Submissions are being invited for entries for the screening programme of the second Doclands festival. The specialist documentary festival and market will take place in Dublin in September.
Feature-length and short documentaries made in the past three years on 35mm, 16mm or Betamax are eligible for entry. Documentaries that haven't been widely shown will be favoured in the selection process. Last year, 28 screenings were held; this year the organisers hope to double that number. The festival takes place from September 27th to 30th; the deadline for submissions is June 1st. More details can be found on the Doclands website at www.doclands.ie
If you've always fancied yourself as a television presenter, now is your chance to go for it. RTE is set to host open auditions in a quest for new talent on April 27th and 28th at the RDS in Dublin. (See the feature on page 5.)
Auditions will be filmed a la Popstars, the recent ITV programme. The judging panel has yet to be finalised, but we're assured there won't be any "Nasty Nigel" types on it. The results will be presented in a four-part series called Selection , made by the independent company Adare Productions for transmission in June.
The aim is that a suitable host is found to present The Fame Game, a new celebrity- based quiz show for broadcast later in the summer. The Fame Game will pit three fans of a celebrity against one another to determine which is the ultimate fan. The type of celebrity is unimportant - it can be a pop star, a sports star, a star of the screen or even a politician (surely unlikely). What's important is how well the contestants know their celebrities.
The most deserving fans will then be sent on missions to meet their idols. But in a further twist they'll have to use their initiative to track them down. They will be given a limited budget, a camera crew, a producer and told: "Go find". Applications for an audition can only be made online, and further details and forms can be found on RTE's website: www.rte.ie
Would you believe that a priest would abandon a woman in the middle of her confession on hearing the strains of The Mighty Avons' Lovely Leitrim drifting down a crowded Indian street? The nameless priest (from Granard, Co Leitrim, we're told) was apparently so overcome by a wave of nostalgia, he left his open-air confessional to savour the musical moment.
So Larry Cunningham of The Mighty Avons tells Shay Healy in the first episode of a new 13-part music show, beginning at 8.30 p.m. on RTE 1 on April 23rd. Produced and directed by Healy, Ireland's Greatest Hits will examine the stories behind the songs that have topped the charts here over the past 40 years. The programmes will mix archive material with recent interviews with artists and music producers.
Each episode will feature four songs. The first kicks off with the aforementioned Lovely Leitrim, followed by Breathless by The Corrs, The Rare Oul' Times by Patsy Watchorn and Crazy World by Aslan. It tells how Crazy World was twice used to bring a child out of a coma. On one occasion, members of Aslan went into a Dublin hospital and played an acoustic version of the song at the bedside of a sick child. While the group were playing, the child's eyelids began to flicker and he regained consciousness. Other contributors to the programmes include Ronnie Drew, Boyzone, Richie Kavanagh and Eileen Reid.
mkearney@irish-times.com