E-ZINE NEWSLETTER ISSUE ONE MARCH/APRIL 2016
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION TO DRIFTWOOD DOLL FILMS FILM : THE BETRAYAL FILM : AFTERTHOUGHT FILM : DEAD INSIDE LATEST NEWS : TERMINAL LATEST NEWS : CONTACT LATEST NEWS : DEAD ALONG THE WAY VIDEOGRAPHY : FILMBASE ACTING CLASSES VIDEOGRAPHY : 1916 – CHILDREN OF THE RISING BLOG POST – “THE BECHDEL TEST, 30 YEARS ON” A TRIBUTE TO MUSICIAN / COMPOSER CONOR WALSH OUR SERVICES WEBSITES & SOCIAL MEDIA
Driftwood Doll Films was founded by writer producer directors Eilís Abbott and Michael O’Dwyer in Dublin, Ireland in the summer of 2014. Starting with the self-funded short film CONTACT, written by Joe Lynch and directed by Stephen Brady, we have gone on to produce several films (AFTERTHOUGHT, DEAD INSIDE), culminating recently in our biggest project to date – THE BETRAYAL, a large scale 30 minute LGBT-themed drama directed by Kamila Dydyna and Natasha Waugh. Along with our own film projects, Driftwood Doll Films look to support a diverse and inclusive selection of writers, producers, and directors through collaborations, services, and associate producing. Through this we have contributed to several film projects in our short existence, including Kamila Dydyna’s previous short – the award-winning TESTIMONY (Reckoner Productions, FoxRock Productions), feature films LEAD US NOT (Alan & Anthony Mulligan) and DEAD ALONG THE WAY (Burnt Ice Picture, ORion Productions), and this month Natasha Waugh’s new short film TERMINAL (Fight Back Films, Hopehapp Productions), a timely and important film about the choices women have to make in their lives, and the extra hardship involved when those choices are denied them in their own country. Driftwood Doll Films have many films to come out in 2016 and continue to develop independent film projects. Write to : driftwooddollfilms@gmail.com
THE BETRAYAL – LGBT Themed Thriller on Sexual Identity
Kamila Dydyna, Mark McAuley, Miriam Devitt – featured cast of The Betrayal “A male partner’s jealous and violent reactions in an unravelling relationship are the catalyst of The Betrayal’s plotline in which a new romantic possibility leads to danger”
THE BETRAYAL, a new female-driven short film from writer / director Kamila Dydyna, looks set to go places that not many Irish films have gone before. The LGBT drama / thriller from the pen of Polish-born Dydyna touches on adult themes such as sexual identity, domestic violence, and revenge porn within the story of a marriage break-up. The lead character Nel’s questioning of her romantic feelings for her best friend Alice seem timely as Ireland slowly unshackles itself from its own prescribed gender norms. The main cast features Mark McAuley (Vikings, Saol) and Miriam Devitt (Running Commentary, Food Fight). Kamila Dydyna, a graduate of the Gaiety School of Acting, whose award-winning directorial debut Testimony last year showed a child’s eye view of an emotional court case, takes on the challenging lead role of Nel in her new film. She doesn’t shy from facing some of the darker truths of society on screen. A male partner’s jealous and violent reactions in an unravelling relationship are the catalyst of The Betrayal’s plotline in which a new romantic possibility leads to danger. Kamila says about the domestic violence aspect of the film, “I grew up watching my parent’s violent relationship and still know way too many people affected by it. Hearing of homophobic attacks on my own friends – from their religious leaders down to their parents – breaks my heart but also fuels my passion for storytelling.
