Shorts are the route to success in film production for Maeve McGrath

Maeve McGrath is a once-familiar face to viewers of Irish soap Fair City but has since carved out a career in production.

A well-known face on stage and screen for well over a decade, Limerick’s Maeve McGrath has succeeded in establishing a futuristic cottage industry in her native Glenosheen. A former star of Fair City who left for the UK in 2000, eventually marrying her fiancé, footballer Jonathan O’Connor, and returning to Limerick in 2009. Sidhe Film, which she established in 2011, has become the catalyst for Vanner, her latest short film success.

“The film’s genesis was a visit to a horse fair in the UK in 2008,” McGrath explains. “I was researching a play and spending time in conversation with members of the Travelling community. We talked about the buying and selling of horses, getting married and then, in hushed voices, about suicide in the community and, in particular, amongst the young men.

“Eventually, I approached Colm Higgins and Tree Light Pictures with a proposal and soon the film was cast and ready to go.”

McGrath insists that Vanner is a very different sort of Traveller story, which focuses on life’s fragility, whatever its origins.

“We shot the film around Ballyorgan and Ardpatrick, in Co Limerick,” she says. “We filmed on the three hottest days of the year, in May 2012, with a superb cast and crew which included Aidan Crowe, Emma O’Grady, Margie Nagle, Chris Rowley and Zeb Moore.

“The film has since been selected for the Chicago Irish Film Festival, where it had its world premier in March, and the Galway Film Fleadh this summer. The making of Vanner was supported by Ballyhoura Rural Development Programme (RDP), Limerick Co Council and a Fund:it campaign.

“All the cast were professional actors, and crucially, Limerick make-up artist Miriam Garcia Mortell succeeded in adding a genuine authenticity to the characters — even my own son hardly knew me. Patrick O’Brien, of the Limerick band, Windings, composed the score for the film, which underpins the weight of emotion involved.”

Another of McGrath’s films, Headlights, was recently completed as a co-production with Apate Film. McGrath is also working with filmmaker Stephen Hall on a Limerick-based web series UpGrade and with local script writer, Andy O’Gorman on a sci-fi film. Sidhe Film and Tree Light Pictures also have a pilot history documentary series in pre-production.

McGrath established Sidhe Theatre in 2010, along with Sinéad Vaughan. Together with script writer Eleanor McSherry, she also co-produced a new film, called Skew Whiff, for Frances Healy, who has played alongside Ewan McGregor.

“The film collective in Limerick is a fantastic community,” says McGrath. “I am involved with Behind the Scenes, which is a network of film-makers who meet once a month. I work on films for people in the network and they, in turn, do the same for me. It’s not only big productions that we need to target. Ten-minute shorts and even two- or three-minute Short Shorts are attracting interest and funding from RTÉ and the Irish Film Board.

“This is allowing local script-writers, like Eleanor McSherry, and producers, like Keith Bogue, to show what they can do. Keith’s films Buddy and Day Trippers are less than 30 minutes long, yet are hugely entertaining and thought provoking.”

For more information about filmmaker Maeve McGrath please see the website: http://www.imdb.me/maevemcgrath