Surf Film event is a Shore Shot for Sligo
AFTER three years in Dublin, the Shore Shots Irish Surf Festival is moving to Sligo on the 15th to the 17th April, with a full programme of events over the weekend including film, live music, talks, art and a food trail.
The person responsible for bringing the national surfing and film festival to Sligo is local entrepeneur, Allan Mulrooney. Allan is behind the Go Strandhill website and the thriving Strandhill People’s Market. “First attract the brands and gain credibility’ says Festival Coordinator, Allan. He has certainly achieved this, as he was one of the main organisers behind bringing another surfing event, the Surf Summit to Sligo last November.
“The Surf Summit was a test of how well it could work in Sligo. We brought the two guys involved in Shore Shots to the Model, the Festival Director, Aidan Ellis, he’s also the sub- editor for the Sun newspaper and they met Tara [ Tara McGowan, Event Programmer in The Model] and they met up with the adventure activity providers and accomodation providers over that weekend. We showcased Sligo and convinced them to come to Sligo for the Surf Summit,” explained Allan.
At last year’s Shore Shots Festival, local surfers and filmmakers cleared the awards table. “The strenght of filmmakers in Sligo have simply been overlooked, people like Stephen Kilfeather, Peter Clyne, Peter Martin and Andrew Kilfeather. Peter Clyne’s winning short film was taken up by Epic TV, a global web series. They are sponsoring the festival, as well as Monster Energy, with their help we can keep the ticket prices down. Also on board as sponsors, we have the international surfing brand, Magic Seaweed. They have offices in England and Cornwall and the two guys will be at the events in Sligo, also Carve Magazine, the UK’s biggest surf magazine and the European surf magazine, Wavelength.”
Allan outlined some of the big names coming to the festival this year, with more to be confirmed, such as Portugeuse big wave surfer and filmmaker, Nik von Rupp: “His last video was filmed mostly around Ireland and Fergal Smith, who has an interesting back story. He was one of the highest paid surfers on the European circuit and is now running for the Green Party and has an organic farm in Clare. Cornish filmmaker, Matt Smith, with his film on substainable living in Clare and Tim Munn from the UK, originally a photographer and now involved in the Plastic Project. George Karbus, a photographer who has a huge following globally on instagram.
“We will be showcasing local designers such as Ashleigh Smith from Atlantic Equipment and photographers and graphic artists, such as Dan Leyon, Gary Reddin and surf artists, Lani Gregory, Ian Jermyn and more, and also international artists. Damm Fine Print, will be running screen printing workshops. We also plan to have a food trail over the weekend, and live bands at 5th on Teeling. The feature- length films will be listed with trailers on the shoreshots website, with films from the festival circuit and some that haven’t been seen before.”
A ticket for the weekend costs € 30 and are available from www.shoreshots.ie