Robert Manson | Film Ireland

May 16, 2016May 16, 2016

Sydney’s Second Annual Irish Film Festival Wraps With ‘Lost In The Living’

Glen Falkenstein interviews Lost in the Living director Robert Manson at Sydney’s Irish Film Festival.

Sydney’s second annual Irish Film Festival concluded at The Chauvel Cinema in Sydney’s Paddington following four days of screenings, closing with the Australian premiere of Lost In The Living, which chronicles an Irish musician’s (Tadgh Murphy from Vikings and Black Sails) weekend in Berlin, a whirlwind romance, and an introduction to the city’s unique nightlife. The film’s director, Robert Manson, flew out from Dublin for the Australian premiere, and sat down with Glen Falkenstein to discuss the film and the growth of Irish cinema. “This is a love letter to Berlin,” says Manson. “I created this project from memories, from experiences, from friends and other people that I met, from observations, chance happenings, things I read, and things that I overheard on trains. I wanted to put it all together in one constructed piece so that I could take it out of my brain and then maybe go to another city and do something else or just go and explore another culture, but Berlin just didn’t let me go.”

A low-budget production, Manson sometimes had to adopt guerrilla filmmaking tactics to get the film made at the authentic Berlin locations that he wanted, shooting quickly and completing principal photography in a matter of weeks. “There’s a lot of space, and great big city streets and parks that aren’t crowded, so you can find a little corner to shoot in,” the director says. “Small independent films don’t really get shot there. I was told to just go and shoot it, and just do it. I was told to just get this one permission slip which is a general permit for having a camera in the city. It’s 100 euros, and then you just go and do it. No one will even notice; so we did, and nobody did. They have a no camera policy in clubs, so we shot in one of the dirtiest little clubs called The Golden Gate. When we were asking for permission, everyone said that there was no chance in hell that we could get to film there, but we told them what we were doing, and they liked the idea and they liked the project, so they invited us to come and shoot it. Authenticity is a big thing in Berlin, so choosing locations for clubs and pubs and things like that is very important.”

With Irish filmmakers expanding their projects to a number of countries including Australia, Manson also shared his thoughts on the development of Irish cinema and the prospects for follow-ups to Lost In The Living. “The diaspora of Ireland is so gigantic,” he says. “People are moving around and sharing their stories. They’re working on songs or projects, and they’re writing theatre, dance, film, and everything together. There are those little Irish communities in places like Sydney and in Berlin, where there’s a huge community now. Those old notions of what Ireland used to be are changing. When I fly into Sydney, I get a very fresh opinion of Ireland, because it’s from people who’ve been here for a long time, and it’s a twist on what I would recognise from being there or living there; it’s a new perspective, with new ideas. It always helps something resonate or grow, and it’s exciting to film in Ireland at the minute or in many of the cities that Irish people inhabit.

“I want to do a trilogy of Irish perspectives from and in Berlin, so Dublin and Berlin – for the first one, Lost in The Living, it’s a newcomer’s touristic perspective with fresh eyes in a new place and culture, there’s alienation, new ideas and possibilities, there’s a freshness of a new city. The second film is about living in the city a number of years, getting into the culture, bedding down and finding a new home and then how that is reflected in being away from Ireland for a long period of time, and then the third part would be returning to Ireland after being in Berlin for a long time.”

Supported by The Irish Film Board and the Consulate-General of Ireland in Sydney, this year’s festival featured a special focus on the centenary of the 1916 revolution and its continuing effects, including 2016: The Irish Rebellion, a documentary narrated by Liam Neeson. Opening with Glassland, focused on the world of human trafficking and starring Jack Reynor (Transformers: Age Of Extinction) and Toni Collette, the festival also featured a showing of the Irish animation, Song Of The Sea, which screened at last year’s Sydney Film Festival.

A version of this article originally appeared on FilmInk

Glen writes film reviews, features, commentary and covers local festivals and events. Glen lives in Sydney. He tweets @GlenFalkenstein

The Irish Film Festival took place in Sydney 7 – 10 April 2016

You can read Ruth Hogan’s report from the festival here

February 8, 2016February 8, 2016

IFI Irish Film in Focus Interview: Robert Manson, writer/director of ‘Lost in the Living’

Robert Manson’s drama Lost in the Living screens at the IFI on Thursday, 11th February 2016. The film follows a young man, Oisín (Tadhg Murphy), who travels to Berlin with his band, buzzing with the potential of a tour and escape from his troubled family life. Oisín meets Sabine (Aylin Tezel), a pretty young Berliner, who shows him the secret places that belong to the city. The band lose patience with him and move on and he decides to stay. But this time of simple pleasures is based on illusions. Oisín’s willful escapism is thrown into a tailspin when events take a dark turn.

