Icons of North set scene for Sheridan movie

A DERELICT part of Dublin's docklands has been turned into a little piece of Belfast for the next two months for a major new film which started shooting yesterday.

The Sheriff Street flats complex, which is scheduled for demolition in the near future, has been temporarily renovated to provide the main location for The Boxer, the new film by writer director Jim Sheridan.

With watchtowers, roadblocks and republican graffiti, the flats have been transformed into a part of Belfast at the height of the "Troubles".

"We've taken a lot of the iconography of the city and turned it into a Belfast of the mind," says the film's producer, Mr Arthur Lappin.

The Boxer, which began filming yesterday in Mountjoy jail, is Sheridan's first film as a director in four years and sees him united for the third time with actor Daniel Day Lewis, the star of My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father.

The film is described as a love story in which Day Lewis plays a newly released republican prisoner and ex boxer who gets back in the ring and also becomes involved again with an old lover, played by the English actress Emily Watson, an Academy Award nominee this year for her performance in Breaking the Waves.

Although Mr Lappin did not wish to disclose the exact budget, there is no doubt that The Boxer is the biggest film made in Ireland since Neil Jordan's Michael Collins in 1995.

It is financed by Universal Studios in the United States, along with the Irish Film Board and Section 35 tax incentives.

The script, which is set in Belfast in the recent past, is co written by Sheridan and Terry George, the director of Some Mother's Son.

Contrary to some reports, the story is fictional and is not based on the life and career of Barry McGuigan, but McGuigan has been working closely with Daniel Day Lewis as an adviser.

The Boxer is the latest in a long line of films in which Dublin has stood in for Belfast (Sheriff Street was also used by Sheridan for In the Name of the Father). Security fears and insurance costs have been cited by many film makers as reasons for not shooting on location in Northern Ireland, although Mr Lappin also believes that "it's probably much easier to work here. The infrastructure for film making is here."

The Boxer will be shooting on location in Dublin and at Ardmore Studios in Bray until July and is scheduled for release in the US in December, in time to qualify for potential Oscar nominations in early 1998.