Limerick set to honour Richard Harris with film festival

Richard Harris would delight in the idea that Limerick has become home to an international film festival hosted in his name.

Harris, who once laughingly agreed when he was accused of having an elephantine ego, definitely would love the fact that this year, its third, the Richard Harris International Film Festival is once again taking place in October, the month of his birth in that city.

He might even joke, “What would Limerick be without me?”

Harris had an irreverent attitude to the honours he did and did not receive from Limerick during his lifetime. When Limerick County Council at one point voted down the notion of giving him the Freedom of the City, Harris told them, “You cannot give me what I took myself when I left the place in 1955.”

On the other hand, when Limerick University offered him a doctorate in letters he is said to have rejected it, telling them it must be of little value if they had conferred the same honour upon Frank McCourt in 1997. Harris detested McCourt's miserable depiction of Limerick in his book Angela's Ashes, which he vociferously attacked in public.

It’s worth noting these anecdotes could be apocryphal, or playful lies, given that they came from the mouth of Harris himself.

‘Unofficial’ Limerick

Either way, one suspects Harris would warmly embrace the fact that the festival, which this year is expanded to four days from October 22nd to 25th, is not a product of “official” Limerick, but the brainchild of Rob Gill.

A Limerick-born strategy consultant, passionate about the arts and a long-time Harris fan, Gill decided in 2012 that a film festival promoting the work of Irish film-makers living abroad could be the most appropriate way to commemorate Harris’s legacy. It was a year prior to the Gathering.

Gill brought on board actor and director Zeb Moore and both are now festival organisers.

The team also includes Sylvia Moore, administrator for Magic Roundabout Theatre Company, and Harris's three sons, Jamie, Jared and Damian. All three have attended previous festivals and Jared will be here again this year.

The inaugural festival in 2013 was a relatively modest affair, hit and miss in many ways. Now it is has the focus that was missing in the early days.

The primary aim still is to encourage Irish film-makers abroad to return and to showcase their work, in both short and feature length films, but the event has also opened its doors to theatrical performers, poets, singers and writers.

Striking a chord

There are plans to have

Jim Webb

– composer of many of Harris’s best-known recordings, such as

MacArthur Park

– stage a concert at next year’s festival, as well as a performance of music from Harris’s films by

RTÉ

Concert Orchestra.

All of this is highly commendable, especially given the fact that the festival is run by the team of three – Gill, and Zeb and Sylvia Moore – often at their own expense. All three are quick to point out it is a non-profit organisation, which receives no major financial support from any official organisation. They stress it is desperately in need of “serious funding”.

During the Dublin launch of this year’s festival, Moore said, not entirely seriously in terms of the amount of money he mentioned: “We do all this by going to various people and organisations and saying, “give us fifty quid, or whatever you can.”

Dealing with penury may be a part of life in the arts in Ireland these days but the Bull would be raging if it folded due to lack of cash and might spit fire from heaven, or hell.

For more information on the festival, see issuu.com/rhiff