Irish Cinema Goes Guerilla

Quick! Somebody call the parish priest! National souls may well be in peril!

Goldfish Memory is a very new kind of beast in the context of Irish cinema. It’s a sprightly sex comedy shot against a very glossy Dublin backdrop replete with alternative lifestyles, bossanova beats and lots and lots of small orange fish.
There’s a youthful, attractive up-and-coming cast, including Flora Montgomery, Fiona O’Shaughnessy and Jean Butler, and a genuinely cosmopolitan ambience. No wonder. Director Liz Gill, previously best known for Gold On The Streets, is a well-travelled lady. Born here to American parents, she spent her childhood summers Stateside, which accounts for the subtle yet unmistakable lilting twang in her voice and the urbane quality of her output.
She is one of several emerging bright young things in Irish film. Just check out the unusually impressive indigenous output this last year – Dead Bodies, How Harry Became A Tree and Intermission can all hold their own against Hollywood output.
We caught up with her recently to chat about this New Hibernian Wave and how to get ahead in the film business.

TB: Did you always want to work in film?
LG: It was something I always wanted to do, which is why I ended up in New York, because at the time there was no real industry here. So I ended up in college in New York. I started out in Columbia, then transfered over to NYU. After that, I ended up getting a job in Scorcese’s office for a summer, and never looked back.

TB: Goldfish Memory has a uniquely modern aesthetic within the context of Irish film. Was that something that was very important to you?
LG: Yes, it was. That was part of the ambition anyway. I mean, I had been back here to work on movies like Far And Away and Frankie Starlight, and then after that I made a film called Gold In The Streets, but I had always wanted to come back here, and I ended up falling in love, so that swung it. But over that period, Dublin had changed so much, so we were trying to capture some of that on film.

TB: How did the dreaded financing part go?
LG: It was very difficult. We spent a few years shopping the project around Europe, and the climate was really, really bad for getting something made. Basically once money from German television dried up, and the whole German end of things collapsed, it became impossible to finance any kind of film. So there were a lot of scripts that were ready to go and just needed that last injection of funds.

TB: When did your luck change?
LG: Well, the Film Board came up with this new initiative inspired by the Danish model, so in our case they would give us 50% of the cash, if we could come up with the rest. We came up with it, in the sense that the cast and crew were generous enough to defer payment. Not just the cast and crew, but also facilities like Ardmore. So it was a labour of love for everyone involved.

TB:How long did it take to turn the film around?
LG: Well, the shoot itself took 24 days, but we took our time with the editing process because we didn’t need to rely on studio equipment as we were working on a digital camera, and because we weren’t under pressure. It took from March 2002 to January this year to complete the final cut, but we took breaks during that time.

TB: Goldfish Memory and Dead Bodies are two recent Irish films made using digital video. Has the technology really democratised things for filmmakers?

LG: Absolutely. Actually, Dead Bodies became the first official film made under the Film Board initiative I was talking about. They shot on HD, which is slightly different from the digital cameras we were using. I mean, technical people can bore you forever about the differences in formats, but they’re pretty similar. In our case, the DV offered so many possibilities – not just because of costs, but because of the way we could operate. We only had a tiny crew, and we couldn’t afford to shut down bars and restaurants, and the DV camera allowed us to film unobtrusively in places that were open to the public. And post-production was great as well. I mean, we could edit at home on a standard G4 Mac computer.

TB: You lined up a distinguished cast. How did you persuade them all to sign on the dotted line?
LG: We just got really lucky that people were game for a laugh. I mean, Flora, for example, was in Dublin anyway appearing at the Gate in The Shape Of Things, so the poor thing ended up working terrible hours. She was with us all day, and then on stage at night. I think she was very brave and adventurous, because we were unknowns, with a script that demanded quite challenging things from an actress. After she came on board, and Sean Humphries was already on board, that gave the other actors confidence in the project.

TB: There have been some hostile write-ups about Goldfish Memory and other contemporary Irish films. Does that bother you at all?
LG: There’s always going to be a certain level of background whinging and begrudgery and whatever else, but the joke is that the Irish film scene has never been more exciting. Intermission is great. Dead Bodies is great. But more importantly consider what’s coming up - The Halo Effect is going to be fantastic. Same with The Honeymooners, The Real Thing, Timbuctoo, Headrush – I know I’m forgetting some here – but the point is that there are six or seven really great Irish features on the horizon. And forget the fact that they’re Irish – they’re just great, entertaining, well-made movies. So the detractors belong in another era, because what’s happening at the moment is cause for celebration.

TB: Irish cinema does certainly seem to have moved up a gear of late. It’s now able to embrace genre filmmaking and so on. What happened?
LG: Two things. Firstly, filmmaking is an incredibly complicated, difficult, multi-layered enterprise. It requires a lot of practice, and it’s difficult to get practice when only a few films are being made by Irish people. I think the new initiatives will help with that. I think as well that Irish cinema has come of age. There have always been Irish filmmakers like Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan and Johnny Gogan, but movies like I Went Down started to prove that others could do it, and that they could do it without making things so theatrical.

TB: So what advice would you give wannabe directors? Buy a DV camera and go guerilla?
LG: Basically, yes. Write a script you can shoot for very little money. Practice is everything, so just go do it. Take the route Robert Rodriguez did with El Mariachi. Make the first one for nothing, because it’s very hard to get the chance to actually direct. Get your friends to act. Get out there and give it a go. You can only get better!

Goldfish Memory is on release now