I felt like a kid in a candy store. With a film crew of fifteen, a clown, a RED camera and an incredibly ambitious shooting schedule, we captured some wonderful moments last week. The performance is one for the ages, the crew and kit were fully on their game, and the 4k resolution is amazing. A challenging job well done. This is a very promising start.

Update on Trolley Boy: I left polishing and tweaking the story for a while and went ahead to polish the animation. Not that it will be very polished in style since I’m planning to keep the animation quite linear and jumpy.  I’m only using anticipation, secondary action, arcs and all the rest of the stuff that every animator ought to be using where absolutely needed or where I just feel like concentrating more to the movement.

Ronan is working on the style and it’s coming along very nicely. The final style slightly blurs the animation by giving it a few frames of anticipation and delay which supports my choice of keeping the motion simple.

I’ve asked musician Abigail Smith to compose the score for the film. I’m currently excitedly waiting to hear her first draft!

Over a period of twenty four hours, i have seen a large eagle flying low over the ocean, salmon making their way up a creek to return to their spawning grounds, a wild deer nibbling on a neighbours shrubbery and an adolescent black bear in the lane way in front of our house. combined with the surrounding rain forests, oceans and mountains, i am reminded that the pacific west coast is an amazing place to be.

Wow! who would have imagined such a possibility even a year ago? Amazing moment in history. 

Blind Man’s Eye will be screening in these festivals this month:

22nd Braunschweig International Film Festival November 4-9th, in Braunschweig, Germany

Encounters Short Film Festival, November 18th-30th, Bristol, England

Bursa International Silk Road Film Festival  November 28th December 4th, in Istanbul, Turkey

(Photo by Karl Burke)

What a gas. We got some fantastic material on the three days of Trembling Veil of Bones shoot. A big thank you to the whole crew, with a singular nod and thank you to Brian Quinn, Tim Fleming, Tom McInerey, Andy Clarke, Nicky Gogan and Martin Rose. Well done. The pints at the wrap party in Mulligans Pub - one of Dublin’s truly great pubs, were well earned. Thanks to all.

Relocating, reconfiguring and shooting resulted in a wave of pressing matters which resulted in the blog being neglected. We’re back at it now.

October 21, 22 and 23 we will be going to camera with (The Trembling Veil of) Bones. Very exciting times. 

What the *&@X!!!!! Now I realize that I am not the only one who doesn’t understand this economic crisis. What is going on? Now we are in a situati….

Hmmm, this posting just disappeared.

Thats too bad, i thought I had made a point….

Then again, maybe its a sign from the software gremlin/angels to move on….

Here is a screengrab of the “Monsieur Critique” character model. The secret rendered look of it is being developed by Glimpse Digital’s monsieur Ronan Coyle.

Hi! This is the first posting about my short film with working title “Monsieur Critique”. Although, I have now started to call the project “The Trolley Boy”. After seeing the first scetches of my protagonist pushing shopping trolleys a few friends asked me if the character is a trolley boy. I told them at the time that this is irrelevant and that I have a more abstract approach to the shopping trolleys. But, as the narrative of the film has been taking its shape it luckily occurred to me that it actually is an amazing idea to make the character a trolley boy. I still like the original francophile working title, and there is no doubt my trolley boy is still as critical as ever.

Last year Glimpse Digital Ltd completed the design, vfx supervision, 3d animation and compositing on six new station idents for the Irish Language Public Broadcaster TG4. This was a three-way collaboration with Brian Williams and Sean Cahill of TG4. These idents are filmic in quality and scope. Beautiful, compelling, and enigmatic. Check the first three out (Warrior Woman, The Bridge and Faeries) on the first page of www.glimpsedigital.com . World class.

(The Trembling Veil of) Bones is getting nearer production as another major hurdle is crossed. Ever so close. Our anticipation builds. Our excitement builds. More to come….

A couple of Jacqueline’s paintings from more than fifteen years ago.

