The Woodstock Film Festival, 2011, from left: Tim Palmer, Terry McMahon and Moe Dunford. Trailer for Charlie Casanova (2010)

This one is for you.

Facebook just reminded us that nine years ago a bunch of lunatics turned up during the worst winter on record to make a psychotic movie about the cancer of the controlling class.

Staring in panic at a blank page for a long time, before projectile vomiting a political script onto ninety of those pages, I was an unproduced hack, who had never directed a short film, much less a feature.

We had a budget of nine-hundred-quid, and our borrowed camera had to be back eleven days later, so that became our production schedule.

Snow bombarded the city but nobody backed out. Frost incapacitated the equipment but filming never stopped. Doubt crept in every second but nobody backed out. Eleven days later we got rat-assed drunk in the way that only a group which has been through hell together can. Awoke the next morning, aching to the bone, wondering if the footage we captured would get anywhere beyond the bottom of a drawer.

What chance did a messed-up little Irish film about a controlling class psychopath have on the world stage? Home-burned DVDs with the title hand-scrawled across them were submitted to film festivals, and we waited for Godot.

Then, Janet Pierson, head honcho of one of the world’s great film festivals, wanted our film to be the first Irish movie ever selected for the coveted SXSW Narrative Feature Competition. And we nearly shit ourselves.

‘Charlie Casanova’ ended up being picked up for distribution by Studio Canal and released in UK and Irish cinemas before being kicked to death by our critics.

We presumed we’d never make another film, particularly since we wanted to address the dehumanisation of people with mental illness; another subject nobody wanted to touch at the time; but five years later those same critics would pick our second film, ‘Patrick’s Day’, as Best Irish Film of the Year. Yet the more things change the more they remain the stagnant same.

Nearly a decade later it’s never been more difficult to make political cinema. Or political television.

The explosion in cheap technology in that decade should have opened the floodgates. But where are those films? Where is that cinematic rage? The controlling class, which we denied even existed a decade earlier, used austerity to relentlessly attack our most vulnerable. But perhaps they also succeeded in sidelining our artistic culture. Or are we just cowards?

Who the hell knows what our collective future holds. Nobody could have believed a decade ago that we’d become the country we are today. What we become in the next decade is wide open.

There are brilliant filmmakers out there. Some of them we already know. Men and women born to make magic. But maybe some of them are as yet unknown. Maybe some of them have yet to dive into the madness of their first movie, penned in panic and made for no money. Maybe some of them have yet to put pen to their first blank page.

Maybe one of them is you.

Terry McMahon is a filmmaker and can be found on Twitter @terrymcmahon69

Kathryn Thomas

On the Late Late Show…

Gareth Naughton writes

Operation Transformation host Kathryn Thomas joins Ryan Tubridy to talk about her big plans for 2018…The Carlow native will chat about preparing for a new arrival with fiancé Padraig and planning their wedding…

Ryan will be meeting some of the daters hoping to find love on the brand new series of First Dates Ireland…

The Late Late will also be hosting a discussion on body positivity featuring a panel of women who have experienced intolerance and abuse because of their size but who are fighting back…

Broadcaster Valerie Cox will join Ryan to talk about the frightening experience of her husband’s recent health scare after he lapsed into a coma when he was struck down with herpes viral encephalitis…

Celebrity hairstylist Trudy Hayes was riding high until the recession struck just as her kidneys started failing her… but her time in hospital also inspired her new business – Raven, a beauty app that brings the salon to you, even if you are in hospital.

Viewers will meet Ailbhe and Izzy Keane who are transforming the country’s wheelchairs from medical devices into fashion statements with their innovative product ‘Izzy Wheels’.

Plus music from Patrick Feeney; and Hermitage Green.

*throws telly out with Christmas tree*

The Late Late Show, RTÉ One, at 9.35pm 

The Echo Chamber podcast.

Hosts Martin McMahon and Tony Groves are joined in the ‘tortoise shack’ by Anne Marie McNally (top), former ‘sheet columnist, Social Democrat Political Director and party representative for Dublin Mid West.

Martin writes:

Anne-Marie is the creator of the #LockedOutGen that we’ve discussed on the pod previously and is someone who has spent her career, in and out of politics joining the dots between politics and what happens in our everyday lives.

