Hello Ireland | Jon Bethel & Galway Film Fleadh

Hello!
I got back from Galway just yesterday evening. I haven't been posting or making videos because you know, life is being lived.
In Galway, we went to the Galway Film Fleadh or the Galway Film Festival. It was glorious. We went up on Friday and watched three movies right in a row. That was the worst thing in my life. I had a monster of a headache for the 3rd film and I felt I couldn't enjoy it as much as I should.

The three films we watched were Stay, Reefer and the Model, and the world premier of Glassland. My favorite was Stay. I just really enjoyed the dynamics and the characters. All the films were very child to parent oriented, which was super interesting.

The second day, Saturday, we went to two sessions for a few shorts. The first one was Brown Bag Retrospective. This was an animation production company based in Ireland. The founders explained the company's origins and had chosen shorts that showed their progression as animators and as a company. It was really interesting to see how they progressed through the past 10 years. I especially loved their short Granny Grim about an old granny who twists the plot of Sleeping Beauty to the chagrin of the child in bed.

The second session were Irish films. There were nine in total. My absolute favorite was an authentic Irish film in that it was funded by the Irish Film Board and the language spoken was Gaelic. It was called Céad Ghrá, or First Love. I thought was really cute and interesting how they made it being gay as a fact of life in the eyes of a 10-year-old boy.

More on the trip in another post. I leave you with my recent Hello Ireland featuring Jon Bethel during a performance portion in a contest in a moving bus.

Cheers,

Claire