$700,000,000,000!!!! Look how many zeroes that is! Its surreal, absolutely surreal.

I thought it was ’free market forces’ that sorts out the has beens from the shining lights in the corporate world. A kind of Darwinian survival of the fittest and all. Yet now, seemingly overnight, the American people are being sold corporate welfare of the most shameless kind.

It amazes to me that the current American Administration was able to unilaterally mismanage the American so-called free-market economy to the extent that ‘we are facing the greatest financial crisis since the depression’, and yet these same mismanagers, then have the impudence to step forward and say, ‘trust us, though we were wrong about so much, we now know what to do, we need to borrow and give away another $700,000,000,000 to Wall Street in the form of a bailout package’. Borrow this massive amount of loot in order to give these very corporate miscreants who have been caught strip mining the economy another chance! Yet despite the pitch coming from these outed snake-oil hucksters without any credibility, few people are rising up and saying ‘Enough! Stop this charade immediately’. One would think there would be millions in the streets demanding accountability. After this isn’t happening in some far away land, happening to some other people. This is happening in America, and its happening to Americans money. 

Where does this massive payout come from? How, with a snap of the fingers, can this enormous number be manifested seemingly out of thin air? And who the hell came up with this massive number (if it was $695,000,000,000 would it still be effective?) and then decided that this package of money should be spent in this way - propping up banking institutions that have been found out to be playing fast and loose with the rules and facts of the industry. Why not make it an even $1,000,000,000,000 - its tidier, looks cooler and sounds even more impressive! - but instead divide it amongst all the working and middle class stake-holders who are potentially getting screwed out of their life savings and are going to be on the hook for the loan for the next generation or two. They can then freely choose where and when to put their money after the market has culled the sickly institutions. Sure some economic discomfort would result, but at least this way the proponents of this failed free market orthodoxy would feel it along with the average American (and Canadian, English, Irish, etc)

I admit I don’t understand it. I just don’t get it.

(Here is an economist that seems to make some sense: Nassim Nicholas Taleb. But then, what do I know.)

After much procrastination, I finally went to see Julie Taymor’s re-imagining of The Lion King. Theatre in general and puppetry in particular can be magical, inspiring, and powerfully evocative. So many wonderful examples over the years, both urban scaled and intimate one person shows. Regarding The Lion King, I was always struck by the seeming unlikeliness of a successful partnership between the commercial behemoth Disney and the uncompromising director/designer/puppeteer Taymor despite the rave reviews of this ‘visionary production’. But she/they pull it off.

Two aspects stand out for me - the costumes by Taymor and the puppets by Taymor and Michael Curry. In most instances, these were puppets as extensions of the human form, inseparable from the costume and indeed the actor’s inhabiting them. In particular, the giraffes, the shaman Rafiki, the hyenas, the royal advisor Zazu, the villainous Scar, and the leaping gazelles stood out.

For my ears, another inspired aspect of the show was wrapping the at times cheesy Tim Rice/Elton John music and lyrics inherited from the film in african rhythms and sounds by the South African composer Lebo M.

I’ve been in London these past few days. The Mark Rothko at the Tate Modern is a fantastic collection of his work. What is compelling about the exhibition of these late works is that the paintings are arranged in sequences, showing variations on themes. The viewer gets a sense of Rothko’s focus and courage as a painter. His rigor. Very beautiful and inspiring work.

People have written of the gloom and doom inherent in these later works, but I’m not buying it. My sense is this perceived melancholia is simply because of the displayed paintings being done not long before his suicide. There is an ephemeral and elegiac quality true, but my take is that this is a reflection of the seriousness of purpose with which he applied himself - confronting the void with an unflinching gaze. Sure it is sobering, but if we are honest, life is.

