Elaine wins best film award at Chicago festival

DINGLE woman Elaine Kennedy has achieved a massive success in her first foray into film-making, winning the award for best short film at the Chicago Irish Film Festival at the weekend.

Elaine wrote the script, directed, produced and acted in the 11-minute film Uisce Beatha, which tells the real life story of a lamb’s birth, death and resurrection on the footpath outside Brendan O’Connell’s veterinary surgery on the Spa Road.

The story was well known to Elaine long before she wrote the script because she herself played a central part in the event that inspired the film when she drove her father to Dingle with a pregnant ewe that was having difficulty giving birth.

That was some 17 years ago and since then Elaine has worked with the Bank of Ireland and after that as a photographer, before taking up screen acting just two years ago.

Her experience in front of the camera prompted her to try her hand at film-making; Uisce Beatha was the result and it has been a phenomenal success, winning the best short film prize at the Richard Harris Film Festival in Limerick last November before last weekend’s triumph at Chicago.

The film will now be screened at the St Patrick’s Film Festival in London, which runs from March 17 – 19, before returning home to be screened at the Dingle Film Festival which runs from March 23 – 26.

Elaine Kennedy