We discussed:The #LockedOutGen and those left behind by the Republic of Opportunity; The #SocDem alternatives and bringing sustainable thinking in politics; #JoinTheDots and making politics matter everyday; #StormEleanor and the Climate Change Spin Cycle and predictions for the next election.

Some strong language, but none from Anne-Marie, she was a complete lady.

The Echo Chamber

2017 was a funny year for me on Broadsheet; I started it off in a bitta’ve mood and ended it deciding to return weekly; in as much as I can.

But I wonder if it was like that for all of us really; those of us above the grey line and those of us below. (I count myself as a tenant of both those locations in case ye’re confused.) Trolling went from its more commonly understood, blaggarding, messing and organised messaging to actually become vengeful, spiteful and shifty. Truth be told, and whether ye like it or not, I’m none the worse for it. Well OK, maybe I’ve every intention of going a bit boulder because of it.

The Broadsheet Bake Sheet came and proved so well it was as if wild yeast logged in and created its own avatar. And I promise so much more for 2018, so ye bin’ warned.

It was also the start of Broadsheet-on-the-Telly, the Shurt Index, the Shift, and the killing fields of the Broadsheet Chat-Pit. Memes came and went and is somewhere in-waiting again I have no doubt.

But for me the Broadsheet Year Ending 2017 was all about the Brave-Hearts.

In 2017 we lost one of our own, and in contradiction to the work she loved and the professional standards she fought and defended shamelessly for, her death was more observed here for the walkouts and fallouts than the circumstances and facts around her tragic demise, and largely by those who never even met Dara Quigley.

Secrecy in institutional powers continues to be one of the biggest crimes in this State, and I have no intention of turning a blind eye to this one or any of the others. But one thing I know absolutely and for sure now, because qualified and knowing people I trust told me so, Dara Quigley would have put that link up herself and would have had murder if Broadsheet refused.

I know this isn’t the last time I am going to mention Dara Quigley again, nor will it be the last time I am going to insist that nobody should be denied access to truth and facts, no matter how personal or unpleasant.

On Broadsheet, and everywhere else on the Internet, Social Media, and in the Mainstream – it’s bloody easy to join up in the outrage, it’s not so easy to swim against it.

But my friend and chat-pit comrade Janet didn’t think twice about baring all and diving in herself. Before putting herself on a train to Dundalk with an armful of homemade posters, she came here to us first, to the Broadsheet commentariat.

She trusted us with the most private and intimate parts of her life. Janet didn’t consider anyone of us anonymous cowards or trolls, nor did she once fear backlash or negative responses from any one of us; whether we are known above the line or below.

She knew what she was doing when she sought out our help in her hunt for Will. The most remarkable thing about her reaching out to Broadsheet is that Janet knew full well what the response might be, and yet still didn’t look back when she boarded that train in Connolly Station. She was fearless – because she didn’t know what the outcome would be or who would know all about it.

I can say this because I know Janet, and she knows me. I’ll admit I was cross with her for going up to D‘dalk on her own for what on the face of it all could have been a drag hunt over the Cooley.

Yet I’m so proud of her; she didn’t fear backlash from a Border community nor did she fear bad news. But just as importantly, for me as a Broadsheet inbred, she didn’t fear any one of you reading her story or hearing what you had to say.

And neither did Broken-Hearted when he came here too. He didn’t know what to expect or what he could cope with hearing, but yet he still put it all in front of us. He didn’t fear trolls or anonymous cowards either.

There is a very important point in his follow up post  that I think we all need reminding of “but what is the best way of getting impartial advice than getting a bunch of commentators on the net to do it!” That is what I love and trust about the internet the most. The truth will always, albeit eventually, surface somewhere.

Oh yeah, I happen to know Broken-Hearted too btw. And I can tell ye he’s fully recovered; but still wants to settle down, get married, get a mortgage, get a family, whatever yer having yerself.

So like Janet, Broken-Hearted was all about the Happy Ever After too; whatever it took.

So, what about 2018?  I hope it’s a bumper year for Brave-Hearts.

Frilly Keane’s column usually appears here on the first Friday of every month. Follow Frilly on Twitter: @frillykeane

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