Fewer blockbusters, but the extension of the tax incentive scheme for film production has seen a slight increase in the number of smaller scale movies being made here. Michael Dwyer reports
Despite the fact that the Section 481 tax incentive scheme for film production was renewed in the December 2003 Budget, and extended to the end of 2008, this has been a dismal year for film production in Ireland.
It started promisingly enough in February with Paul Mercier's Studs and Tommy Collins's Dead Long Enough both going into production. However, with the exception of two significant productions during the summer - Ken Loach's War of Independence drama, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, shot in Cork, and Charles Sturridge's new version of Lassie, half of which was shot on the Isle of Man - it has been a remarkably lean year. Element Films, which was the Irish co-producer on both films, also was involved with the German-language TV movie, An Ocean of Heart, which shot for five weeks in Kerry at the end of the summer.
One producer commented this week that were it not for RTÉ, it would have been even worse. RTÉ, he noted, produced over 30 hours of TV drama this year, including Pure Mule, Stardust, Showbands 2, Fall Out and the new series of The Clinic.
There are glimmers of hope as the year draws to an end, although most of the new productions are at the lower end of the budget range. Ronan Glennane, who produced the London-set, Irish-shot Peaches, made his first feature as a director last month - Pride and Joy, a drama dealing with a family inheritance feud and featuring Michele Forbes and Owen Roe as a Dublin working-class couple. Described as an "ultra low budget feature", it was shot in three weeks for €100,000.
Last week the Irish Film Board issued an optimistic press release. Citing the success of three new Irish films at the recent Toronto International Film Festival - Breakfast On Pluto, Pavee Lackeen and Isolation - the board announced: "Autumn will see Irish film production activity escalating, with three new films set to go into production." All three begin shooting here in the next month.
First up on November 6th is The Front Line, the second feature from writer-director David Gleeson, who made Cowboys & Angels. Produced by Nathalie Lichtenthaeler of Wide Eye Films, it features Eriq Ebounaney (from Kingdom of Heaven) as an African immigrant employed as a bank security guard in Dublin and taking on a criminal gang. It also features James Frain, Gerard McSorley, Fatou N'Diaye and Darren Healy. Buena Vista International (Ireland) will release the film here next year.
Freeze Frame producer Michael Casey of Green Park Films is preparing Middleton, which is now in pre-production and features Matthew Macfadyen (Mr Darcy in the new Pride & Prejudice) in a story of conflict between two brothers. Scripted by Daragh Carville, the film will be directed by Brian Kirk. Eclipse Pictures will distribute it here.
The third project announced by the film board is Brendan and the Secret of Kells, a feature from Kilkenny-based animated company Cartoon Saloon telling the story of the boy behind the Book of Kells. It will be directed by Tomm Moore, who scripted it with Fabric Zlorkowski, and produced by Paul Young. Production will proceed for 18 months in Ireland, Belgium and France.
Meanwhile, producer Adrian Devane has set November 20th as the starting date for shooting Speed Dating, a romantic comedy to be directed by Tony Herbert, who wrote the screenplay. Set to shoot for four weeks in Bray and Dublin city centre and at Ardmore Studios, it features Hugh O'Conor and Don Wycherley. Describing it as a romantic comedy, Devane says he is keeping the storyline under wraps for now, but adds: "I haven't seen anything like it before. It's very smart, it's very funny and above all it's commercial."
In January, veteran British director Nicolas Roeg is due to start shooting Puffball, with Samantha Morton (who starred in Lassie this year) and Donald Sutherland (from Roeg's classic Don't Look Now). Michael Garland of Grand Pictures - which made Dead Long Enough and the micro-budget hit, Spin the Bottle - is producing this supernatural thriller based on a 1980 novel by Fay Weldon and adapted by her son, Dan Weldon. Shooting on this €4 million production will take place in the area of the Monaghan/Armagh border.
And Mexican director Luis Mandoki is preparing to shoot his new film, The Winged Boy, here and in Britain next spring. Described as a family film with a slice of magic realism, it deals with a young boy living in a present-day Irish village where he grows wings and starts to fly.
It's based on an unpublished story written by Mary Hayley Bell, widow of the late John Mills, and the screenplay is by her grandson Crispian Mills - singer-guitarist with Kula Shaker and son of Hayley Mills. Mandoki's new movie, Innocent Voices, set during the civil war in 1980s El Salvador, opens in the US this month and his Hollywood movies include White Palace, The Edge, Message in a Bottle and When a Man Loves a Woman.
