International meets local as Dingle celebrates film

INTERNATIONAL met local at last weekend’s Dingle Film Festival where films from across the world and those with a strong West Kerry interest combined to attract some of the biggest audiences the festival has seen in its 12 years.

The festival opened on Thursday night with a full house for the screening in the Phoenix cinema of Dónal Ó Céilleachair’s documentary film ‘The Camino Voyage – Iomramh an Chamino’, which charted the extraordinary naomhóg voyage from Dublin to Santiago de Compostela undertaken by Domhnall Mac a’ tSithigh (RIP) and his fellow pilgrims. Described as Festival Director Maurice Galway as the best opening film in the festival’s history, The Camino Voyage was shown to another full house on Sunday and eventually emerged as the festival’s ‘viewer’s choice’ award winner.

There was an equally enthusiastic response for other local work, including RTE video journalist Seán Mac a’ tSithigh’s news/documentary work, and Ventry-based Nuala O’Connor’s ‘Keepers of the Flame’.

Away from the dizzying range of big screen offerings, film-making and the film industry was discussed in depth at the ‘Dingle Pow Wow’ in Ionad an Bhlascaod Mhór on Saturday and meanwhile ‘Animation Dingle’ hosted workshops with the likes of Dan Katcher who demonstrated how to make animated dragons like the ones he made for Game of Thrones.

Animation Dingle – a sideshoot of the festival that has blossomed into a major event in its own right – was attended by 600 students and representatives of studios such as Disney, Nickelodeon, and Pixar who, as well as hosting workshops, were very actively recruiting at the event which is now listed among the top 25 animation festivals in the world.

The animators went to Nellie Fred’s pub on Saturday night to hold a charity auction and raised over €20,000 for the Donal Walsh LiveLife Foundation. The prize item of the night was a clay model made by Peter Lord, founder of Aardman Studios who are famously the creators of the Wallace and Gromit characters. The model sold for €4,000 and Lord later tweeted from Dingle about how he enjoyed: “An amazing, hilarious and sometimes ridiculous night, raising money for a great cause”.

The Dingle Film Festival, which was founded in 2007 by Maurice Galway, was run this year with the help of over 50 volunteers, but according to Maurice it wouldn’t happen at all without the continuing support of Tor Cotton who came to Dingle to make a film about Fungi, and never left. That support was recognised with the presentation of a silver pendant, designed by Brian de Staic, at the festival’s ‘wrap party’ in McCarthy’s bar. It was a simple gesture that meant a lot to Tor, whose backing for the festival has earned Dingle a place on the world stage of film-making.

Photo by Declan Malone The three remaining members of the original Camino na Sáile crew - Liam Holden, Breanndán Ó Beaglaoich and Breandán-Pháid Ó Muircheartaigh with director Dónal Ó Céilleachair (second from left) after Sunday’s showing of ‘The Camino Voyage - Iomramh an...