LIKE buses, you wait for ages for one and then a dozen come at once. Like buses, awards for Irish films have begun to swoop in, what with The Banshees of Inisherin and An Irish Goodbye plus other Bafta accolades for writing and acting, and Oscar nominations – we certainly are flavour of the month.
And now comes The Laughing Boy, one of four Irish films to be selected for the 25th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece.
Already a winner of the Pull Focus award for best new Irish documentary in 2022, news has just come through that The Laughing Boy (which is about the Brendan Behan poem) is one of the finalists.
An all Irish affair, it’s directed by writer and film-maker Alan Gilsenan, made by the local production company Imagine Media for the Irish language television channel TG4.
It’s presented by the respected Irish Hellenophile poet, Theo Dorgan, and produced by Belfast’s Kathryn Baird and Sheila Friel.
The poem by Brendan Behan was written in praise of Irish revolutionary hero Michael Collins, translated into Greek by Vasilis Rotas, and set to music by Mikis Theodorakis, with the powerful voice of Maria Farantouri who made The Laughing Boy famous in her country as To Yelasto Paidi, which became an anthem in the struggle for democracy in Greece.
ANOTHER BRILLIANT IDEA BY AUNTIE
CAN you believe what the BBC is proposing now?
Hope it doesn’t filter through to Northern Ireland otherwise our front of camera people could be looking 'sweaty and dirty'.
Dressing as if they have just left 'a fine dinner party' is off-putting to audiences and not authentic according to Naja Nielsen, the BBC News digital director. Dressing down will, she hopes, inspire more trust from viewers. I don’t agree.
My mother once told me that an elderly housebound friend had told her how much she enjoyed me popping in to visit her a couple of times a week and always looking so smart.
I actually visited her while on television but I realised that I was a entering her world and should dress and behave accordingly. I guess if I’d been reporting from war torn areas it would have been more appropriate to dress in fatigues – warmth and safety over elegance. Nielsen believes "viewers are more likely to trust journalists if they are looking dishevelled out in the field.”
Remember the outcry when war correspondent Kate Adie filed a report when wearing little pearl stud earrings?
You can see the changes already; trainers, T-shirts, open-necked shirts and tight trousers – both men and women – but watch out for weather-man Tomasz Schafernaker who takes casual elegance to a new level.
THIS PEN IS MIGHTY
HOLLYWOOD may well have its Walk of Fame but Lombard Street in Belfast has it’s own Wall of Fame curtesy of Alan Quigley.
This prolific artist already has a Quigley Room in the Merchant Hotel where his award-winning portrait of Alex Hurricane Higgins hangs – now he has a wall in the Monico Bar in Lombard Street which is completely covered with black and white sketches of famous actors and entertainers from Van Morrison to James Nesbitt – there are 23 in total so far.
Using a pen with black Indian ink, a graphic pencil and biro, he has captured the personality of these subjects. This is Quigley’s own style, his interpretation of stars, living and dead, and produced all over the last couple of months.
He credits his style and talents of the well known Irish artist Dan O’Neill, whom he met in a Belfast bar on 1973.
“I began working in crayon, working on anything I could get my hands on, including wall paper. Unfortunately with so much concentration and hours working at an angle I developed fibrosis in my neck and back so now I have to paint on a flat board.”
It’s no wonder he stresses his body, as he starts work at 9.30am, has coffee or green tea mid morning, eats a meal at 4pm and then continues to work into the evening.
At the moment he’s preparing a one-man show, his first in 40 years, as well as the portrait commission which he says he’s enjoyed, although committing these famous faces to paper has been a challenge.
His favourite face is Ian McElhinney, soon to join the UTV drama Unforgotten, and he likes his most recent work of Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol. Not many women unless you count May McFettridge...
Although his pictures can fetch thousands of pounds today, Alan began his working life as a picture-framer focusing on restoration.
He then trained as a make-up artist in Hammer Studios in London, and played guitar with some of the top showbands in the 60s and 70s.
He had no formal art training but the talent he had shown at school was nurtured and encouraged by O’Neill and today his subjects are many and varied – mostly noted for his Irish paintings of characters and landscapes which hang in exhibitions and private collections in Ireland, America, Canada, London and Spain; and in Padstow Cornwall, with one of his most fervent admirers, the chef Rick Stein.
But never far away is his pen and paper – and the faces that fascinate him.
