Injecting some Dingle magic onto silver screen

AT first glance, it seems a mad idea: take famous scenes from the world’s most iconic movies and ‘Dingle-ise’ them by recreating the magic moments in the heartland of west Kerry where the sea and scenery always have a starring role.

Use local actors to say things like: “Of all the sheebeens in all the world, you had to walk into mine...”

That’s how a textbook documentary of Dingle’s annual film festival came to be transmogrified into an eccentric, yet elegant piece of movie-making.

It all sounds very odd, but what’s even odder is that it works on all kinds of levels.

Directed by Grammy Award Winner Geoff Wonfor (Beatles Anthology) the film tells the story of Maurice Galway, the gutsy festival organiser who created an event that honours film makers, much like Robert Redford and what he set out to do when he created the Sundance Film Festival.

The festival first caught Wonfor’s attention in 2009 when Galway selected and screened the Beatles anthology in its entirety as a tribute to local Irish co-producer Chip Chipperfield. Impressed by Maurice’s passion for film and charmed by Dingle’s unique place in classic movie lore (Far and Away and Ryan’s Daughter among others), Wonfor enlisted cinematographer Eugene O’Connor to help him document the festival.

Wonfor’s approach is, like Dingle, unique. Using dialogue as gaeilge, he recreates classic movie moments from Casablanca, Titanic, The Godfather, Jaws, Cinema Paradiso and others, interspersed with interviews that unveil Dingle’s rich history and its contribution to the film industry.

Directed by Wonfor and filmed by Eugene O’Connor, (Killanascully), We will always have Dingle is likely to do for west Kerry what Ryan’s Daughter did 40 years ago, when David Lean’s film brought enormous changes to the area of Corca Dhuibhne and sparked the age of tourism on the peninsula.

While the film will premiere at the Dingle Film Festival on St Patrick’s Day, it will also be broadcast in the US and local businesses say it will bring in thousands of tourists.

For writer/producer Diane Namm, it wasn’t just about the film festival or famous movies. “We are also telling the story of Dingle and its history. I was in Dingle in 2009 for the first time and I was charmed by the magic of it. It looked to me like an Irish version of Malibu.”

Malibu?

“Yes... even the weather was beautiful. It struck me as an amazing place. We filmed in Dick Mack’s pub, we filmed on the Skelligs and we even used Fungie to recreate a scene from Jaws. It was all great craic. Geoff, who is a brilliant director, got the chance to be every great director in the universe and I got the chance to be every great producer and writer. It was fantastic fun.”

In spite of cannibalising Hollywood’s greatest movie moments, Namm insists that We will always have Dingle is uniquely Irish. “In the Godfather scene, for instance, there is a moment where the speak in Italian, which is subtitled. We changed that to show them speaking Irish.”

lWe’ll Always Have Dingle will open the 5th Dingle Film Festival on St Patrick’s Day 2011. For more information, go to www.dinglefilmfestival.com