Adventures in Ireland

Freebies in Ireland and other adventures

Having watched the speed of the transition from analogue to digital in music, stills photography and now cinema, I’m seriously hoping there will be a much swifter transition from fossil fuels to electricity for the propulsion of our road transport requirements. There are so many obvious advantages of electric motors over the internal-combustion engine: cleanliness, efficiency (the motor is only using power when it’s working so nothing’s happening when you’re stopped at the lights, except for powering the CD player), and... the distribution network is in already place! (No, I do not have intentions of buying up shares in Mighty River Power – that’s a whole different discussion!)

Meantime, Helen and I have flown to the other side of the planet (more combusted fossil fuel to add to the demise of our Mother Earth, does flying economy class mean a smaller carbon footprint?) to document the coming together of a group of Kiwi musicians and performers with a group of Irish musicians and performers. Here we are, knocking on the door of retirement age and still doing free-bees. The venture entailed staying in an artist’s retreat, the Tyrone Guthrie Center, Annamaghkerrig, in the northern part of Southern Ireland, County Monaghan, near a town called New Bliss. Here we stayed for about a week while the show was rehearsed and worked up. Then we took a trip away down to County Cork to partake in a cross-cultural greeting ceremony between the Irish and Maori – a very interesting and enriching experience. Then the working part of our trip was rounded off with performances in Dublin and London before the Olympics had begun. Helen and I then caught a train up to Edinburgh to catch up with rellies. What an interesting old city Edinburgh is. We were there just before the festival began so we missed the festival and we missed the Olympics – and consequently missed the worst of the crowds, but were able to take advantage of all the very helpful ‘helpers’ who were stationed at stations all over London.

So that’s what I’ve been up to but what’s happening with your Guild? Our executive officer, Karla, has applied for and got money from the New Zealand Film Commission to fund a series of workshops. I’m sure she will fill you in with more. This is a great move forward for our Guild, getting more involved in the process of up-skilling and broadening the skill base. It is also an opportunity to enhance inter-departmental understanding within our industry. As Karla rightly points out, we have only one Oscar-winning Kiwi director but we have many Oscar-winning creative technicians, as well as many more Oscar-nominated creative technicians. So it’s great that we now have this opportunity to help spread knowledge and understanding among our ‘creative technicians’. (That’s Karla’s choice of words, ‘creative technicians’, I like it!)

Albol

Plus a few words from Helen Bollinger

Movie-making is a great way to see the world. It remains the perfect vehicle for transporting film workers to exotic places and people, both here and off shore. ‘Exotic New Zealand’ may seem like an oxymoron – but New Zealand is a big and varied little country. How many of us have seen all of it?

As you would’ve read above, Albol and I recently had a marvellous adventure in Eire, Republic of Ireland. We went there to document a fusion of traditional musical styles and instruments as performed by Irish and Maori musicians who came together as Green Fire Islands. At our great ages (129 years all up) we’re still doing freebies in return for adventure – Green Fire Islands was the latest.

Our group of around 30 was accommodated at Annaghmakerrig, a fine old country estate in County Monaghan. Tyrone Guthrie, former owner and philanthropist, left the property in his will, (3 March 1971)…

“…my said dwelling-house, furniture, pictures and chattels and the income from my residuary estate to be used for the purpose of providing a retreat for artists and other like persons … so as to enable them to do or facilitate them in doing creative work.”

Now wouldn’t it be a fine thing for New Zealand to have such a place? Sam? Peter? Finn boys?

One night after work, Albol bush-bashed right around Lake Annaghmakerrig. This raised a few Spanish and Irish eyebrows – why would anybody want to do that? Albol’s response was – why wouldn’t everybody want to do that? His tramp seemed to confirm the European perception of New Zealand as one big outdoor education camp.

I was on the crew list as film-crew and costume. My kit consisted of my Apple MacBook, double-sided tape, little gold safety pins and a big bunch of genuine plastic Pohutukawa flowers (thank you Dana). On the film side, I prepared interviews and downloaded the cards from two cameras and sound, after a crash course from a woman in Donnybrook, Dublin, who rented us the camera gear. Incidentally, she had a picture of Robert Mugabe on her wall, with the caption ‘Clean up Irish politics – Mugabe for Taoiseach!’ (Taoiseach is Prime Minister). She explained that local politics was nothing out of the ordinary, ‘just full of the normal graft and corruption’.

I stored about 60 hours of footage on two hard-drives which were (and are) kept in different places. I do wish I’d left one hard drive behind in Annaghmakerrig, so I could rush back there to look after it. I’m also counting on the producer to jack up the edit to be done there. Evidently, you don’t have to be Irish to get into Annaghmakerrig– the project is the thing.

Helbol