As the curtain went up in Cork on Sunday, the 2nd Kerry Film Festival was in its final stages, with the presentation of the festival prizes. Smoothly organised by Maurice Galway, the artistic director of Samhla∅ocht, the Kerry arts organisation, this relative newcomer to the busy Irish film-festival circuit spread its programme across the county, opening in Dingle, continuing in Tralee and closing in Listowel, along the way featuring special screenings at Kerry Airport, in a bar and in the touring Cinemobile.
The programme featured 51 short films, most of which were repeated at the various venues, and many of which were represented in Kerry by their directors. There were four prizes of £500, awarded by a jury composed of Philip King, whose new film on John Cale, Beautiful Mistake, had its Irish premiere on the opening night, and this writer.
As always when viewing a large number of films over a concentrated period, a number of coincidental themes and aspects became apparent. One was the preoccupation of young Irish film-makers with destiny, death and the afterlife. Another, reflecting the concerns of so many feature films, placed men at the centre of scenarios in which women were peripheral or non-existent.
Selecting the winner of the award for the best Irish short film was particularly difficult, such was the range and quality of the entries. The first shortlist was a long one, eventually whittled down to six, with the prize going to Collette Cullen's tender and engaging Odd Sock, which turned stereotyping on its head.
We gave a special commendation to five entries: Tony Keily's edgy and arresting What Are You looking At?, featuring an impassioned performance from Michael Oppourchaux, a Dublin-based French actor; The Pawn, Tom Comerford's stylish, chess-inspired allegory; Slumber, Emer Reynolds's sharp dark comedy, which made effectively exaggerated use of sound; Brendan Muldowney's eerie The Church Of Acceptance, the strongest of the death-fixated films; and The Terms, Johnny O'Reilly's highly assured and visually dynamic macabre comedy. O'Reilly's work also earned him the director's award: studio time worth about £5,000 at Ardmore.
The best-animation prize went to Cashell Horgan for Paddy, his witty claymation romp through Irish stereotypes. Barry Murphy took the best-experimental-film award for the haunting imagery he created in Nosoma. And the prize for best short documentary went to Maria Ganovska and Inger Sund for Petra, Up Close And Personal, which viewed Irish attitudes to immigrants through the mixed experiences of the eponymous Romanian who runs Dublin's only Transylvanian restaurant.