“Writing / directing and acting in stories featuring gender-based violence is my way of trying to understand it, and ultimately inspire people to prevent it. In The Betrayal, Nel’s first reaction to an act of aggression from her husband is of course shock, but it’s also mixed with paralysing guilt and shame. There’s still such shame involved in telling anyone. It bothers me so much that it’s the victims that are ashamed, not the perps. I wanted to explore all of that and a lot more in the film. Even though in the world of The Betrayal nothing’s black and white, excusing such violent behaviour, especially as a society with collective responsibility for how men are allowed act towards women, allows gender violence be the norm.” Far from your average short film, Kamila Dydyna and production company Driftwood Doll Films (Eilís Abbott and Michael O’Dwyer) assembled a mostly female team to bring the thirty page script to its full potential over an intensive six day shoot in late January / early February. Each member of the crew come with their own experiences of being a woman in an imbalanced industry where it’s common to be one out of ten on film sets and in production meetings, and are quite amused to have it the other way round for once. The film is co-directed by Natasha Waugh from Fight Back Films, with cinematography by Gosia Zur (Monged), costume design by Gwen Jeffares-Hourie. The Betrayal will also feature the title track from the late Conor Walsh’s debut EP “The Front,” named one of the best Irish songs of 2015 by Nialler9. A Crowdfunding campaign runs until MARCH 23 for The Betrayal : igg.me/at/TheBetrayal
Hilary Bowen-Walsh on the set of THE BETRAYAL Photo by Rafal Kostrzewa
AFTERTHOUGHT finalising post-production
Neil Hogan, Rose Landys, and director Sinead Ralston filming AFTERTHOUGHT “Afterthought features Neil Hogan as an indefatigable pensioner attempting to woo indomitable Rose Landys in a series of silent comedy style vignettes“
Independent film company Driftwood Doll Films are finalising postproduction on romantic comedy “Afterthought”, their second produced short film. The film is written and directed by newcomer Sinead Ralston, and according to Driftwood Doll Films’ producers Eilís Abbott and Michael O’Dwyer, fits with their ethos of encouraging and working with new female voices in the industry. “I met Sinead on a screenwriting course in Filmbase three years ago, and when it ended we decided we’d keep meeting up regularly to give each other script feedback and the always needed motivation to get things finished. I’m really proud that I was able to produce her first film and see her working so brilliantly on a film set for the first time. She has many powerful projects in the works.” - Michael O’Dwyer “Afterthought” features Neil Hogan as an indefatigable pensioner attempting to woo indomitable Rose Landys in a series of silent comedy style vignettes, and was filmed in Dublin. Writer / Director Sinead isn’t the only member of the Ralston family involved in the production as her husband Gavin, a musician and owner of independent record label Silverwood Music, will provide the allimportant soundtrack to the silent comedy. The camera team on the project were John Hennessy and Lucy Jones of Kerbute Productions, and “Afterthought” will be aimed at a festival run this summer.
DEAD INSIDE homelessness film project A personal blog post by Michael O’Dwyer
Co-writer Joe Lynch and Kamila Dydyna on location
It’s been a long time – many years and a few false starts – but I got back to directing at the end of 2015 with “Dead Inside”, a short film drama about a homeless man’s odyssey around Dublin city which I wrote with its star Joe Lynch. We wrapped(!) on Christmas Eve after four cold days shooting outdoors in and around the city, but it’s now in the can and I’ll be starting to edit the film very soon. As the lowest of budget films, made for approx €500, responsibilities were shared amongst a skeleton crew and dedicated cast to bring to the screen this fifteen page script of a self-destructive young man
meeting someone from his past who offers a ray of light to his world. The project came about through my co-writing partnership with Joe Lynch, in which real life circumstance is the main focal point around which a film is based. In December 2014 on my way to a morning filming job, I witnessed first-hand the aftermath of one of homeless Dublin’s many tragedies, seeing the horrific image of the body of Jonathan Corrie where he was found on a doorstep a couple of hundred metres from Government buildings.
Journal Article on the anniversary of homeless man Jonathan Corrie’s death
http://www.thejournal.ie/jonathancorrie-anniversary-2474232-Dec2015/
I’m sure the irony was not lost on the suits at the end of the road, but such incidents haven’t stopped mealy-mouthed power brokers from excusing themselves of responsibility, and in fact facilitating banks worsening the homeless situation as many families are evicted to emergency accommodation, and in many cases onto the same streets. Although the film is not a true story, the continuing reality of discarded lives in society, and cowriter Joe Lynch’s own experience in growing up around drugs where a normal life and reaching adulthood could never be taken for granted, also informed the film as it developed. The question of judging a person for their mistakes, be that drugtaking or a self-destructive attitude to life, but failing to take into account the wrongs done to them and the tragedies in their past, became a major theme.
