Under the mask of Patrick O’ Neill

Fergus Dennehy talks to Ballyheigue filmmaker, Patrick O’ Neill, about getting his ‘cinematic education’ by watching films in London, winging it through his first ever film and setting out to make his universal film ‘The Uncountable Laughter Of The Sea’ as a ‘tribute’ to his dear friend and fellow ‘blaggard’ Fr Padraig O’Fiannachta.

MY conversation with Ballyheigue’s native film maker Patrick O’ Neill starts off on a very good note as he informs me that his film ‘The Uncountable Laughter Of The Sea’ has just been renewed by Killarney cinema for two weekly screenings on Tuesday and Thursday nights at 7pm and 4:30pm respectively from June 27 onwards.

“Now that mightn’t sound such a big deal for you but for anyone that makes a feature film and gets it into a cinema, that’s the crown jewel,” he says speaking to me The

Kerryman on Thursday. “Getting a second chance at a cinema run then, that’s an astronomical thing to me – this is a film that was designed to be experienced in the cinema.”

A film director and two-time feature film producer, Patrick rose to national prominence last year with the release of his debut feature film, the previously mentioned ‘The Uncountable Laughter Of The Sea’, a film that was shot entirely in Kerry. The movie has since drawn the praise of President Michael D Higgins and Hollywood actress, Susan Sarandon, both of whom praised the beautiful artistic vision of the piece.

An ‘overthinker’ by his own admittance, Patrick says that he is someone who is utterly fascinated by the technical and creative process of filmmaking, something which he says was instilled in him in a small room in London, many years ago.

“I remember being in a room listening to a man talking about films and I mean, it was just general conversation and I just remember being utterly fascinated by all this knowledge that this man had; I mean, normally when we consider film, we think about actors – we don’t name directors or producers or the cameramen – we only really consider films in relation to the actors – we never give thought to the technical side of things or to the artistic mind behind the script or the directing of the actor.”

“I was listening to this man talking and he was mentioning these names and I was all ears, I was hearing these names like Felini and Antonini and I was just mesmerised because I had never considered this aspect of film before,” he continued.

“I left that course and went and stayed in London for a while and I started getting more and more interested in chasing up these names and I then became an avid follower of directors and significantly, when I was living in London, I lived near the ‘Everyman Cinema’ in West Hampstead which is a very famous and old cinema.”

“I used to go there and watch films, I became a member of the cinema, I think you had to pay £30 a month or something, and sometimes I would watch three or four films there in a row in a single day. What was happening as I was watching all of these films was that I was getting a ‘cinematic education’.”

“Instead of theoretically learning about the theory and the techniques of film, I was seeing it unfold on the screen as it was designed to be seen and experienced – I was seeing all these great masterpiece films from all the great directors and

how they brought their own work to life. I was seeing so many on such a constant basis that my memory was just being flooded with all these techniques subconsciously.”

The requisite skills acquired, it was now time for Patrick to put these skills to the test and when his friend in London came to him with a script for a feature film, Patrick put the challenge to him to make the film and out of this came his first ever film, ‘Spider Hole’.

“We had a film crew from Toronto, actors in London and we filmed for 19 days in Ireland and 4 more in London, I raised the finance myself; I had never done anything like this before, I was totally winging it the whole way!” he laughed.

“It was all shot in London except that we shot all the interior shots and it was 90% interiors, we shot all of these in an old mansion just outside Tralee in an old house in Ballard.”

“I was winging it and learning at the same time, I was winging it but I was also being educated as I was dealing with agents and lawyers and solicitors and literally, I’d be on the phone to all of these people, listening to what they were saying to me and I was learning because the questions they were asking me, I had to be able to answer them - it was a great learning curve.”

This learning curve was to prove vital for Patrick as he set to work on his most ambitious project, a film that embodies the very definition of a ‘passion project’, a film which celebrated the life and vision of Patrick’s dear friend, Kerry priest Fr. Padraig O’Fiannachta, whom he first met in Dingle many years ago.

“I was out in Dingle on New Years Eve a number of years ago and I remember taking a walk across to the most beautiful church and I remember seeing this small man and this man was Fr. Padraig O’Fiannachta.”

“Myself and Fr. Padraig became great friends over the years and his priesthood, in my opinion, was something very much animated by beauty, in other words, he saw the manifestation of God in his eyes through things like nature and beauty and art and creativity. He was a man who was a master of languages, he knew Latin, Greek, Welsh and Irish.”

“I loved spending time with him because we had great fun together and we’d have a lot of craic blaggarding each other and winding each other up you know? We were like two peas in a pod at times. Seeing how this man viewed the world and how he interacted with it, all of this this led me to want to make a film about the different things that animated his life.”

As a fellow enthusiast of nature and more specifically, the spectacular beauty that we have here in Kerry, Patrick set out to film what he saw as a true tribute to both Kerry and the universal language of nature in our world.

“I said to him that I wanted to make a Caravaggio in Kerry, Caravaggio was one of the most famous Italian painters of the Renaissance and he was known for his epic paintings,” he continued.

“In the film, I wanted to shoot each scene of natural landscape of Kerry as an epic scene because it is epic, it’s all there for us to see and sometimes it takes framing that beauty through a cinema lens for people to see what something thay they’ve always seen, but now in a deeper way - so much so that they are almost seeing it again for the first time.”

“The film is a slow and gentle process in which you really just have to let yourself go into it - we’re venerating age, wisdom, beauty and enviornmental consciousness in it - it’s a very meditative process.”

“This film is unique because it’s such a rare thing to be able to go into a cinema and see your county in such a powerful way - I mean, the score was composed by a three time Oscar winner.”

“Our film brings you right home, it wants to show you the beauty of your mountain ranges, your valleys, your rivers - they’re all yours to see and enjoy as much as you want. You don’t have to go away to see something spetacular. it’s right there on your doorstep.”

‘The Uncountable Laughter of The Sea’ is set to begin a month of screenings at the Carnegie Arts Centre in Kenmare on Thursday June 8 at 8pm, it will then be shown again on June 15, June 22 and June 29 at 8pm also.

Our film brings you right home; it shows you your mountains, your rivers, your valleys - it’s all right there for us.