It is hard not to be cynical about art when you hear what Damien Hirst is now up to. Hirst is his own promotor/publicist, project manager, producer, industrial designer, collector, presenter, agent, auctioneer and bank. He is a brand, a company, a factory. Oh yeah, he is said to be the artist too. With the auction, Hirst demonstrates that he controls the entire loop, even more so than Warhol did. Hirst has created a veritable rabbit hole of inconsequentiality (or is it consequentiality?), albeit one that he makes substantial profits from.

But at the end of the day, is he an artist at all? Is the artist merely one who comes up with the idea and then acts as the project manager in order to realize the piece? Especially in the case of Hirst’s recent formaldehyde series, this seems to me to be more akin to being an exhibition designer at a Victorian museum than being an artist. 

Mind you, the film industry has been this way for as long as anyone can remember. Even the term film industry says it all. It is a factory. One could argue that the Hollywood system has had a whole slate of Hirsts - industrial production under a singular brand - for a long time: JJ Adams, Spielberg, Bruckheimer, Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer - each are pretty much a closed system of money making under the guise of the film makers art. Why is it so shocking to hear of Hirst’s recent exploits?

Here is a very good article by the Irish Times Fintan O’Toole on the debate regarding Damien Hirst’s recent auction.

The KROK, International Animated Films Festival, takes place on a ship! Fantastic! It starts in St Petersburg and ends in Moscow stopping in five towns along the way. I gather the directors stay on board the ship with a room and board supplied. This is one Ship O’ Fools I’d love to join! If I ever get another film into the festival, I am going to bust my ass to get over there.

Blind Man’s Eye is showing at KROK between September 21 - September 30, 2008

The newest festival screenings for Matthew Talbot-Kelly’s film Blind Man’s Eye:

KROK International Animated Films Festival, St. Petersburg - Moscow, September 21th - September 30, 2008

Animest International Film Festival, Bucharest, Romania - 6-12 October 2008

Cinessonne European Film Festival, Orangis, France 10th to 25th october 2008.

DOK Leipzig, 51st International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film - October 27 - November 2 2008

22nd Braunschweig International Film Festival, Braunschweig, Germany - November 4 - 9, 2008

Encounters Short Film Festival, Bristol, England - Nov 18th-30th

‘The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross’ - written by Jacqueline Rogers/Matthew Talbot-Kelly, Directed by Matthew Talbot-Kelly - is a short film about a poor pedlar who follows her dreams and journeys to a faraway Capital City to uncover a treasure that is buried on the seemingly barren land she just left behind.

The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross revisits a well known traditional story that has variants in Jewish, Middle Eastern, English, Irish, Isle of Man, and Germanic traditions. In their essence, they are each stories about listening to one’s inner voice against circumstantial odds in order to find a treasure. For our version we have introduced Crow as the prophetic voice and changed the treasure from being a pot of gold to being the modern currency of fresh water.

The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross completes the triptych of inter-related films: Blind Man’s Eye , (The Trembling Veil of) Bones, and The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross. Each film shares characters, timeframe and explores similar hybrid digital and analog techniques. And conceptually, each explores Matthew Talbot-Kelly’s concept of nostalgia for the future.

The primary metaphor and over-riding impulse for the film Blind Man’s Eye is collage. The majority of the film takes place in the dimensional collage landscape of ‘the memory city’. What attracts me to collage as an approach are collage’s inherent notions of resonance and dissonance. It fascinates me that one can take a number of things that are not particularily compelling in and of themselves – and which already have their associated partial narratives however banal - but placed beside, on top of or underneath other forms, its possible to produce friction or harmony. Sometimes both. And this can work in terms of shape, texture, colour, pattern, material as well as more abstract notions like ‘fragment’ or ‘completion’. I’m curious how our minds eye can jump around these fragments arranged as collages and make all sorts of associations and connections, and begin to construct narratives. Of course, once one starts animating the elements of the collage and then you also have the camera point-of-view changing, one can achieve fantastically rich and deep and evocative shots. In a way moving dimensional collage enables expanding waves of legibility or meaning - shifting veils of perfection and coherence.