In the writing of the script as a partnership between myself and Joe, an initial idea passes from one of us to the other and back again several times to develop a fully realised and collaborative shooting draft. After a test shoot of some of the visuals, which we knew were as important as the main character relationship to the film's success, we put together our key team of Eilís Abbott (my partner in Driftwood Doll Films) to produce, and Kamila Dydyna (an awardwinning writer/director and actress) as the co-lead opposite Joe. I took on director of photography duties as well as the directing to keep the shoot as streamlined and within the tiny budget as possible, and we hope to have “Dead Inside” through post-production and ready for viewing before summer 2016. ****
Dead Inside Test Shoot
LATEST NEWS: TERMINAL Big Congratulations to the cast & crew of TERMINAL which wrapped last week. It’s a timely and important film about the choices women have to make in their lives, and the extra hardship, secrecy, and emotions involved when those choices are denied them in Ireland. Terminal is written and directed by Natasha Waugh from Fight Back Films and produced by David C Lynch of Hopehapp Productions. Director of Photography was Eimear Ennis Graham. Driftwood Doll Films are associate producers.
Director Natasha Waugh talks through a scene with Aoife Doyle & Andrea Kelly
CONTACT The Ides Of March brought vindication in place of assassination for our first company film CONTACT, written by Joe Lynch and directed by Stephen Brady. We’ve started to look for more screenings for this selffunded €2,500 budget film that we shot two summers ago in O’Devaney Gardens with a great cast and crew, and had a chance to show it at "The Randomer" Filmbase fundraising event in Sin É on March 15th..
Joe Lynch as Richard in CONTACT
and Julius Caesar(!).. Contact won BEST DRAMA and Joe Lynch won BEST ACTOR from the 16 films shown on the night.
We’re delighted with the recognition and would sincerely like to thank the organisers for giving us the opportunity to screen the film, and the judges! It was very well received on the night in amongst some great quality films, and thanks is due to all who made the film with us as it's your overall contributions that make it as cinematic and creepily unsettling as it is! We hope to get the film some more screenings soon. Here's the awards list from the night: Best Drama: Contact, Best Actor: Joe Lynch for Contact Best Actress: Susan Loughnane for Nocturne Passage Best Director: Garrett Lynam for Walter's Weakening Best Comedy: The Last Viking: The Tale Of Fisk Og And The Pommfritter
DEAD ALONG THE WAY
Director Maurice O’Carroll of Burnt Ice Pictures says he is now on the final furlong of post production for Dead Along The Way. “The film is being colour graded this month at Windmill Lane and it's being sound mixed by whizz kid Martin Benson. We have cut a teaser and a trailer which will be released with some bonus videos in the run up to the release.” Dead Along The Way is a co-production between Burnt Ice Pictures and Sinead O’Riordan’s ORion Productions. Driftwood Doll Films is associate producer.
VIDEOGRAPHY: It was great fun filming showreel scenes recently for Maureen O'Connell's Beginners Acting Class in Filmbase, and doing a Q&A afterwards for the actors with Maureen, and Eva Hein from ReActors Agency, a co-operative acting agency based in Dublin. A talented group of young actors with a great teacher. Watch out for Maureen's next Filmbase class "Intro to Acting for TV & Film" in April, and her new film PROCLAIM which is in post production.
http://filmbase.ie/into-to-acting/#.Vur_UPmLTIV
**** I recently had the opportunity to film a unique 1916 commemorative ceremony in St Joseph’s CBS Primary school, Fairview, in which pupils representing six local schools and well-known Irish personalities including Liveline’s Joe Duffy, writer Gene Kerrigan, and singers Noel O’Grady and Audrey Dunphy gathered to pay tribute to the “Children of the Rising”, the many young souls from those schools that perished during the week of the Easter Rising. The full resulting film will be for private viewing only, but there may be a short highlights video released online of this very special occasion.
