The Moderators, the short documentary I cut for Ciaran Cassidy, I’m delighted to say has been shortlisted for this years Grierson Awards. Absolutely thrilled with this as The Griersons are the pinnacle of documentary awards on these Islands.

Ciaran Cassidy and I worked on ‘The Last Days of Peter Bergmann’ and his co-director this time journalist Adrian Chen, a staff writer with The New Yorker and frequent contributor to a whole range of publications.
The film was produced by Colum McKeown with Laura Poitras (Citizen Four), AJ Schnack and Charlotte Cook for Field of Vision, an online platform for challenging documentaries.

SYNOPSIS
In an office in India, a cadre of Internet moderators ensures that social media sites are not taken over by bots, scammers, and pornographers. The Moderators shows the humans behind content moderation, taking viewers into the training process that workers go through in order to become social media’s monitors.

NOMINATED
Grierson Short Documentary Award
Grand Prix SXSW Short Documentary

SELECTED
SXSW 2017
Sheffield DocFest 2017

You can watch the film below

The Full shortlist is here

The reaction to the ‘Giles’ documentary which I cut for Loosehorse was incredible. It was watched by a huge audience figure and was the number one trending item in Ireland for twitter for a few days.

Liam Fay writing in the Sunday Times called it “a compelling chronicle of his life story and lifetime devotion to football…Giles was one of the year’s best home-grown documentaries, a film as much about the evolution of modern Ireland as the development of Irish football.”

In the Irish Examiner, Larry Ryan wrote “Giles, a lovely gentle film by Loosehorse, retraced the route through a football life of our greatest football man. The beauty of Giles the film, much like Gilesy the player, was simplicity. It let him talk. Pull the strings. It did the bread and butter stuff right.”

John Byrne writing for RTE website said “There was so much to savour in this compelling and almost flawless documentary it’s hard to figure where to begin.”

Here are some selected tweets about the film. There were 1000’s of them…

http://vimeo.com/217471462

I was delighted to cut this doc for Craig Speer about the life of Sam Barry, one of Irelands leading Tennis players. In between testing each other on 90’s Manchester United trivia I think we managed to fashion a unique look at a side of professional sport most people can’t imagine. I’m delighted with how this turned out.

It airs THURSDAY JULY 1ST at 9:30 on Eir 1

Ian O’Riordan in The Irish Times called it ‘the loneliest Irish sports documentary ever made’ which was pretty much what we set out to do.

In advance of the documentary Sam sat down with Jarlath Regan for his fantastic An Irishman Abroad Podcast

https://soundcloud.com/an-irishman-abroad/sam-barry-episode-191

SYNOPSIS
Filmed over a two-year period, this observational documentary charts the trials and tribulations of Limerick native Sam Barry as he tries to break into the elite top 200 tennis players in the world. eir Sport 1, Thur, June 1st 21.30.

This is a story of grit, dedication and a will to succeed no matter what. Sam Barry, just 25, is one of Ireland’s leading tennis players. He is determined to make it in the professional ranks of this most competitive of sports. He spends 40-45 weeks of the year on the road, travelling around the world to play in tournaments that will help him improve his ranking and achieve his ultimate goal – a place in the top 200.

This is the less glamorous side of professional sport, but it is equally compelling in its own right. Directed by Craig Speer and produced by GMarsh TV for eir Sport, Sam Barry: Behind The Baseline shows us the hard yards, the rites of passage that nearly every top level sportsman or woman has to go through to make it to the big time. It’s a story of endless travel, of anonymous hotel rooms and airport departure lounges, of gut-wrenching training sessions and matches in near-empty arenas.

Filmed and Directed by Craig Speer
Produced by Gillian Marsh
Edited by John Murphy
Music by Daragh Dukes

Crash and Burn has picked up the Torc for Best Sports Documentary at the Celtic Media Awards held this year in Douglas on the Isle of Man.
This is the second time a project I cut for producer David Burke and director Sean O’Cualain has won this award, we previously picked up the gong for ‘Rás Tailtean’ a few years back.
In recent years the awards have been kind to projects I’ve cut with Rás, Arkle and Paidí Ó Sé also winning awards. Despite promising to go every year, I’ve yet to make it to the event. Maybe Wales next year!!

Here’s Sean picking up the award last week

and here’s the trailer to the film

Mattress Men bet out an incredibly strong field to win the George Morrison Award at the 2017 IFTA’s. This is a huge achievement and I’m delighted to have been part of it. I’m especially thrilled for Colm Quinn the director for whom this has taken up the best part of the last 3 years. Working with such a talented director was a real privilege moreover it was an honour to get to know such a wonderful guy.

Here’s director Colm Quinn picking up the award on the night

The Moderators is a short film I cut for Ciaran Cassidy with whom I worked on ‘The Last Days of Peter Bergmann’ and his co-director this time journalist Adrian Chen, a staff writer with The New Yorker and frequent contributor to a whole range of publications.

The film premiered earlier this year at SXSW in Austin where it was nominated for the Grand prix award for best short documentary.

The film was produced by Colum McKeown with Laura Poitras (Citizen Four), AJ Schnack and Charlotte Cook for Field of Vision, an online platform for challenging documentaries.

The Film has now been made available to watch online and it has already gone down a storm becoming a Vimeo staff pick as well as features in The New Yorker, Wired and Mashable among other. Check out the links below for more.

Anyways here’s the film…

SYNOPSIS
In an office in India, a cadre of Internet moderators ensures that social media sites are not taken over by bots, scammers, and pornographers. The Moderators shows the humans behind content moderation, taking viewers into the training process that workers go through in order to become social media’s monitors.

Media Coverage

The New Yorker
Wired
Mashable
The Verge
Digg
TechCrunch
The Journal
The Outline

For the last six months or so I’ve been beavering away on a film that I directed with  Traolach Ó Murchú called ‘Photo City’. If you follow me on Facebook or any social media, you’ve probably heard me mention it more than once. Its the story of Rochester,NY and that city unique relationship to photography. Anyways the film has its premiere this Tuesday in the IFI at 6 as part of the Audi Dublin International Film Festival. We are super excited about the screening, we released the trailer a few days back and it has been getting a great reaction.

Today we are proud to present the movie’s poster, designed by the wonderful team at revert design . I’m over the moon with it.