The first National Film School graduate screening threw up a few directors with plenty of promise, writes Donald Clarke.
It says something for the talent and ambition of young film-makers that two of the 10 directors featured in the National Film School's 2004 graduate-screening programme, which took place at the Irish Film Institute last week, are already well on their way to becoming established names. Ken Wardrop, director of the fine Ouch, which closed the programme, was the subject of a retrospective at this year's Cork Film Festival, where he also won the prize for best Irish short, for Undressing My Mother. Peter Foott, another 2004 graduate, achieved a Special Mention at the 2004 Venice Film Festival for his ingenious The Carpenter And His Clumsy Wife.
Unsurprisingly, Donald Taylor Black, head of the film and media department, is delighted by how things have turned out. I mention that I am struck by the maturity of the show. Generally one expects to see half a dozen where-is-my-girlfriend? weepies and twice as many where-is-my-hash-pipe? comedies at such events. Both genres are conspicuous by their absence.
"The fact that we have a lot of mature students helps," he says. "About 25 per cent of our students are mature. Even if that means they are only 21 they have still seen something of life. They are more likely to want to say something rather than just wanting to do something technically very good with no story. Ken Wardrop, who came to us in his late 20s, is a very good example."
It is a year since the film department at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, in Dún Laoghaire, transformed itself into the National Film School. So, although the graduates all began under the old regime, this show has something of the character of an inaugural event. And there is much to celebrate.
The Carpenter And His Clumsy Wife, narrated with characteristic dourness by Jim Sheridan, combines animation and live action to tell a deliciously vile story. When the titular housewife accidentally severs a finger, her husband fashions a wooden replacement. He likes it so much that he plans to do the same with her hands. Then she severs a leg. You can see where this is going. Foott's work carries shades of the Czech animator Jan Svankmajer, but, as in his earlier Just A Little Bit Of Love, the inclusion of showband music - Sonny Knowles features particularly prominently - emphasises its unmistakable Irishness.
Wardrop's Ouch is only marginally more naturalistic. The director invites three men to discuss their circumcisions, then combines the often excruciating monologues with footage of actors in their underpants and magical fantasy sequences inspired by the events described. Edited with admirable restraint, the film is funny, touching and, most impressively for a student exercise, totally original.
Elsewhere we enjoyed Ciaran McCabe's Ignition, a brief comedy, shot in aggressively insistent monochrome, in which an apparently unconscious man proves to have unlikely innards. Like Jane Clancy's Turkle, the story of a troubled young boy who lives life in a cardboard box, Ignition is an adeptly achieved example of, well, the sort of thing that film students do. Both directors seem to be fully in control of their medium.
Among the several things to celebrate in Brian O'Toole's Chronic is the film maker's hugely impressive use of sound. Austere and troubling, the film focuses on a young man's irritation with a dripping tap. Annoyance turns to obsession and, eventually, something a little like madness. Although the film is crisply shot in black and white, it is the scary noises that have the most disturbing effect.
The only non-narrative live-action piece screened was Conor Lynch's Todo Es Armarillo, in which the story of a Spanish farmer's day is read out while English subtitles appear on various modern buildings. The film's look could be sufficiently slick to appeal to the industry headhunters who tend to frequent such events. Among those circling last week was Derry O'Brien, managing director of the development and distribution company Network Ireland Television. O'Brien was paying particular attention to the animation programme. "Oh yes, there are two here we know we could sell tomorrow: Trouble In Paradise and Bullox," he says.
Shane Collins's charming Trouble In Paradise follows a nervous crab as he tries to flee the vaguely sinister coconuts - each of which has disturbing eye-shaped holes - that have suddenly started to fall from the only tree on his island. There is evidence here of a wily commercial sensibility that could propel the director a long way.
The other wholly computer-generated piece, Bullox by Paul Sheehy, imagines what might happen if visiting aliens, intent on probing our cows, accidentally beamed up an ill-tempered bull. The colours are brilliant. The jokes are good.
Enjoyable as these two films were, it was a pleasure to welcome a pair of shorts that, though presumably made with some electronic support, had an old-school appearance. Ciara McClean's expressionistic, angular Pucker Up bounced around with travelling lovers as they exchanged kisses. But the most impressive-looking picture in the animation section was Alan Ó Cuilinn's Tógtha. So lovely were the sketches in this meditation on creeping urbanisation that one could forgive the film its groan-inducingly naive depiction of property developers as razor-toothed monsters in suits.
So did any clear themes emerge from the programme? Did we learn anything about what today's young folk care about? Anne O'Leary, the course's coordinator, explains that the new intake of students is obsessed with zombies, but the undead scarcely make an appearance in the graduate show. "Well, looking at The Carpenter's Wife and Ouch, there's an awful lot about knives about here," Taylor Black says with a queasy laugh.