Robert has described the film as his ‘love letter to Berlin’, a city he has been visiting for ten years and where he now lives. “I love Berlin. It’s a huge inexpensive creative metropolis, where young and emerging artists, can find and afford space to develop their craft without too much hassle. Lost in the Living is an homage to the city of Berlin in many ways. This film is a collection of anecdotes, experiences and observations I have made in the city over the years. Some are personal ones, some are of friends and visitors, to Berlin, and some are things that I have seen and overheard. I collected all these little shards and memories and worked them into a simple script about love and loss in a foreign city.

“The film took me a little over four years to make and bring to this stage. I have been living in Berlin for nearly a year now so my perspective of the city has changed considerably over time. But it’s still interesting to see and experience things with fresh eyes. I still feel that newcomer buzz when watching the film now. I have learned a lot more about Berlin since shooting this film. Including a deeper understanding of the people, the culture and the history of the city. In some ways the success of this film has given me an opportunity to delve deeper into life in Berlin. It was originally my plan to make this film as a bookend of my experiences in the city and go somewhere else to discover another city perhaps. Berlin hasn’t let me go though. I have been immersed since then, presenting the film to new audiences in the capital city.”

It turns out that this will not be Robert’s only film set in Berlin. Robert explains that he plans to make a trilogy of films there, “representing three stages of life in the city: visiting the city; living in the city and, finally, leaving the city, after spending a long time there. I am currently developing the script for the second part of this trilogy, along with two other scripts, which are set in Ireland.”

Robert had written and directed 5 shorts before taking on his first feature and points out the particular challenges he faced working on his debut feature. “Shorts and features are two completely different animals. Everything is ten times bigger, scarier and more difficult when handling a feature. The hardest part about making a feature is knowing when you’re ready to step up and start swimming against the current. Then comes the decisions about what story or script to develop. There is also the challenge of gathering a team together to work with you.

“‘Don’t wait too long or you’ll miss your chance,’ an Irish film director once told me at the Fleadh in Galway. Convincing yourself is the first stage, then you need to try and convince everyone else around you that it is going to happen. It’s like a right of passage for a director/writer. Shorts are a great way to find your feet as a filmmaker and to develop your craft. It’s important to make as many as you can at a young age and make as many mistakes as possible during the process. I made loads of mistakes along the way to finishing Lost In The Living.

“We shot a feature film, on a minimal budget, in a foreign city, with a language and cultural barrier. My producer Lisa Roling was asked at a recent screening in Berlin, ‘how did you manage it all?’ she replied, ‘I really don’t know’. We survived this process by the skin of our teeth and with all the film Gods looking down on us and guiding us. The experience I garnered on this film, I think, will put me in good stead for many years to come. It will also help me tackle, with good temperament, the challenges of future projects. I am hungry for the next challenge now.”

For a film like Lost in the Living to work, Robert needed particularly strong performances from its two leads, which he got in spades from Tadhg Murphy, playing Oisín, and Aylin Tezel, who plays Sabine. “After watching the short film Rhinos, I thought Aylin Tezel would be perfect for the role of Sabine in my film. I got in touch with her and visited her in the Mauerpark in Berlin. She liked the script and we became friends. There were a few bumps in the road before we actually got around to shooting the film in the summer of 2013 in Berlin. In that time, Aylin had started to become really famous in Berlin and was working on a number of high-profile films and had also secured a main role in the hit German TV show Tatort. But she kept true to the film and joined up with us to shoot in Berlin and Dublin.

“I cast Tadhg a few weeks before setting out to Berlin for the pre-production phase of the film. I met him in a cafe in Dublin just after he had finished shooting on Vikings and I was bowled over by him. He was so open and generous with me. I remember him being calm and revealing stuff to me after a matter of minute that he said he hadn’t told anyone yet. I knew he was perfect for the role.

“It’s always a worrying moment when actors meet for the first time on set. Thankfully, Tadhg and Aylin got on like a house on fire from the first moment they met. Their first scene together was when they meet for the first time. I didn’t introduce them before the scene where Tadhg looks over at Aylin in the cupboard bar scene in the film. I told him to find her amongst the crowd of extras and he did. It was perfect and is still one of my favourite moments in the film.

“We worked with a lot of non-actors and real people just off the street in Berlin during, the making of this film. Tadhg was a godsend as he relaxed people he shared screen time with and also guided some people that needed a little extra encouragement. He was like an acting coach for some people. It was amazing working with both these generous, high-profile actors, and so much fun, introducing them to the madness of Berlin.”

In the film, Oisín has left behind the sadness of his mother’s death and disappointment towards his absent father and his disaffection spills over into an overt feeling of alienation – something that his character pursues. “Berlin is like the city of lost children,” according to Robert. “Maybe an inverted Tír na nÓg. There’s a strange energy in the city. I regularly find myself just wandering around the city with no real destination or appointment to keep. It’s great. I enjoy switching my brain off, grabbing a beer from a Spati and taking the long way home or then going to a party. Also if you don’t understand the language it’s easy to filter all the conversation around you on busses or trains and find complete silence in your brain. I think Oísin’s character has been through a lot in recent years and a few events at the start of the film forces him to break away from his friends and to search for some peace within himself. He seeks distraction and silence… but finds love.”