Joe Duffy read from his book “Children of the Rising” at the event
The Bechdel Test, 30 Years On – Moving Towards Equality by Michael O’Dwyer
We’re 30 years on from the first appearance in Alison Bechdel’s “Dykes to Watch Out For” of what became known as The Bechdel Test. It’s become something of a millstone even to feminists in the film industry being that it was meant originally as an ironic aside to highlight just how marginalised and proplike women were in 80’s movies. It was closer to a barbed spear in the heart of gender bias absurdity than a standard for gender equality, but stands as a starting point for a movement towards change, and it's this that underlies the basic idea. Are films supposed to be rewarded and carry some kind of feminist or gender equal currency if they in fact do feature two women talking to each other about something other than a man? Of course not. Most would say we’re a long way past that now, with Bechdel Test parameters having been set so low to properly reflect the feminist-hating, “Backlash” era, conservative revolution 80’s. Well it’s absolutely true we should be past that, but as pointed out recently, the sad fact is 36% of supposedly mainstream Hollywood films (2010-2014, https://women-in-film.silk.co/)
still fail to have two women talk to each other about something other than a man. That’s 36% of mainstream films, the ones EVERYBODY sees all over the world, that don’t even pass the pointedly ironic standard for female involvement of The Bechdel Test. There are many reasons for this failure, or more to the point obstruction : the predominance of male executives and producers, male directors and writers, male script readers and screenwriting gurus. As revealed in Logan Hill's truly extraordinary Cosmopolitan article on the Hollywood shutout of female directors, the leading men who can greenlight films must take their share of responsibility in the lack of females in front of and behind the camera. The idea that a tight and dramatic script means plotdriven, and megabucks, and only men can be trusted to carry things of such importance still prevails. The backlash voices insist it's just political correctness to stick a woman in among the group of men we’ve come to expect. Having two women with fully-rounded characters would be absurd! Films have always learnt from and grown out of other films. They don’t come from all the divergence, tangents, and unusualness of life.
They come from the formulas and plot points and themes of other films - the screenwriting science - by Hollywood committee, protected zealously by the male gurus of successful film writing and making. It’s very hard to break down that wall with anything new or anything real. If the Bechdel Test’s parameters are set low, then Hollywood’s are set narrow – and the true reality of women’s lives coming into that would seem radical on screen. But it does seem that this revolutionary genderquake of the film industry is about to happen, and Hollywood's complacent rehash, remake, and resuscitation of male stories in recent years has literally engendered the willingness to see anything different on screen.. even when it means bracing ourselves for allfemale remakes of the same stories! I’ve loved most things Paul Feig, Kristen Wiig, and Melissa McCarthy have done so far. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. As anyone who has seen the negativity and male trolling around the yet-to-be-released Ghostbusters must be aware, it’s not just the reality of women that has to fight for its place in mainstream film culture. There is a growing backlash against the new breed of fictional female
heroes too - Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, Rey from the newly awakened Star Wars franchise - because they exhibit all the traits that are apparently only acceptable when bestowed on a male hero: impossibly brave in the jaws of death, wise beyond their years and blessed with the ability to always find a way, and with plenty of time to be both emotionally engaged and acerbically witty on a blow by blow basis. In other words, a fully faceted human being – exhibiting strength of character, intelligence, empathy, and wit – a place where female characters in our movie history have so rarely got to go. The embarrassing film trope of the panicky, squeamish, weak, one-dimensional love-interest female is so ubiquitous that generations of young male film school screenwriters and directors, and their fanboys, can barely distinguish the fact that it has no basis in reality and the women around them every day, if there are any. To “find the new” for that career-making script, all you really need do is write from the reality and not the trope. It’s not the reality of the executive, only concerned with the bottom line of what’s been before, or the experts, the gurus and their slavish acolytes who only learn
