Kieran’s Speech, Launch of Southern Screen Guild Profession

Bodega Bar, 9 June 2011

Ladies and gentlemen,

Launching the Southern Screen Guild Profession tonight marks another milestone for the discipline of film in our region and creates a much needed forum. The story of producing film makers in Cork has been inspired by many threads.

 I’m always amazed at the number of students that study film at colleges such as St. John’s and Colaiste Stiofain Naofa, the impact of festivals such as the Cork Film Festival and further festivals afield and festivals such as the Cork French Film Festival. The updated Cork City Arts Plan, developed by Cork City Council also has a section on film. The overall plan aims to explore and debate the value of the arts to a city, both in terms of the economic value they deliver via tourism, but also the benefits delivered in respect of artistic, cultural, educational or social gains in a city.

However there is one thing saying those terms, it’s another thing to deliver on them. I think it is the personal commitment to the arts by artists and actors in this region that ultimately make Cork: A City of festivals and a City of the Arts.

Last week I saw a film Water for Elephants…I was taken by the imagery and the reconstruction of times on a travelling circus in 1930s America. It was this more so than the plot that enlightened me and challenged me –it was how life was lived, the backdrops and frames to everyday life was presented, that process of envisaging and embodying life between maybe the ideal and actual.

But I’m a geographer by trade plus have a huge interest in landscapes and the human life within them, so not only the shapes and contours but also how ways of life weave their way into the physicality of landscapes creating a sense of place and memory.  Indeed, there are many pieces of life depicted in such as film.

What should film do?

An online discussion two years ago on the film critique website Mubi Europe, a blogger Stewart Adams asked the questions…What should film do? should it leave the viewer to find the answers or should the film point in one direction?

What should film do?

Some of his colleague bloggers relied Film is a response to the world.  Another replied it is a template for imagining the world, another film is about the capturing of images through a viable mode of recording. Others wrote about photography’s specific attributes – its materiality, ease of access that it is an affective and driven view of the world that is thought to bypass the intellect and communicate directly with the emotions. Another wrote about cleansing the doors of perception and the creation of memorable scenes through a director’s perspective.

Another wrote that film should allow the viewers to see the infinite possibilities of life as in a kaleidoscope. It should raise interesting questions but allow the viewers to enter the “dialogue” and reach their own conclusions. A film can achieve this by reflecting the shifting boundaries out there or challenging certain boundaries, collapsing and reconstructing them.

Another blogger penned that a film can immerse you very deeply into situations in a way that can enlighten your understanding of humanity, because it mimics how you experience something in reality. That the illusion is so powerful that one feels like it can have a greater depth of feeling and connection with humankind because of that.

The list went on for pages on the Mubi blog….

Film and motivation:

So the process of film making seemingly cannot be pinned down – It involves so many threads. And perhaps that is why the value and processes of film making are so very apt today especially if we connect it into Ireland’s story. Once again Ireland has come to a cross-roads where it must now once again be creative and think outside of the box, so the nation can move forward.

The medium of film power has the power to grasp, encourage wonder, inspire confidence, motivate a self-purpose, provoke questions and the imagination and even draw in the viewer and even disturb and so much more – lessons of life can be presented and debated.

Ladies and gentlemen perhaps there is so much to learn through the medium of film – Actors and directors all bring their own talents, confidence self pride, self belief and a desire to perform their medium. Those are all very important traits.

Ladies and gentlemen, in this world, we need more of such confidence, pride and belief – we need to mass produce these qualities. This is where film gives hope and have no doubt has saved souls. I wish to congratulate all involved in this screen guild of professionals and wish you all the best for the future.

To conclude, I would just like to read one more quote from the Adams Blog of what film should do. It was written by a blogger called  scooter:

“Film should grab us by the shoulders, shake us violently, and proclaim: “You are alive!”. Film should be an alarm clock, whose jarring pulses should penetrate our dreamless slumber with the urgency of a full bladder. Film should be a goddamned rocketship that jets us away from the humdrum and hurls us into the sublime surf of the cosmos. Film shouldn’t say a single word or eat at a single McDonald’s; it should simply wrap itself around your tiny little head like a plaster mold and suffocate you. …. Film should stretch itself thinner than the value of the dollar and then collapse into a black hole. Film should teach you how to dream and dream to make you feel.”

Thank you.