Today sees the start of the second Cinemagic Festival in Dublin, or, to give it the full title : The Coca-Cola Cinemagic Film and Television Festival for Young People in association with AIB.
This is a not-for-profit festival and charity that brings the magic of film, tv and all sorts of moving images ‘to entertain, educate and inspire’ young people.
Having volunteered with them last year and done a bit of promotion for them this year, I know how much work goes into the festival and how much it is enjoyed by the young people attending films, masterclasses and workshops.
I wish I'd had something like this when I was younger - at that age access to the people (Ray D'Arcy, Don Conroy, Rachel Kavanagh, David Caffrey, Aidan Power) or workshops (a news journalism workshop, one that is a pauper's guide to film making and classes in Storyboarding and Claymation for 7 to 11 year olds) would have been invaluable and inspiring.
The festival caters for all young people (aged between 4 and 25) with any range of film and television interest – whether they want to watch and enjoy, create their own work or take things a stage further and find out more about a possible career in the film or television industries.
I've posted on Culch.ie about the festival. It's also worth pointing out you can win tickets to films both on Culch.ie and over on Boards.ie.
Best of luck to all those helping, volunteering and above all participating. I hope you all have fun and enjoy it as much as I have.
You'll already have seen the chance to win tickets to see Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors at Dublin's Abbey Theatre over on Culch.ie. Here's the new promo video for it.
...two sets of identical twins are separated in childhood. Years later, they all show up in the same place at the same time. The Comedy of Errors tells the story of a father, mother, brothers, sisters, masters and servants, all of whom find themselves confused, baffled and bewildered by the events of a single day.
I'm off to see it tomorrow night. From what I'm hearing, it should be great.
(EDIT: I've changed this post from the original to lose some stuff)
I have finally uploaded many of my photos from yesterday to Pix.ie and have included some below. I spent much of the day tweeting and twitpiccing the parade while on the route interacting with people, answering queries and helping if and where I could. I had the camera with me and swapped between N95 and camera as necessary.
I really need to thank three people in particular who were working on the Festival team and really helped me so much.
Catherine Egan with the Press Office was fantastic and obliging and really gets why online is so important in the promotion of an event.
Denise Rushe was an eternal font of knowledge, good humour and support and made my involvement this year that much easier
Kathy Kinsella is *the* volunteer coordinator in Ireland and it's been a pleasure to work with her again. Super organised and efficient, she understood what I was trying to do and let me get on with it. Super stuff indeed.
The other people to thank are Marcus, Niamh, Will, Grannymar, Elly and Phil who all made the day that bit better and more fun. Also all the performers who posed for photos and put on such a great show!
Anyway - I tried hard to cut this down to only a few photos - you'll see the rest here - so hope you enjoy:
With parade Grand Marshalls Cathriona Foley, Cork Camogie Captain, Henry Shefflin of Kilkenny and Angela Walsh, Cork Football Captain
This may not be 100% accurate but I'm fairly sure that the 2009 St Patrick's Festival will be the seventh time I've volunteered with it. From my first year of just walking in the Parade way back in 2000 to this week, it's something I look forward to every year and it's just been a case of me living in London that I missed one year and in hospital the other.
So, why do it? Why not spend the time in the pub, out with friends or away out of Dublin altogether for an event that draws thousands of people year on year? Well...
5. Seeing it up close
The incredible amount of work and detail that goes into each event at the festival is quite staggering and by volunteering, you're not only getting to help out on that but to see things up close.
Whether it's the parade set-up, the effort people go to dress up and enjoy the Treasure Hunt or just the sheer delight people have in creating something colourful to amuse and entertain, the chance to see all this up close, not behind barriers or in the midst of crowds is important and helps set the full picture.
It's how too drawings like the below turn into the displays underneath
4. The events themselves
I'll stick this into another post but it's been great to see some of the events that have happened over the last few years. There was the year we were in the middle of the Liffey setting up for Skyfest and the giant inflatable Polish puppets. There was the rain from last year's event down at the Docklands. There was the speed dating as Gaeilge.
There was also the time the Andalucian shepherds I was looking after lassoed Mary McAleese in the Grandstand while her Aide de Camp looked daggers at me. Very good memories. Very funny.
My personal favourite? The Denny Treasure Hunt that people dress up to participate in. Every year people come back saying how much fun it was and how they've learned something new about Dublin. Great event altogther.
3. The photos
Head on over to Pix.ie to see the thousands of photos about the Festival, the parade and all the people involved. If it's true that part of the soul is taken away by a photograph, mine has evaporated after last year's festivities. As much as I like seeing them, I am particularly fond of some of the photos I managed to grab last year myself.