from films that have been before. It’s a forward looking progressive leap of faith, or to film reference it : a bit like Indiana Jones at the end of The Last Crusade. So if a new day is coming where women can be created (in movies) equally, where do we go now from The Bechdel Test? The statistics point out its use in showing us just how much movie-making is predominantly still the male gaze with billions of dollars behind it to reinforce its normalcy and inescapability. Frankly, we can’t rely on a film passing a test or a quota no matter how pointed a measurement such things are to inequality. Only a full realisation - in pain, anger, humour, sexuality, blood, sweat, and tears - of female characters on screen as an expectation and not a pleasant surprise can satisfy the need behind the idea of The Bechdel Test. The ten man to one woman model of late 80’s / 90’s films like Goodfellas, despite their quality, always bothered me. It was everywhere, and because of witnessing the over-aggressive behaviour of men in my own adolescence, I was sick of it by the time I wanted to start writing films myself. When something goes unchallenged, as male misbehaviour usually has in life, it has free reign – and just like the routine misogyny and
ignorance in all those scripts down the decades that got passed through male hands only in development, the creative process needs approaching from new, fresh perspectives. And you wonder why so many actresses got a reputation as "difficult" or "a diva", when they were being presented with scripted roles that bore no resemblance to actual women or a truthful, honest portrayal. What was needed was a recognition of the absurdity in what had been pushed as the norm. Things have changed as slowly as you would expect when the actions taken by the monolithic industry itself are always to appease protests rather than institute real change. The apoplexy at the recent lily-white Oscar nominations may in fact work to everyone’s advantage by forcing the academy to open their eyes not just to non-white films and actors, but non-male ones too. Dare they risk an all-tuxedo ceremony where the female half of the industry have refused to show up because there are no female directors deemed worthy of a nomination again? When it comes down to what we can do to make a difference, we realise that our own protests and complaints are useless without spending as much time
as we can filmmaking and developing projects that reflect a progressive way of thinking. The old male dinosaurs of the industry (not a reference to the pathetic sexism on display throughout "Jurassic World", an appropriate title if ever there was one) can never be an inspired force for change no matter how loud we call for it. Personally speaking, when I started to write, I only wanted to write female characters for a female audience. This isn’t balanced and equal, or a reality based approach to reflecting life on film either. It’s a reaction. A reaction to 95% of what I was seeing being the other way – male characters for a male audience. The emergence of organisations like the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media with a stated mission “to engage, educate, and influence content creators to dramatically improve gender balance, reduce stereotyping, and create diverse female characters in entertainment”, is a huge step in
the right direction as female voices are finally getting traction in the corridors of power. It's not surprising now to see female-dominated production companies emerging like the one just launched by Jessica Chastain, or predominantly female film crews like we had on our recent short film The Betrayal, and as they begin tackling projects that don’t normally see the light of day or infusing ones that do with a strong feminist core, they also begin redressing the gender imbalance in front of and behind the camera. The long wished for emergence of females on screen that better reflect the fully realised unusualness of life is nothing to flinch away from. It’s a reaction too. A good and necessary one, for all being equal. As what is normal to see on screen develops, so will our tests of what makes the grade for female involvement - the end point being that we don't need the tests anymore.
A TRIBUTE TO MUSICIAN / COMPOSER CONOR WALSH The entire BETRAYAL team and Driftwood Doll Films were very shocked and saddened to hear the news this past weekend of the sudden death of musician and composer Conor Walsh. Conor's track "The Front" is a key piece in our film The Betrayal, and played over the ballerina performance in D-Light Studios when we had virtually everyone involved (cast, crew, and extras) together in the one room. All were in awe of Conor's music, as we were right from the first time writer/director Kamila Dydyna, who knew Conor personally, played it to us. We would just like to do all one can in moments like this, and extend our condolences to his friends and family, and share his truly beautiful, evocative music with you. This is a link to listen to “The Front”, and also other pieces on Conor’s soundcloud.
https://soundcloud.com/conorwalshpiano/the-front Rest in Peace, Conor.
ANNOUNCEMENT OF CONOR’S PASSING FROM NIALLER9 http://nialler9.com/conor-walsh-passed-away-rip/
Conor Walsh, photo by Mark McGuinness
OUR SERVICES Along with our own film-making, Driftwood Doll Films also provides low-cost videography, photography, and writing services, such as :
Actor Headshots / Portraiture Audition Self-Taping, Editing, & Upload Showreel Editing Artist-based Documentation Films Script Consultation Script Formatting & Editing Basic Website Creation, Social Media, Press Releases
Contact for All Enquiries: driftwooddollfilms@gmail.com
Christina Hamilton
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