I use the phrase ‘nostalgia for the future’ to describe this strange contemporary condition we are in, where things are old before they are born, where what is old is repackaged and deemed to be new. Aided and abetted by ever more ubiquitous technologies demanding instant feedback, we quiver between already happened and yet to happen. Like the image of Janus, the two headed roman god associated with thresholds/doorways, we are fibrillating between the past and future, past and future, past and future.

This homesickness for where we have not yet arrived seems to me to be the essential absurdity of ‘post’-‘modern’. It is perhaps understandable in our peculiar time - where a profound groundlessness pervades. We are losing our sense of place. Long gone are the days when many of us can bring the kids to visit grandma in the house we were born in. Physically we are perpetually on the move - look at our ever more undifferentiated, generic cities, our suburban houses, our massive airports. Many of us have been moving/reconfiguring every few years for most of our lives. This profound groundlessness gathers momentum. To where do we return? 

One result is lack of presence in the present, which in turn leads to an increase in anxiety. By worrying about the future and lamenting the past, we miss the boat of the present. 

Though our truly natural condition is change, personal awareness of change eludes us, except for the big events like birth, death, turning forty, puberty and such. These truly incremental events hit us like a ton of bricks as they creep up on us and seemingly arrive out of nowhere. 

Looking beyond the surface appearances of his visage, I’d say the essence of Janus isn’t the dichotomy of looking this way or that. Rather, it is about the ‘space between’ - that is holding the contradiction in order to be present to perpetual change. 

Lets stay here in the present. The past is just that, gone, nothing we can do about it. The future hasn’t happened yet so lets not get too pre-occupied by that vista. And try and be present. It is not easy. I reckon’ I’ll need a few more lifetimes yet.

Here is Droll Dollz Two…

A surreptitious moonlight meeting of two ninja maquettes - with tragic results.

Many many months ago we made a proposal to do a series of one minute animated shorts organized around the subject matter of dolls. We call them Droll Dollz. 

Below are some stills from the first one - a Victorian doll living on Dublin’s streets, haunted by her etiquette lessons. 

See Droll Dollz 1

Another facet of the film Blind Man’s Eye that we were exploring is time - playing with time. Our conventions of merely human time, as opposed to godly or heavenly time, are tied to the invention of perspective. Time is defined in relation to space – so in fact the dimensional collage world that we have created has moments of collapsed or stretched space.

Its my belief that what we call ‘time’ is not linear. If we were to graph it, it might be better represented as a spiral. But I feel that even that is too restrictive. I have experienced folds of time and space. So our graph of time might have some spirals touching or overlapping.

Of course, film has temporal conventions that we were also exploring. On a basic level, an edit is a cut in space and time, and film plays out as a sequence of images. Convention is that there are beginning, middles and ends to films. In Blind Man’s Eye, the end is a beginning. In a couple of shots in Blind Man’s Eye for example, we follow a smooth camera move over a juxtaposition of different three dimensional spatial conditions – over top, Crow flies into frame, leaves frame and then a few frames later re-enters the frame from another place. This is perhaps akin to medieval depictions of people of importance, like JC, where their figure is repeated within a single frame in multiple scales and locations.

Unfortunately we were ‘gonged’ on a recent funding request for Ship O’ Fools.

Ship O’ Fools is an ever evolving project. The kernel of the idea was to make a dada tv series. Then we were thinking a dada interactive internet presence makes the most sense. Then we were thinking we launch it as the world’s first ‘animated radio series’ (its dada ok?). In the most recent incarnation, we proposed it as a three minute dada musical! We’re confident there is a platform for it somewhere…. isn’t there? Maybe a dada Opera….

The world won’t believe their eyes and ears when the Ship O’ Fools eventually casts off. It is especially noteworthy for the incredibly hilarious and cutting narrative poetry that Gary Keleghan has written. There are not many around who can pull this off. Glimpse can make the pictures do their thing, but this is the most explicitly literate adventure Glimpse are embarking on, so Gary has been enormously influential.

