Culture That Made Me: Cork filmmaker Brendan Canty on Coldplay, Talos, and Father Ted
Brendan Canty, director of Christy, and an upcoming documentary in Cork Film Festival.
Born in 1989, Brendan Canty grew up in Ballincollig, Cork. In 2013, his video for Hozier’s track, became a viral hit. His award-winning short films include For You, starring Barry Keoghan. his debut feature film, premiered in February at the Berlin International Film Festival where it won a Grand Prix prize. His Knocknaheeny-set documentary, will be screened as part of the Cork International Film Festival, on Friday, November 7. See: www.corkfilmfest.org.
Growing up, I loved It was hilarious. I was drawn to how Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews, the show’s creators, got under the skin of and poked fun at Ireland and Catholicism. It was so light and inoffensive. I don't think anybody had brought out that humour in Ireland and satirised it as well as they did. It was never naff. They straddled that line. It was always so charming and funny. Everyone could enjoy it, and it was so quotable.
The first TV drama that grabbed me was They cast a lot of real people. They leaned into colloquialisms and the specificity of Baltimore – you'd be watching a scene with the corner boys in Baltimore, you wouldn't have a clue what they're on about, but you love it, being brought into this world. They never tried to tone it down. That was a big influence on me, trying to do the same in Cork. People underestimate what international audiences want. A lot of people love to watch a universal story they can relate to but also be transported into a world they never knew about. Often an international audience might think of Ireland as twee or whatever. Then they see, say, North Cork and they’re like, “Oh, I didn't expect this.” They’re brought into a world they never knew existed.
I loved watching Michael Palin's travel shows as a teenager. He can connect with and make people laugh. He can engage with people from all walks of life. He's got a lovely, easy-going, non-confrontational way about him. I love the mood of his shows. I remember he did one where he went to the Himalayas. It was such a serene, atmospheric watch. His approach to people is probably in my approach. He takes the pressure off everybody. He has a brilliant way of making people forget about the camera by being sound and gentle.
The film was brilliant. There was a follow-up TV show, a mini-series, with the same cast. That was really good, almost better than the film. They did different eras in the UK. The film was set in ’83. Then they did a TV episode on ’86, ’88 and ’90. I was inspired by the sense of community, the improv and the way Shane Meadows got all those performances out of everybody. Just a filmmaker doing things differently. That was a big inspiration for Christy, definitely.
I remember seeing Andrea Arnold’s which was shot by Robbie Ryan, an Irish cinematographer. It was the sort of film I wanted to make – using first-time actors, a film that feels intimate and real. The way it is shot is poetic but also very human. It's about a young girl from working class Britain, somewhere outside London. She's lost, an isolated young girl, with a lot of anger. It's about her trying to find her place in the world. She wants to become a dancer. It's her navigating adolescence. A coming-of-age film.
is a Japanese children's cartoon by Hayao Miyazaki. It's about two girls. Their mom is ill. They've just moved house. They're trying to deal with the idea that their mom is sick, trying to process it. One of the young girls encounters this creature in the forest. It's about imagination and nature and how it can help to heal. It breaks that Disney structure – there are no bad guys. It's very spiritual and moving in the most subtle ways. Childhood imagination is so powerful – how kids can imagine creatures or imaginary friends and how they can do it to help them to process stuff they're going through. It's a beautiful and simple concept. It's such a lovely film.
Coldplay’s got me into music. It's such a great album. Coldplay get a bad rep, but that and really gripped me. I remember being on a holiday when I was about 13 or 14 in Turkey and listening to Parachutes on the bus back to the airport, looking out the window, as the ocean and the landscape went by. It was my first big experience with music. It was so atmospheric. That opened everything up for me.
I remember being obsessed with Animal Collective’s album I listened to that album religiously. Completely different from Coldplay. It was more experimental music, more abstract. The album for me was so visual. I could just see visuals when I listened to it. This inspired me to want to make music videos.
My first ever live gig was Moby. My dad took me. It was on in the Showgrounds in Cork in 2000 [Green Energy Festival]. I remember thinking it was amazing. I didn't like Moby before that. I was too young to really appreciate it, but it was a cool gig looking back. Something happened there which made me change my mind about Moby. I gravitate today towards the same sort of music, ambient music and electronica. It was probably the “live” feeling.
I was blown away by a Cork band called Hush War Cry. I wanted to be involved with this band, so I ended up making a music video for them. The lead singer was Eoin French. He ended up being Talos. I managed Talos and made all his music videos. He made music I adored. We had an amazing partnership that helped me develop creatively. He was an incredible creative. We had similar tastes. We were two artists passionate about making art. At a time where I would have been happy and settled for stuff, he always pushed me. He was an architect, so he was always a perfectionist. He pushed me to be a perfectionist. He was into literature and discussing ideas about deeper stuff and metaphors. His vision as an artist, his talent, was a huge cultural moment for me.
I loved the Canadian band Broken Social Scene’s album It's an instrumental album, very ambient and textural. In college, at what was then Cork Institute of Technology, as part of a project in 2009, I made a music video for it, my first. I was drawn to that album visually. I put it on YouTube. Some of their fans commented on it. That was a big buzz for me. It made me want to make more of these.
There's an Irish music video, which I loved, for a band called Wild Promises. The song's called It's a portrait of suburban Ireland. It's done so well. It was inspiring to me. It's an amazingly well-observed music video. It captures the feeling of growing up in suburban Ireland. It’s a masterful music video.
