of actors join this film’ commented Martina McGlynn. ‘Their combined talents and experience makes this a mouth watering prospect for this story. It’s a powerful drama and I’m in no doubt that audiences will be in for something special from these performers.’

Meritta Gorman-Geoghegan has also been confirmed as the films costume designer. She will oversee the costume design and creation of 1920’s ensembles for the main cast.

The film is expected to be completed in early 2014.

Further casting details will be unveiled over the next few weeks.

For more information visit www.mixedbagmedia.com

Or email production@mixedbagmedia.com

20 – 26 May

Monday, 20th May

Wednesday, 22nd May

Archive at Lunchtime @ IFI

 Actas de Marusia (Letters from Marusia) @Instituto Cervantes, Lincoln House, Lincoln Place, 6.30pm

Corona Fastnet Short Film Festival (22 – 26 May 2013, Schull, West Cork)

After Effects 101: Intro to AE CS6. 22nd – 24th May (3 Days) @Filmbase

Thursday, 23rd May

Friday, 24th May

Galway African Film Festival @ Huston School of Film & Digital Media (24 – 26 May) 

In Cinemas:

The Hangover Part III

Epic

Something in the Air

Everybody has a Plan

 IFI CLASSIC – The King of Marvin Gardens (24 – 30 May) . IFI

Saturday, 25th May

The Angels’ Share @ The New Theatre , 43 East Essex Street, Dublin 2

Neil Jordan Retrospective: the director in conversation with novelist Pat McCabe. IFI @ 2.10pm

Neil Jordan Retrospective: Breakfast at Pluto. IFO @ 4.10

Writing Movies Screenwriting Course with Laurence Henson in Strokestown Park House on May 25th/26th.

Sunday, 26th May

LIFE IN MOVEMENT screening at Dublin Dance Fesitival. IFI @2pm

Neil Jordan Retrospective: The Brave One. IFI @ 1.30

If you have an event you’d like us to feature, contact news@filmireland.net with details.