I had a great evening last Saturday at the IFI. The Last Days of Peter Bergmann was having its world premiere along with 3 other Irish Film Board Reality Bites short documentary films. Despite the program starting sufficiently late that we all could have seen the second half of the hurling, there was a great atmosphere in IFI’s Screen 1.
The 4 films that played were all excellent and indeed very different form each other. The talk afterwards was how rare it is to go to such an enjoyable shorts program, where you were treated to very different films and all made to a remarkable high standard.
The film I edited, The last days of Peter Bergmann(Director: Ciaran Cassidy) was up first and it went down superbly and everyone involved in the film was delighted with its reception.
followed by There’s No Charge for the Hat, directed by Tom Burke of Areaman Films
and then there was Emile Dineen’s Rebirth, which was really excellent and I think has the potential to do very well for Emile and it’s producer Aisling Ahmed, whom I enjoyed meeting and chatting to afterwards.
Finally, there was Keith Walsh’s funny and moving “Analogue People in a Digital Age” which brought the house down. I was delighted for my old college buddy Keith and his partner Jill.
Later on Stranger Than Fiction Festival director Ross Whitaker announced the winners of the shorts awards, which were judged from these films and a batch of ten films which had screened earlier in the day. We were all thrilled when “The Last Days of Peter Bergmann” was honoured with the Audience Award. The gong was voted by the public and came with a generous donation from Windmill Lane of €1500 worth of post production. A great prize and a perfect way to top a great screening. Furthermore I was delighted for my buddy Traolach who got a special mention from the jury for his film ‘Gordie’ as it continues its relentless pursuit of awards all over the world. The jury prize went to ‘Rebirth’ and I’m sure it won’t be the last prize it picks up. Here’s hoping Peter Bergmann isn’t finished winning either.
John Murphy 