Bryan Coll, winner of this year's Douglas Gageby Fellowship, starts his three-month series with a look at the Harland & Wolff Paint Hall, which is attracting major Hollywood players
ON THE GRAVELLY floor of a large warehouse in Belfast's Harland and Wolff estate is a familiar-looking silhouette: a statue of a dynamic-looking man, his arm thrust above his head with fingers outstretched. From a distance, it looks like Edward Carson, the former Ulster Unionist leader, whose likeness is perched atop the hill outside parliament buildings at Stormont. But the polystyrene mock-up on the floor of the Paint Hall is from a different world entirely. It's the centrepiece of Ember Square - part of the set of the Hollywood fantasy film City of Ember, the latest in a stream of big-budget, international films to be made in Northern Ireland. Adapted from a popular children's novel, City of Ember tells the tale of two children who live in a crumbling, underground metropolis devoid of any natural light. They eventually escape the city and emerge above ground, leaving the darkness behind them.
At a stretch, this tale of light at the end of the tunnel could work as a sci-fi allegory for today's Northern Ireland, perhaps with a casting reshuffle placing City of Ember's leading man Bill Murray in the role of First Minister Ian Paisley. A more appropriate symbol for the changes underway in the North, however, is the Paint Hall; the vast industrial shell that housed the film set. As a poster image for the emerging Northern Ireland, the Paint Hall is, at first glance, an unlikely choice. Its peeling paintwork, rusting chimneys and air of forlorn disuse jar with the images of gleaming apartments on nearby hoardings advertising the new "Titanic Quarter". This £1 billion project will turn the desolate wasteland of the shipyard - once the world's biggest - into Europe's largest waterfront redevelopment, featuring a Titanic-themed tourism centre, office blocks and a new university campus. By contrast, the 110ft-high Paint Hall, which dominates the shipyard skyline, looks like an embarrassing remnant of a failed past. But behind the retractable, reinforced doors is the largest film stage in Europe and the heart of a burgeoning new industry in the North.
THANKS EITHER to architectural coincidence, or far-sightedness on the part of shipyard bosses decades ago, the Paint Hall has given Belfast a studio space that can house the most ambitious of film sets. The hall is divided into four massive cells, each measuring 16,000sq ft, and the heavy insulation once required to paint ships in climate-controlled conditions means the building is fully sound-proofed.
"This is an accidental gift from our industrial past," says Richard Williams, chief executive of Northern Ireland Screen, the body responsible for promoting and funding film projects in the North, "and it's become a key asset for our future." The Paint Hall studio is being heavily promoted worldwide; the backbone of a marketing campaign that casts Northern Ireland as a movie-making mecca. A recent visit to Mumbai by Tourism Minister Nigel Dodds saw the North promoted as a potential location for Bollywood films - placing Banghra in Bangor within the realms of possibility. The most recent promotional brochure from Northern Ireland Screen describes the North as "the most compact 5,196 square miles of back-lot in the world, offering a myriad of stunning locations".
"In the past, people might have said, 'why would a Hollywood film come here?', says Williams. "But today, we should be asking, 'why would it not come here?' We have unique facilities and a world-class workforce. For too long, Northern Ireland has had a sense of inferiority. Projects like City of Ember say: we can do this."
During its 14-week shoot, City of Ember spent more than £9 million in the Belfast area - the biggest single investment in the Northern economy by a film. Other international productions recently made here - such as the Richard Attenborough-directed Closing the Ring, and the romantic comedy Buy, Borrow, Steal, starring Heather Graham - have employed local crews and bolstered a local production hub, a large part of which is located, rather aptly, in the Co Down town of Holywood. "We might not have the Paint Hall forever," says Williams, referring to Northern Ireland Screen's lease on the building, which expires in 2010, "but it should act as a magnet for talent and create a world-renowned centre of expertise in Northern Ireland."
Across the city, Musgrave Park Hospital, the site of a 1991 IRA bomb attack, recently played host to the cast and crew of Red Mist, a psychological horror film based in the United States but shot in various locations around Belfast.
Reflecting on the dangers once posed by filming in the North, Red Mist's director, Paddy Breathnach, recalls working on a documentary about the Republic of Ireland soccer team in the run-up to the 1994 World Cup. The crew was set to film at a qualification match against Northern Ireland in Belfast, which took place two weeks after the murder of eight people by the UFF in Greysteel, Co Derry. Fearing for his safety, Breathnach changed vehicles with a Northern colleague at the Border so as not to be seen with a Southern registration. "It was difficult to make films in the North then. There was a real sense of paranoia." In today's more peaceful Northern Ireland, Breathnach feels local film directors face difficulties of a thematic kind: how to replace the extreme images of the past. "I've noticed a kind of hunger and energy among local crews," says Breathnach. "There's a search for new stories about Northern Ireland." That sentiment is echoed by Martin McLoone of the University of Ulster's Centre for Media Research: "Now that the symbols of the Troubles are a thing of the past, films in Northern Ireland have to find a post-conflict personality. At the moment, it's not clear what that is."
In recent international productions, Belfast has doubled for New York, London and Copenhagen; a sign of progress, perhaps, that a city once so notorious can now blend into the background.
According to Michele Devlin, director of the Belfast Film Festival, which runs until April 19th, local film-makers are already sketching out new identities for Northern Ireland. In her office in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter - another regenerated district that, along with the Gaeltacht Quarter and Titanic Quarter, has divided the city into tourist-friendly quadrants - Devlin pores over the festival programme, which this year contains nine Northern Irish films - the highest number in the festival's history. "There is more local product around than ever and a more diverse range of themes that can appeal to a universal audience."
She singles out Peacefire for praise; a film directed by Macdara Vallely and shot in a housing estate in Craigavon, Armagh. "This is a film that's full of Northern Irish humour but it could just as easily be set in Liverpool or Johannesburg."
DESPITE A CREATIVE move away from political films about the past, Devlin is cautious about consigning Troubles films to the cutting-room floor. "There's a perception that Troubles films are done and that we should move on. But some self-examination can be good for a country." Self-examination might sit uneasily with the lofty ambitions of a film industry looking to make its mark on the world stage, but retrospection is very much on the agenda at this year's film festival. This week, festival-goers gathered at the Queen's Film Theatre for an event called Memory, Truth and Transition, co-organised by Healing Through Remembering, a cross-community group that aims to find ways to deal with the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland. Also in the cinema were representatives from Sinn Féin, the Progressive Unionist Party and victims' groups, who chaired discussions following screenings of four films about the aftermath of conflict in Chile, South Africa and Liberia.
NORTHERN IRELAND, too, could soon find itself among the model pupils of the post-conflict world. A report published by the European Union's Northern Ireland taskforce last week recommends making Northern Ireland a worldwide brand for peace.
Fee-paying representatives from countries experiencing conflict could attend a "European facility for conflict resolution" based in Northern Ireland to take classes in peace-making. Yet for Michele Devlin, the low-key discussions taking place at the film festival are as much part of the emerging Northern Ireland as securing peace dividends from Hollywood or Brussels: "We're based in a place where there has been, and still is, strife. When a country is emerging from conflict, personal stories of loss take time to come to the fore. We shouldn't forget that."
Bryan Coll is the winner of this year's Douglas Gageby Fellowship, which is awarded by The Irish Times Trust, in honour of the former editor of the paper, Douglas Gageby, to a young journalist at the beginning of his/her career.
'Out of the Night' continues on Thursdays in 'The Irish Times'.