Lisdoon visit leads filmmakers to love

Two American filmmakers recently launched a new documentary on Lisdoonvarna’s Matchmaking Festival.
Shot in the North Clare village nearly a decade ago, Matchmaker is the story of two young American friends’, Seth Camillo and Dustin Morrow’s, journey to the festival.

Seth, an Italian-American from Iowa, explains how the film came about.

“Dustin had graduated and was a professor and we had gone to under graduate school together, so we knew each other for quite a long time. We were sitting together one day and we were both single and he said, ‘there is this festival in Ireland and that is the largest matchmaking festival in Ireland’. He said we should go and make a documentary about it. He said ‘let’s file that away in our heads for a bit’ and I said ‘no let’s file it away for now’. Let’s do it,” he recalled.

That was nine years ago.

“That was my trip to Ireland to shoot the film. Dustin has quite a few connections and he goes every summer to Ireland to teach film. A lot of his work in general is about Ireland,” Seth explained.
Shooting was completed fairly quickly but conflicting schedules meant it was some time before the documentary was completed.

“It is really very time intensive to make a real documentary and Dustin and I were in different towns and time would pass, we shot it and we did everything ourselves. His sister did the graphics because she is a professor of graphics and we had a friend of Dustin do the main score but aside from that Dustin and I did every single thing, top to bottom,” he added.

Seth was 27 when he and Dustin travelled to North Clare and while he didn’t meet a match at the time, the festival, he believes helped him find love eventually.

“Dustin met a match while we were there. Marcus White introduced him to a woman right after he had told us that Willie Daly does the matchmaking. We were interviewing Marcus at the time and he stopped the interview and introduced them. At the weekend both of us came away with a real appreciation for what it means to be in love and to have a partner.

“You are in that environment, you are with people from 18 to 80 and people of all stages in their partnerships, from people just meeting, to people who have been together for 50 years, to people who have been widowed and people who are divorced and people are very open about letting you in. Dustin came away, and so did I. it was an intense experience and people opened up and let us into their romantic world and their emotional world.”

“I am engaged now, I fell in love a month after coming back because I was able to relinquish some things because of the trip. When you are a younger man you aren’t around people who have been together for a long time and seeing what partnership means in a long-term way, it affected me and I think it affected Dustin too,” he added.

When he went back home to Iowa, Seth says he found himself more open to love as a result of his experience in Lisdoonvarna.

“A lot of the film is me dealing with this closed-offness that I had within the plot of the movie…Dustin finds love and I find the ability to be open to love.”

Opening up was “half the battle” Seth believes, and he says “Outside of the film, Lisdoonvarna and the festival had a definite positive effect on my life.”

The film has yet to be publically screened and Seth would love to have a screening in Lisdoonvarna,

“We screened it for invited friends a couple of years ago in Iowa and we always knew it was excellent but it took so long for us to do it. It is a first rate film, we are both professional filmmakers and I think it is absolutely as good as anything I have ever produced. The people we have shown it to, love it. Is it ok for me to not be modest? Everyone asks me for it. I have done other good work, but people will just come up to me and ask for Matchmaker. They tell me ‘I lost my copy, can I get another one?’ and Dustin has the same experience,” he outlined.

“The film is now on sale through Amazon but we haven’t had any public screenings. There has been some interest from distributors and we are at the very early stages. Hopefully people will see it and it will gather steam. That is how Dustin and I feel about it. That is how we are confident. I fell like if a few people see it, I think it will get people’s attention,” Seth commented.

While the film is now completed, it is not the only legacy Lisdoonvarna has left the Iowa man.

“The highlight of the whole thing for me has been getting over my fears and even just asking a lady to dance with me and sitting down to talk to me. I had never done that before. It was about learning to approach somebody and feel confident.  I think Lisdoonvarna is like a training ground because I took those lessons and was able to apply them when I came back. I am getting married later this year to the woman I met after I came back because I was confident.

“It is not just about who you meet there or whether you make a match, it is a safe training ground for learning how to love and I think what happened me, happens a lot of people,” Seth concluded.

The trailer can be seen on matchmakermovie.com.