Flying high on a wave of local talent
THE great and the good of the Irish audiovisual industry will gather on Saturday for the annual Irish Film and Television Awards. The glitzy event at the Convention Centre Dublin will be broadcast live on RTÉ One.
Among the nominees are familiar faces like Gabriel Byrne and Neil Jordan, as well as rising stars like Chris O’Dowd and Jack Reynor. Reynor — who recently signed on as the lead in the next Transformers movie — is nominated for his turn in Lenny Abrahamson’s What Richard Did, a favourite this year in the film categories. In the TV stakes, meanwhile, RTÉ’s gangland melodrama Love/Hate is tipped to pick up a slew of awards.
Saturday’s ceremony marks the tenth year of the IFTAs, an initiative coordinated by the Irish Film and Television Academy. Though the event has had its critics over the years, the IFTAs have successfully staked a claim on the public psyche. An event of this kind seems a fitting response to the increased professionalism of film and TV production in Ireland since the 1990s.
While the Irish Film and Television Academy runs a range of programmes throughout the year for the benefit and support of its members — numbering almost 1,000 industry professionals — its flagship event is the awards.
“It’s a showcase,” says IFTA CEO Áine Moriarty, “It says to the general public, ‘Look at what we’ve been doing this past 12 months’. Over the 10 years I believe the public have become more familiar with the talent that we have here at home. They’ve become more supportive. And there’s a great pride building up now from knowing that we are punching far above our weight.”
Among the IFTA nominees this year is Ian Fitzgibbon, director of Death of a Superhero, a film which merges scenes of animation and live action, while relaying an affecting narrative about a teenage boy with cancer. The film is nominated for best director and best film gongs, while Michael McElhatton’s understated turn has been rewarded with a nod for best supporting actor.
Both Fitzgibbon and McElhatton were at the first IFTA Awards in 2003, then as nominees for their much loved TV comedy, Paths to Freedom. Since then, Fitzgibbon has gone on to direct charmingly offbeat flicks such as A Film with Me In It and Perrier’s Bounty, as well as TV fare like The Clinic and Moone Boy.
The Dubliner says he is particularly pleased for long-time collaborator McElhatton, whom he has known since they trained together at RADA in the 1990s.
“Michael has that knack of being able to convey emotion in front of a camera without seeming to do very much,” says Fitzgibbon. “And that’s always what draws me to him as an actor. He’s got an extraordinary face and an extraordinary presence but he also carries this emotional heft.”
Though Fitzgibbon would concede that there are years when the IFTA nominations are less overwhelming than others, he believes that the films this year certainly deserve recognition, and he is critical of the negativity that still lingers around the subject of Irish filmmaking.
“If you’re Irish you’re bound to knock yourself,” he says. “That’s just what we do. That’s our national sport. It’s almost embarrassing for Irish people to celebrate any kind of talent. We’d rather lurk in the corner and certainly not blow our own trumpet. But if you look at the list of those films I’d defy anybody not to see the quality in them.”
The real issue in Irish film is not about quality, Fitzgibbon says, but about finding an audience here for Irish productions.
“The challenge for us is to get Irish people to go and see Irish films,” he says. “But I don’t know what the answer is. I thought Grabbers was great craic, but I know it didn’t really perform at the box office. Cleverer people than me could sit down and devise ways of making films reach the audience they deserve.”
Moriarty believes the IFTAs can help boost the profile of Irish films. “Irish films are competing in the cinemas for space with all the big US films,” she says. “So we have to fight for our space. There are so many wonderful stories that have been told that have had very limited release. Some of them are gems and it’s a shame that they don’t get the exposure they deserve. But we can help to build awareness and showcase the talent that’s there.”
But the IFTAs event also supports the sector in other ways. IFTA has strong ties with the British body BAFTA, and it is also a member of the Film Academies Network of Europe. Thus, an IFTAs nomination can be a feather in the cap of any Irish production looking for distribution deals overseas.
Moriarty says the creative team behind Albert Nobbs, a huge production starring Glenn Close, acknowledged that the IFTA nominations had been very helpful in closing their distribution deal.
Behind the glitz, then, there is much more to the annual IFTA awards than first meets the eye.
*The IFTAs are broadcast on RTÉ One on Saturday at 9.30pm