Ship O’ Fools follows a small ship loaded with ‘the whole of mankind’ voyaging through the seas of time. Sadly, every one of the representatives is a fool - indulgent, self centered, clueless and quite possibly mad. These pillars of society are trying to sail their not quite seaworthy ship to reach an illusive utopian destination - the “fool’s paradise” of Narragonia.

Intending to send up one and all, Ship O’ Fools is part Drawn Together, part Monty Python, part pointless social and political satire, part Bosch and Bruegal paintings, part Spongebob Squarepants, part Commedia dell’Arte, and part court jester/Dada/anarchist performance. Ship O’ Fools will delight, annoy, perplex, provoke and surprise its audience.

Another of my intentions in making Blind Mans Eye was to make a film that was not ‘disposable’ or ‘perishable’, but to make a film with a ‘long shelf life’. Part of this intent was to not ’spoon feed’ the audience. I have always enjoyed films that ask questions, make me ruminate, challenge me as a viewer - it is only upon repeat viewing that the mysteries are partially revealed. In our age of instant gratification, where the fluorescent gaze of modern life can be scorching, this is an old fashioned, even romantic idea. I am aware and accept that this integrity faces considerable challenges, as many people may not have the time, interest or attention span to view let alone make sense of a film like Blind Mans Eye. I have always imagined that the film will only be viewed by a few hundred people during its existence/lifetime, so for the few people that do manage to sit down for it, I hope it will be rewarding.

Amongst the waterfalls and totems spread throughout Vancouvers airport, is this amazing fella.

As I was recently, I am often asked to provide guidance as to the best way to enter the world of digital film making. Of course, this is a vast and open ended question, to which there is no easy answer. I do have a few basic suggestions for true neophytes.

In the absence of registering in a structured film school program, there is no better way to figure out if you want to make films and how to make films then by doing it.  In order to figure out where you fit in the film making pipeline, step in wherever you see your opening. Do it yourself and/or do it with others. Write a one minute script, storyboard it, shoot it, edit it, add sound and release it. Volunteer to help out on a local film production. One of the great promises about the democratization of digital film making technology is that now we can all do it. (Of course, it doesn’t mean we all should do it.) It is likely that once you get a hands-on taste for the process, you will begin to get a sense of what aspect of the process you enjoy.

The second bit of advice follows on from this - as you define and refine what it is you like to do in film making, practice until you become very good at it. You can still dabble in all the other aspects, but by becoming very good in one aspect of film making, you can at least be useful on other people’s films which will then fuel your on-the-fly film school.

Official Selection - Venice Biennale/Film Festival 

Official Selection - Zinebi Bilbao Short Film Festival, Bilbao

Official Selection - Cork International Film Festival

Official Selection - Anima Brussels Animation Festival

Official Selection - Foyle International Film Festival, Derry, UK

Official Selection - Galway Film Festival

Intrn’l Showcase - Ottawa International Animation Festival

Official Selection - Mediterranean Festival of New Film in Larissa Greece 

Official Selection - Regard sur le court métrage au Saguenay, Quebec

Official Selection - International Festival of Short Films on Culture, Jaipur India

Official Selection - Granada Filmfest

Official Selection - Filmfest Dresden - Dresden International Short Film Festival

Official Selection - ANIMABASAURI4.0   ANIMABASQUE, Spain

Official Selection - AniFest, International Festival of Animated Films, Czech Republic

Official Selection - Edinburgh International Film Festival

Official Selection - International Documentary, Short and Animated Films Festival, St Petersburg

Official Selection - ARCIPELAGO - International Festival of Short Films and New Images, Rome

Official Selection - Melbourne International Animation Festival (MIAF) 

