Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Irish Are Coming

The last time I walked out of Boston’s Logan Airport I was wearing a sheepskin-lined denim jacket and I have to tell you, it’s been a while since I’ve worn one of those. Mind you,  I could do with one right now - it’s near freezing here, and the driver says there’ll be “a tickle ah snow” tonight. Meaning five or six inches.

I’m here with David Bolger, writer/choreographer/performer in Deep End Dance, a short film I directed of him dancing an underwater duet with his 76-year-old mother Madge. Madge is a staunch member of the IFI’s Wild Strawberries Cinema club, and unfortunately can’t make this trip (just to be clear, this is not for reasons of age – Madge can do anything).

We meet director Darragh Byrne and producer Dominic Wright at the baggage carousel. They’re here with their film Parked, which opens the Boston Irish Film Festival tonight. Deep End Dance will play before it. The lovely people at the festival have not only brought us all over for this, they are giving an award to each of the films at the opening ceremony. Which means I’ll probably have to explain what ‘chuffed’ means to an audience of bewildered Bostonians.

On Friday I’ll be getting the train south to meet my producer Katie Holly in New York, where our film One Hundred Mornings opens for a week long run at the Rerun theatre.  Boy From Mercury director Martin Duffy is over and says he’ll drop in, transplanted Irish filmmakers Niall McKay (The Bass Player) and Paul Rowley (Make Something Modern) are already there. Paul is very kindly lending Katie and I some video equipment to shoot an interview next week in New York for Making a Show Of Myself, our ongoing documentary about Dublin drag icon Panti Bliss. The interview will be with Angelo, who was the other half of the celebrated drag duo Candi Panti (they were very big in Japan) before he put down the lipstick and became a Prof. Eng. Lit. in NYU.


Before all that, I have a day to explore the town. Via Facebook, a Bostonian friend in Dublin offers some tips, but if I take even half of her suggestions I’ll end up with sore feet and a distended stomach. One of them catches my eye, though - apparently Boston has a pretty awesome aquarium. There’s a multi-storey shark tank down the middle of it, and loads of Bostonians running around going, “Tylah! Tylah! Lookit the shaaahk!” and “Whoah! It’s a staaahfish!”. It sounds great, and I wonder how David and Madge would look dancing in it.

Conor Horgan
Director
One Hundred Mornings (Opens May 6th)

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