Gleeson film project awarded €500,000

ACTOR BRENDAN Gleeson's labour of love, a film version of Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two Birds,has received €500,000 from the Sound and Vision II fund.

The grant by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, which administers the fund, is a further boost for the project which has been in gestation since 2004 when Gleeson got the film rights to the book. The €500,000 allocation to Parallel Films is 8 per cent of the project which indicates the film will have a budget of about €6.2 million

Cartoon Saloon, the company which produced the Oscar-nominated animation film The Secret of Kells, also received €500,000 for its follow-up, Amhrán na Mara/Song of the Sea which is due to start in September.

The film will be directed by Tomm Moore, who directed The Secret of Kells, and is a global production involving animation companies in Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg and France.

Song of the Seafeatures the myth of the selkies, women in Irish and Scottish legends who change from seals into people. Director Neil Jordan addressed the same legend in his film Ondine.

The Sound and Vision fund, which is a top-slice of 7 per cent of the licence fee and is distributed to independent production companies, will provide 10 per cent of the funding for the filming, valuing the budget at €5 million.

The largest grant was €750,000 to Connemara-based production company ROSG, which made Irish language film Cré na Cille(Graveyard Clay) and the three-part horror series Na Cloigne(The Heads).

It received the money for An Bronntanas(The Present) a planned six-part Irish language drama series set on a lifeboat off the west coast of Ireland.

Life's a Breeze, a feature film by Lance Daly, who made the adolescent drama Kisses, has received €420,000, 21 per cent of the total cost of the film.

The fund distributed €7.81 million to 43 projects having received applications from 98 projects for almost €20 million in funding.