Official Selection - Auckland Film Festival

Official Selection - Wellington Film Festival 

Official Selection - Anima Mundi International Animation Festival, Rio de Janeiro/São Paulo

Official Selection - Telluride Film Festival 

Official Selection - London International Animation Festival, 

Official Selection - KROK International Animated Films Festival, St. Petersburg to Moscow

Official Selection - 3rd anim’est International animation film festival, Bucharest

Official Selection - Cinessonne European Film Festival, Orangis, France

Official Selection - DOK Leipzig, 51st International Leipzig Festival for Documentary & Animated Film

Official Selection - Encounters Short Film Festival, Bristol

One of my intentions with this blog is to explore some of the methods that I have used in making moving imagery. One of the most successful things about the film experiment known as Blind Man’s Eye was that digital techniques do not dominate. This gives me great satisfaction. At the risk of stating the obvious here, I have always believed it is pretty silly to throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to things digital, in that humankind have been making images of various kinds for thousands of years previous to the arrival of computers. Digital image making is part of this legacy.

Below are some stills from Blind Man’s Eye which are indicative of this multiple media approach. 

… Matthew Talbot-Kelly’s (The Trembling Veil of) Bones. This film is inches away from going into production. Very exciting. More to come.

Glimpse has a new short film in production: Teemu Auersalo’s ‘Monsieur Critique’. Nicky Gogan will be producing on behalf of Glimpse. The project is funded through the Irish Film Board’s Framework’s scheme. We are looking forward to working with Teemu, and assisting him in unleashing his eponymous hero to the world. We expect much hilarity will ensue. More to come.

Another memorable film from the Telluride Film Festival was called O’Horten, made by Bent Hamer, the director of Kitchen Stories and Factotum. It unfolds gradually, with wonderful pacing. Its a story of a bachelor everyman confronted with retirement from his job as a train engineer. Unsure what to do with himself when his routine is interrupted, Odd Horten follows his almost child-like heart through the complexities of retirement living. Funny, poignant and honest, it is an understated gem of a film.

 ferry doors and air vents

I saw some very good short films at Telluride. I was honoured to have Blind Man’s Eye screened amongst such gems. Not only was the animation section excellent, but there were many other collections of short films played throughout the festival that stood out. I am not going to list them all, but some of the memorable animated films are: In the Woods by Paul Vester, Father by Sebastian Danta, Sleeping Betty by Claude Cloutier, A Film From My Parish: 6 Farms by Tony O’Donoghue and Zoologic by Nicole Mitchell. Memorable live action films are: The Frozen Sea by Lukas Miko, 2 Birds by Runar Runarsson, Russian Choir by Sebastian Fischer, Circles of Confusion by Phoebe Tooke, On The Line by Reto Caffi, Haber by Daniel Ragussis, New Boy by Steph Green, Tag by Natalya Uglitskikh, This is Her by Katie Wolfe, I love Sarah Jane by Spencer Susser and Wianbu-Comfort Women by James Bang.

Second screening of Blind Man’s Eye at Telluride Film Festival seemed to go over very well.

I got lots of good feedback.

Salmon Rushdie was in the audience.

The experience of arriving to the Telluride Film Festival in a twin prop De Havilland Dash 8 was both discomforting and surreal. I haven’t been in a plane this size in many years, and for someone who has become a nervous frequent flyer, the buoyancy of the airplane on even minor turbulence was unnerving.

The single hostess’s hosting functions were like performance art imagined by the Cohen Brothers. Cryptic. Folksy. Absurd yet heroic. Working solo, she had to verbalize how to buckle the seatbelt, then put the ‘phone down’, and do the mimed version. Presumably due to repetition and isolation, her review of the ’safety features’ morphed into a nearly continuous stream-of-conscious run on sentence, spoken so fast as to be almost unintelligible, with breaths placed inappropriately in mid sentence, all interspersed by extra long pauses - almost like she has gone into trance. And then in drill sergeant mode, she upbraided one of the passengers for ‘not listening’ and so repeated certain phrases that demanded audience feedback. It was like this stewardess had rehearsed so often in her own mirror, she is not aware of the impact or lack of them her words had on her captive constituents. While she was clearly comfortable, the net effect of the small plane and the hosting did not inspire reassurance.