2. The people
I almost put this first but really it and no. 1 are as important to me. I'm always so entertained by the thousands of people who voluntarily come to participate, to give their time, creativity and enthusiasm to something that entertains so many others. The amount of work that is going on in school halls, warehouses and garden sheds all over the country shouldn't be under-estimated. Why do they do it? For the love of it!
1. The friends I make
I've made a wide group of friends through volunteering at different events. We stay in touch, see each other at different festivals, meet up for pints and look forward to seeing each other again. From all different countries and places, we share a lot of the work, the laughter and the shared experience of working for Ireland's premier festival.
Some of course are only for the duration of the festival and then fade away despite best intentions and some are there to stay. Each encounter is special in its way and makes the memories all the better.
You can find out more information about volunteering with St Patrick's Festival here. The lovely Kathy would be more than happy to help you with any queries you may have. See you there!
So I've heard about this "Alternative Miss Ireland" event for a few years now. Kind of like a Rose of Tralee, kind of like a Craggy Island Lovely Girls competition and kind of like the Calor Kosangas Housewife of the year gig that Gaybo used to do, except for men pretending to be women and sexual jokes aplenty and sure it's really only a gay community thing, right?
A selective run around Google offers a few things - previous contestants include Joanna Ryde, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Heidi Konnt, Funtime Gustavo, Lucy Furr, Tampy Lylette and Shirley Temple Bar, some of whom have won - Shirley Temple Bar and Tampy (Katherine Lynch) best known to us through RTÉ. The pictures from Showbiz Ireland or Flickr tell a story of flamboyance, of creativity and of a design flair you won't see on any Late Late Show this side of Gaybo.
Visiting the website presents a more complete story. We are told
Alternative Miss Ireland (AMI) is an annual beauty pageant that is open to all creatures - men, women and animals - and that raises money for Irish HIV/AIDS organisations.
A lot of money in fact. Over €250,000 since 1996 with over €50,000 being made on last year's pageant alone - €20,000 more than 2007.
"Money raised by AMI has been instrumental in enabling the development of ground-breaking programmes tackling issues with HIV and children, and more recently with the burgeoning immingrant populations in Ireland" says the website.
Five different charities are the benefactors - each one with different concerns: from children to parents; prevention to post-infection healthcare; education, well-being and self-esteem. Open Heart House, Gay Mens Health Project, Dublin AIDS Alliance, Grandmas Ireland and The NewFill Project at St James’ Hospital have all benefited.
If one name was to be associated with the event it is Panti. I met with the organiser, grand-dame doyenne, presenter and tour-de-force icon herself to find out more about the show:
"No, it's not just about drag queens and kings. Maybe for the last few years it's been sidetracked into that but crazed, fabulous performance has always been at its roots and that's what we're looking to get back to this year. At its heart - and it's a big heart - it's a silly, fun, and totally fabulous charity event.
Shirley Temple Bar is probably the most high profile drag winner and that was 1997 so it may have put that it's about traditional drag acts into some people's heads. But 2009 is about bringing it back to its arts student vibe; there are very few straight up drag entries."
Artwork by Niall Sweeney
Happening on March 15, 2009, the competition returns for its ninth year to the Olympia Theatre. The theatre is an important part of the show, having come from venues like the Red Box on Harcourt Street and Temple Bar Music Centre.
"Before the Olympia, the carpark usually doubled up as both freezing dressing rooms and toilets. The dancefloor would be squeezed with tables and though one year we did manage a kind of curtain system, it broke down early in the proceedings and was duly ditched.
So the Olympia was a revelation to us - a real stage with a full-time and experience stage crew! Dressing rooms with toilets and washing facilities! It was huge change. It allowed us to produce the event on the scale which it seemed to want to become, and gave us a whole system of people and spaces that were just unachievable to us before."
HISTORY
The very first Alternative Miss Ireland happened in 1986 - it was a very small club event at a time when homosexuality was still a crime.
"In 1996, because of the club nights and events we were involved in organising, a group of us were were approached by one of the many groups that had transformed from gay activism to AIDS activism, to dig up the Alternative Miss and put her to work as a charitable concern.
It's important to note that in 1990, six of those directly involved with the original AMI, two of them contestants, were already dead from AIDS. So here we are, all volunteers, all donating our time having raised 250,000 Euro for Irish HIV/AIDS organisations."
ORGANISATION
"There have been some changes this year. Previously we tended to just bury our heads and get into a big flap around January time. This time though we all went down the country - some 18 of us - and ate food and talked AMI for two days solid.
We've refocussed on making the show nuttier and artier, bringing a new experience to both performers and the audience."
This year contestants were asked to submit videos of them to the judging panel. Panti has them on her blog - some are bizarre, some downright strange and some just wonderful. This one is my personal favourite so far:
THE CONTESTANTS:
"It wouldn't happen without the contestants and all the hard work they put in. It's incredibly impressive and always astounding to see how the aspiring Queens, with nothing to win except the title, and nothing to lose except their dignity... put so much work into the creation of our Misses.
