Film award puts Clare producer firmly in the picture

A PARTEEN film producer was celebrating recently when his film won the Best Irish Short Film at the Foyle Film Festival in Derry, writes Dan Danaher.

This award is both Oscar and BAFTA qualifying meaning that ‘Ship of Souls’ was on the long list for best short film at the annual Academy Awards. And while he didn’t make the final cut on this occasion, the Foyle award will provide a boost to Gregory Burrowes as he bids to finance future endeavours.

Gregory (34) is the producer of this short film, which centres around Michael, a father who can’t come to terms with his son’s sudden death in a car crash. Written and directed by Jean Pasley, it was shot in Castlegregory during October 2020.

Pasley lived in Japan for a number of years where she witnessed Obon, the annual Japanese Festival of the Dead. She was deeply moved by the festival, which inspired her to write Ship of Souls. She explains that essentially it’s a film about different ways of dealing with loss and grief.

“It is also about the way different cultures think about the dead. It offers hope to anyone who has suffered loss.”

Gregory says he was delighted to work with Jean on the film.

“I was immediately struck by how heartbreaking but elegant the story was. The funding that Kerry County Council provided us to make the film, allowed Jean to craft a powerful story about loss, grief and the search for redemption, themes that have universal appeal.”

Born in Limerick, Gregory grew up in Parteen, attended Parteen National School, studied in Limerick Senior College before completing radio in Ballyfermot and his Masters in Film Theory in Trinity College, Dublin, where he lived for ten years.

A qualified sound recordist, he is working on a freelance basis on a horror feature film in Cork City jail.

Together with Ronan Cassidy he set up Carbonated Comet Productions in 2017. In 2020, the duo secured the Kerry Film Bursary for ‘Ship of Souls’ after they were initially turned down in 2019. They felt it was worthy of resubmission because the script was something “special”.

“I thought it was a lovely story and was worthy of an application,” says Gregory.

“Luckily, we got the funding and made it. What is unique about the film is the fact it is a cross cultural story. I don’t know many stories about Irish Japanese relations.

“I was struck by the image of this Japanese woman in her kimono walking around Kerry doing her ritualistic dances. It is ultimately about heartbreak, sadness, loss and coming to the understanding that grief affects everyone.

“Jean Pasley crafted a script that elegantly explores that. I think we somewhat of a successful job getting this on screen. Hopefully, the win in Foyle will help us get it on to more screens across the world.”

Premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh last year, it has been screened at the Belfast, Waterford and Cork Film Festival.

Now the duo have their sights set on international screenings and are hoping to submit it to Nashville, Tokyo and Rode Island.

The film includes Michael played by Lorcan Cranitch, who can’t accept his son’s sudden death in a car crash and his wife, Cathy Belton who starred in “Hidden Assets”.

She is nominated for best actress in the film at the Richard Harris Film Festival.

Hannah, the Japanese character, is played by Clare Uchima, a musician who has played keyboards for the Pet Shops Boys and Harry Styles, and had never acted before but still excelled in the role.

“Tim Fleming is a wonderful cinematographer who shot “Once” with Glen Hansard in 2007,” Gregory stated.

Director Paul Webster provided the script for the duo who were initially turned down for funding in 2016 before securing the all-important finance a year later.

Gregory acknowledged making the breakthrough in film isn’t easy for new writers or directors.

“Film is very competitive in Ireland. There is only a limited amount of funding and everyone wants it. We were lucky because the Covid-19 lockdown actually helped us in a way because we went back to the drawing board and applied for as many schemes as we could. We got two or three over the course of 2020.”

“It all came together pretty well for us. From the inception of the company, you are always trying to scramble together money to make projects and to keep the momentum going from one project to the other.

“We have gone from bursary to bursary, but we also have applied for television documentaries and have two BAI funded documentaries currently in production that will be broadcast on RTE.

“We have several projects in post production. Ronan is producing a music video for an artist in Los Angeles. We are very busy.”

The duo also got funding from Screen Ireland for “Vasectomy Doctor” that was nominated for the Irish Film Awards (IFTA) and won 14 awards around the world.

This chronicled the story of Dr Andrew Rynne, the first vasectomy specialist in Ireland, who also set up Clane Hospital in County Kildare.

Bucking the system at a time when the Irish Catholic Church has a lot of control, he distributed contraception without prescription and nearly went to jail over this practice.

In 1990, a gunman walked into his surgery as he was preparing a vasectomy and shot him in the right hip. This led to a stand-off with the gardai, which was all featured in this documentary style film with reconstructions of real life events.

One of the BAI funded documentaries is called “More Than A Whistle”, featuring female referees officiating in male games.

It follows three referees overseeing different sports – rugby referee, Joy Neville, who was one of the first to officiate at a Six Nations international, Gaelic football referee, Michelle O’Neill and another soccer referee.

The other documentary is called “One Valentine’s Day in Edinburgh” about the first Irish female national rugby team, how they formed, and their first game against Scotland on February 14, 1992.

Back in the early nineties, manufacturers didn’t even make jerseys in women’s sizes, which indicates one of the obstacles they had to overcome.

Filming ceased for a period in 2020 due to Covid-19 restrictions. When the duo shot a short film in September 2020, this was one of the first to be made after the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

“There was a whole style of shooting with a host of Covid-19 regulations that weren’t needed previously. You get used to it. For a while, there was no filming because no one knew how to make it safe.”