When it comes to film-making, poverty is not always a bad thing. In Ireland, first-time film-makers such as John Carney and Tom Hall (November Afternoon) and Enda Hughes (The Eliminator) have made impressive debuts taking the no-budget route, which allows them to bypass the lengthy (often several years), tortuous and frequently unsuccessful process of "developing" a film to the point where it can attract the several million pounds' worth of financing necessary to make it as a "professional" feature. Internationally, in recent years, the "no-budget" tag has become a marketing device in its own right, with movies from El Mariachi to The Blair Witch Project loudly proclaiming their minuscule shooting budgets (while keeping very quiet about the hundreds of thousands of dollars poured into their post-production).
There's no particular reason why a film produced in this fashion should be any better or worse than one made on a full budget. In fact, an increasing number of no-budget movies made around the world every year never reach an audience, usually because they're not good enough. But, in an Irish context, it's interesting to compare and contrast the best of the crop with their fully-financed peers. Quite often the guerrilla film-making styles, fresh ideas and sheer energy of the no-budget films make other movies seem plodding and pedestrian. The latest to hit our screens is Fintan Connolly's Flick (reviewed below), an atmospheric portrait of life on the fringes of Dublin's underworld, which Connolly and his producer, Fiona Bergin, decided to go ahead and shoot without waiting around for finance.
"I had a hankering to do a feature," says Connolly, a Dublin film-maker in his mid-30s, who has been making television documentaries for the last 12 years or so, including Twenty Thousand Secret Journeys. "Having made a couple of shorts, and realising the trouble and difficulty that went into them, I thought that making a feature wouldn't be that much more difficult."
Initially, Connolly planned to shoot Flick on an orthodox, fully-financed production model. "But with a first-time director and a drug theme, it just wasn't happening, so myself and Fiona sat down and decided to do it guerrilla-style. Once the decision was made to do it that way, that was half the battle, and everything started falling into place."
Did he find that the script needed dramatic surgery to take account of the production process? "No, it was a kind of a liberation in a way," he says. "Because there were no investors, there was no pressure to change things. The Film Board came in with completion money afterwards, but there was no editorial interference involved."
He agrees that, in some ways, shooting no-budget can be easier than shooting low-budget - with nobody getting paid, the entire crew and cast are on a level playing-pitch. "Money isn't the motivator, which can help, because nobody feels that they're getting less than anyone else. Also, as a director, if a problem comes up, you have to be creative rather than throwing money at it.
"I remember we were shooting around Dublin at the same time as Ordinary Decent Criminal. You'd see all these vans and trucks pulling up, and you'd wonder how long it takes for them to get that shot of a guy walking down the street. We could put our characters on the street relatively easily and move around quickly."
Like many films shot in Dublin over the last few years, Flick portrays the criminal milieu of the city. "When I first had the idea, it was around the time that films with an underworld Dublin theme were starting to be made," says Connolly. "Up until then it seemed a bit implausible to have a guy with a gun in an Irish film. Now it's a bit more realistic, although maybe it's a problem if people feel every movie about Dublin has to go that way. I'm not so sure that it's a great idea to make three different films about the same guy (Martin Cahill), who wasn't the nicest fellow in the world."
Unlike those other movies, though, the central character in Flick, played by David Murray, is a middle-class drug dealer, working the streets, bars and clubs of the prosperous south city centre. Shooting on location around Temple Bar, Dame Street and George's Street, Connolly paints a portrait of a hedonistic modern city which is familiar to those of us who live here, but which has remained largely invisible on screen up to now. It seems that film-makers, most of them middle-class, prefer to resort to an Irish version of what Connolly refers sardonically to as "geezer chic".
"In those other films, drugs are always portrayed as a working-class thing," he agrees. "I suppose I'm middle-class myself, and that's part of it. But something like hash is quite a common thing across all classes, and heroin as well; these are not just confined to the working-classes." As if to illustrate the point, Flick includes what now seems a poignant cameo from Connolly's friend and fellow film-maker, Conor Kenny, who died from a heroin overdose a few months after the shoot.
So is Flick based on Connolly's own experiences of living in the city? "Well, I can only say that being out and about you come across certain things," he replies. "So far, no-one's ever stuck a gun in my mouth, but you never know... You hear stories, you see things. Even if you're waiting for a taxi in town for half an hour at 2 a.m., you'll see all those things going on. The film is very much about our generation - clubbing and that kind of vibe. So it's of its time - I don't know if it'll look quite dated in five years' time."
One of the most impressive aspects of the film is its fluid, jazzy, impressively cinematic evocation of this night-time street-life, shot without additional lighting by Connolly and his cinematographer Owen McPolin. "It's a much better-lit city now," says the director, "and you can do a lot more with the new film stocks available, so it's possible to get that whole night-town ambience, which I like."
Indeed, one of the paradoxes of Flick (as of many urban films) is that Connolly seems to be in love with the visual poetry and seedy beauty of the city, while simultaneously telling a story which depicts Dublin as a place to be escaped for the "simplicity" of the countryside. "I suppose it's an ambiguity, really," he concedes when I express my doubts about the film's urban/bad, rural/good conclusion. "I didn't think it's that simplistic, but I do have a love-hate relationship with the city. But even if the city itself looks well, it's the character's lifestyle that's the problem."
Currently working on a new script - he's interested in exploring other genres such as the road movie, "and in telling a story from a female perspective". Connolly also intends to continue making documentaries, which he describes as his "bread-and-butter work", although he believes there's less interest in RTE in the sort of polemical series, such as No Comment, which he was making 10 years ago.
"When you see stuff like Big Brother, you can see the way it's going," he says. "Certainly, there seems to be less space for the kinds of programmes we were doing. It's like film-making. You could say that there's a certain style of political film-making from the 1970s which has also passed its sell-by date in this rush to the middle ground. A lot of film-makers who were working in the 1970s find it very difficult to make films now.
"A lot of stuff is production-led now, so there isn't so much interesting discussion about Irish film-making any more. In the old days we used to battle it out in the IFC and in Filmbase about those ideas. I suppose it's matured a bit, but the only drawback I see is that there's too much talk about production and not enough about film-making or directing or writing. It seems to me that it's set up to be producer-led - not just here but everywhere - although it amazes me that none of these people appear that concerned when those films don't make any money. But I'm still a bit of an old indigenous head. If I could make a film every two or three years, I'd be quite happy."