One spontaneous and sometimes hilarious thing about the AMI is that there are no dress rehearsals for the contestants, they arrive at the theatre in the afternoon on the day of the event. The only stage most of them have ever been on before is the imaginary one in front of their bedroom mirror.
We get in on the morning of the show, run around setting everything up and then getting it ready for the audience. We have no idea what the contestants will do on stage, we're seeing it for the first time.
It's a fucking amazing event on so many levels; it's highly entertaining, the atmosphere is fantastic and it's in no way up its own arse - it's a mixture of raw talent and butt clenchingly awful performances and that's what makes it special.
It's quite amazing how moving some of the performances can be. People still talk about '97, the year that Shirley won. When Heidi Konnt handed over her crown in 2006, people were in tears. We've had all singing acts, all dancing acts. We even had a dog entered as a contestant one year."
The entry stats are impressive. As the website says
We've had 150 entrants Which means 450 individual performances and they, in turn, have brought over 1,000 additional assistants and performers on stage with them. Of the 150 entrants, about a quarter have been biologically female. And then at least 5 have started off on one side of the gender spectrum and now live happily on the other side.
So what happens at the show?
"Well, it's a traditional beauty pageant - the contestants - there are usually about 10 - are put through rounds of daywear, swimwear and evening wear and are judged on their originality, personality and poise. That's where the madness starts.
We've had some great judges through the years - Senator David Norris, Louis Walshe, Linda Martin, Ivana Bacik, Twink, Mr Pussy, Brenda Fricker, NCAD lecturers, New York arts magazine editors and multi award winning international video artist (and San francisco drag legend) Paul Rowley.
Each of the contestants should have created an alter-ego - their alternative "Miss" to be realised through elaborate and skilful constume and performance on the night. There'll be dancing, singing, mimes, props a plenty, a tonne of make-up, some debatable genitals, plenty of nervous passion and, usually, at least one contestant who manages to push some kind of boundary. The audience love it."
The entrants, known as "aspiring Queen Cailíns", compete for only the title as there is no prize-money. The awards are refashioned each year from the cheapest possible assembly of materials.
The Crown is known as the Medusa Crown of Shamrocks, and last year it took the form of a large silver spike with an impaled seagull as the photo of last year's winner Sheila Fitzpatrick shows below.
"The idea of an Alternative Miss, which in Irish translation becomes "Alternative Daughter", as an alternative ambassabdor for the country, tugs at the concept of the Women of Ireland, the Mná na hÉireann, who have been invoked into action throughout Irish history, most recently in the campaigns for reforms in equality and human rights status."
So says the AMI website. But the reaction of people on forums - "YAY! Really looking forward to this..."; "This night is the one fun crazy night"; "The fun..the money..the madness! That's what makes AMI... I can't wait" is an indication that this is an event both loved by and important to those who go and enjoy it.
Tickets go on sale today from the Olympia Theatre Box Office. It's bound to be a different night to the shamroguery and paddywhackery taking place in Dublin around the time, all monies raised go to a great cause and you can always say you were there to see the last Alternative Miss Ireland of the first decade of 2009 crowned. And that, in itself, will be quite a story to tell.
Last month, a video was filmed as part of the 2009 Jameson Dublin International Film Festival where people were asked to name their favourite films. Here it is:
I do apologise. Blame Anthony - he sent me the email saying
The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival would like to know what your favourite film of all time is? We need one hundred people to help us with an exciting new marketing campaign that features you!
All you need to do is come along this Saturday the 6th December and have your picture taken and tell us what your favourite film of all time is and then do the same thing all over again to camera. Pictures taken will be featured as part of a fabulous print and online campaign for the 2009 festival.
So I went and I did it and now I'm part of the advertising. In fact I'm apparently on a big poster in the window of Filmbase, Temple Bar, one of the "lucky" ten. People are emailing/texting me along the lines of
"Can you imagine how frightening it was to see your face enlarged by about 100 times plastered on a poster on the front window of Filmbase?"
When we were at the Festival launch on Monday in the Odeon, I walked into one part to find the monstrosity below staring back at me. Bizarre is one way of describing it. The lighting was pink, explaining the poster. Even worse I found out I adorned a pillar outside too.
So there you have it. It's the 1997 Roberto Benigni film La Vita é Bella for me, at 2:40 in case you're that interested. In defence of my wardrobe, that was the day I filmed the Hibernian Ad - I don't dress as well as that normally!
What's your favourite movie? Can you limit it to just one?
Any of the things I write on this blog are my own opinions and should be treated as such. They are neither a reflection on or the opinion of the companies that I work with. I also do not write posts that have been paid for or requested by employers.
Given all that though, I still hope you enjoy them :)