That sense of alienation is made more palpable by the cinematography of Narayan Van Maele and Gareth Averill’s sound design to create a particular sensual environment that sets the tone of the piece. “Narayan was a lifesaver for this film. I have worked with him many times over the years on short films, in and out of college. So he know my approach as a filmmaker and knows what to expect. Sometimes it can be hard to form a relationship and dialogue with a new DOP. Especially when you’re thrown in at the deep end on set. It can take years to develop a connection and professional working relationship, sometimes.

“This was our first feature film together as DOP and director. Having solid people in all of the key Heads Of Department positions on set is so important. Also, it didn’t hurt that Narayan can speak German, being from Luxembourg. We would have been lost with Narayan, if the truth be told. I think that his European pedigree for cinematography and his rich and imaginative eye for details shows up through his shot selection and the visual style in the film.

“I have worked with Gareth on many projects over the years. We have a great working relationship. I don’t need to describe too much about what I am looking for on each project. He just gets it. I send him a cut of the film to work away on and I get some of the most amazing soundscapes and scores back that I can pick and choose from. He usually sends me samples of the directions he’s going in and I can keep up to speed with him that way. For me the sounds design is always one of the most enjoyable stages of the whole process. Sound really brings everything together.”

Lost In The Living screens on Thursday, 11th February 2016 at 18.30 at the IFI as part of Irish Film in Focus, a focus on new Irish film and filmmakers.

Director Robert Manson will be present for a post-screening Q&A.

Tickets are available here or from the IFI Box Office or on 01 679 3477

July 16, 2015July 16, 2015

Review of Irish Film at Galway Film Fleadh: Lost in the Living

Christopher Banahan gets Lost in the Living, which screened at the Galway Film Fleadh.

Lost in the Living begins as a classic story of a bunch of Irish lads in a band enjoying the thrill and adventure of touring in a foreign land. The foreign land being Berlin, which here is portrayed as a very decadent city, with its emphasis on youth culture. Then the story begins to drift away to focus on the troubled band-member Oisín and transforms into a personal voyage of discovery and reckoning for this central protagonist, compellingly portrayed by the extraordinary presence of Tadhg Murphy.

Oisín, who has an obvious self-destruct mechanism, feels he has been sidelined by his band. He is lured away by the exquisite and utterly charming Sabine (played by the ‘face to watch’ in German Cinema, Aylin Tezel). Initially, he is dumbfounded by this beautiful girl’s interest in him. Then, in what the director called his ‘love letter to Berlin’, the pair appear to fall passionately in love with each other. Sabine reveals to him a hidden Berlin of intimate places, away from the tourist traps. Though you always suspect she is too good to be true and this is hinted at in a nightclub where she pretends not to know a man who seems familiar with her.

Oisín, smitten, surprises her by wanting to see her home. At this point you sense he wants to see this ‘perfect girl’s’ background, possibly curious to see what makes her ‘so happy’ – as it becomes obvious Oisín has a troubled past he is in denial about.

After an intimate night together, secrets slip out unleashing Oisín‘s self-destruct button as embittered memories are brought to the surface.

The director, Robert Manson, uses a subtle metaphor of ‘foreignness of voices’ around the troubled Oisín to emphasis his alienation, not only to the city but from himself and the people he thought cared for him.

The film has a remarkable juxtaposition of cinematography by Narayan Van Maele, emphasised in the scene where Oisín appears to walk drunkenly through an underground train. It’s as if he’s at kilter to the movement of the irregular shifting of the carriages, like an annoying ‘crazy walk’ on a fairground ride, making his slow progress sluggishly towards an endless sea of overhead T.V. Monitors with the same image repeated.

In fact there are many remarkable moments of cinematography, such as the focus pull on the wonderfully atmospheric depth of field swimming scene, where the nakedness of the young couple is treated sensitively and with pathos (as such scenes can so easily be portrayed as corny).

The director Robert Manson said that much of the cinematography and plot approach are partly an homage to Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad) and Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni (L’Avventura), both known for their chilly depictions of alienation, creating enigmatic and intricate mood pieces, rejecting action in favour of contemplation, all ingredients in which Lost in the Living successfully negates and embellishes, adding its own unique imprint.

Christopher Banahan (MA Production and Direction: Huston School of Film & Digital Media, Flirt FM journalist)

Lost in the Living screened on Thursday, 9th July as part of the Galway Film Fleadh (7 – 12 July 2015)

April 28, 2015April 28, 2015

‘Lost in the Living’ Wins in Berlin

Lost in the Living had its world premiere at the Achtung Berlin Film Festival on the 17^th of April. The feature film was screened four times at the festival in Germany and won the Best Director award for writer/director Robert Manson. This film was made by Irish and Berlin-based filmmakers and by actors in Ireland and Germany during the summer of 2013.

Lost in the Living follows a young man, Oisín (Tadhg Murphy), a musician from Dublin, who travels to Berlin with his band. He leaves behind the weight of losing his mother and an anger towards his absent father. But things do not turn out as he plans.