Happy to keep the focus on film

The Underground Short Film Festival, which takes place in Cork from Saturday to August 16, will, for the first time in its four-year history, screen five feature films.

As well as four classics — Jaws, Alien, Dirty Dancing and Ghostbusters — the festival will screen an Irish feature. How to be Happy, directed by Michael Rob Costine, stars Brian Gleeson (a son of actor, Brendan Gleeson) and is about a psychologist who, following the break-up of his relationship, starts to date his clients in a misguided attempt to make them happy.

Director of the festival, Darren O’Mahony, says that Costine, a Dubliner who studied film at St John’s Central College in Cork, submitted a short film to the first Underground Short Film Festival.

“Last year, he made How to be Happy which has done quite well on the festival circuit and got funding from the Irish Film Board. We thought showing his film would be a good way for us to break into showing features. I want to show film makers that once they’ve made their shorts, they can progress to feature films.

“A lot of film makers see shorts as the be-all and end-all whereas the real careers are in features. Micheal will attend the screening and will talk about how his career has progressed over the last couple of years.”

O’Mahony instigated the festival because as a filmmaker, he was frustrated with film festivals around the world. Big festivals, he says, can be intimidating — receiving thousands of entries that they often don’t even acknowledge.

A graduate of film studies at St John’s Central College, he says the festival is very much a labour of love, run by volunteers. It survives on a budget of less than €10,000. The event is funded by crowd-funding and receives a small amount of money from Cork City Council. It is also sponsored this year by Rising Sons Brewery.

The feature films will be screened at a drive-in cinema in the Munster Agricultural Society’s show grounds in the Curraheen area. A drive-in truss is being hired to facilitate this.

The other venues for the festival are the Vision Centre, Camden Palace, the Kino, the Gate Cinema and the Clarion Hotel. There will be 21 screenings comprising 95 shorts and the five feature films.

“We had 250 submissions, on a par with previous years. About 50% of the films are locally made which I’m quite happy about.”

The other films are from 16 countries. Submissions were made from as far away as Brazil and India. Categories include comedy, drama, documentary, experimental, science fiction and horror.

O’Mahony, whose day job sees him making promotional videos, says the axing of funding to the Cork Film Centre has “made a huge dent in the film-making community in Cork”.

“The nearest facilities are now in Galway and Dublin and a lot are going to give up. It’s a very short-sighted move; the Irish film making industry is considered small but it still generates huge money.”