On the tarmac (movie)

I have seen many, many good films. It would take a long time to give them all their due. A couple jump out at me.

One is the feature debut of the Desperate Optimists - the film making team of Joe Lawler & Christine Molloy. Described as kitchen sink realism crossed with Tarkofsky, ‘Helen’ is challenging in so many ways. Their are many seemingly contradictory impulses calibrated just so - resulting in tensions which remain long after viewing. Like their earlier shorts, Joe and Christine partner with local community’s to explore social issues, in the case of ‘Helen’ the disappearance of a teenage girl. The filmmakers have chosen to focus on the police recreation of the disappearance, more specifically the eponymous Helen, who plays the girl in the police recreation and her search for belonging. Featuring a nearly completely amateur cast that stepped forward from the communities where the film is shot, the film is simultaneously an intentional piece of fiction, a record of community activism, and a kind of public performance art. In terms of social point of view, it compliments Ken Loach and Mike Leigh’s work, but in its compellingly aesthetic and ascetic camera work, for me it also evokes Terrence Malick’s Thin Red Line.

The desperate optimists are just that.

Another film, called ‘Hunger’, a first film from the Turner prize winning visual artist Steve McQueen, is an unflinching revisit of the IRA hunger strikers treatment within the Maze prison. Described as ‘an intensely lyrical reverie on human suffering’, the film is a timely return to the subject of the handling and treatment of political prisoner. ‘Hunger’ challenges our appetites on many levels. It would seem that being an African-British visual contributed to McQueen’s ‘outsider’ perspective and allowed him to step into and then navigate the polarized tribalism of this most contentious of Irish subjects with a poetic incisiveness that has proven more difficult for Irish film makers. The power of the film is that it isn’t so much about Bobby Sands or Irish-English politics, or Protestants vs Catholics specifically, but rather it is a trans-national appeal to revisit this still-charged circumstance of our recent history to try and understand the profoundly human toll of man’s seemingly universal proclivity to descend into ‘barbarism’ under the orderly veneer of ritualized justice. Amazing film.

I have followed my film Blind Man’s Eye to the Telluride Film Festival - as a friend says - “the coolest festival in the world!” This auspicious occasion seemed a good time to launch the glimpse films blog - a blog about making digital independent films, from the ground up. 

Telluride is well, Telluride. Its baking hot in the day, chilly at night. Nestled among the mountains, astride a stream, the 5×8 blocks of pretty haphazard arrangements of buildings run off the classic historic main drag. Few fences, lots of dogs. There is still money in these ‘ere ‘ills, but on first look, it isn’t flaunted. A handful of the houses are no more than cabins (there are a couple that i guess would be barely 400 sq ft), some are multi-million dollar homes.

The festival itself is known as an intimate director-centric film festival. Accessible and friendly. 

There is a large Irish contingent here in Telluride. Three features - Cathal Black’s ‘Learning Gravity’, Joe Lawlor’s/Christine Molloy’s ‘Helen + Joy’, and Lance Daly’s ‘Kisses’, and three animated films - in addition to my film ‘Blind Man’s Eye’, Tony O’Donohue’s ‘A Film From My Parish’, and Jane Lee’s ‘Revelations’. Such is the scale and format of this festival, i have already met all of them, and shared grub and a drink with all but one. In some ways, I have done as much Irish networking in the last six hours than I have done in years of dublin living. 

Tributes are being given to David Fincher, Richard Schickel, Jean Simmons and Jan Troell.

I’m off to attend the opening dinner that takes place in the middle of the main drag.

More to come. 

Blind Man’s Eye showing at Telluride