Give Me Direction: Who, What, When, Where & Why
In an update to last year's format, Bord Scannan na hÉireann/ the Irish Film Board is delighted to announce that three guest curators will programme a day and half of public interviews, debates, screenings and readings: all on the exciting and intangible topic of comedy at the Give Me Direction Screenwriting Conference 2010.
Lenny Abrahamson (Adam & Paul, Garage), Sharon Horgan (Pulling, Angelo's), and Pat McCabe (The Butcher Boy, Breakfast on Pluto) will select some of the people they think are funny and smart who will in turn talk about and screen some of the things that they think are funny and smart.
The event will take place in Dublin from Thursday 17th - Friday 18th June 2010. Further details of the event and the release date for tickets will be announced shortly.
Give Me Direction is run in association with the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.
Curator's Biographies
LENNY ABRAHAMSON was born in Dublin in 1966. He studied physics followed by philosophy in TCD. After college he directed the short film 3 Joes which won the Best European Short Film award at the 1991 Cork Film Festival and the Organiser's Award at the 1992 Oberhausen Short Film Festival. He went on to direct numerous commercials for television in Ireland, the UK and worldwide. His first feature film, Adam & Paul, written by Mark O'Halloran, was released in August 2004 and quickly became a critical and box office hit in Ireland. It won the Galway Film Fleadh as well as being nominated for eight IFTA Awards, winning the award for Best Director. In 2005 it played in Official Selection at the Berlin Film Festival, Panorama section and won both the Grand Prix and the International Critics Prize at the Sofia International Film Festival. It was nominated in the European Screenwriter category at the European Film Awards. His second feature, Garage, written by Mark O'Halloran, produced by Ed Guiney of Element Pictures and starring Pat Shortt, premiered in the Director's Fortnight selection, Cannes '07 where it won the Art Cinema prize. It was selected for Toronto, Stockholm, Pusan, London and Turin where it won the prize for Best Film. It recently played in cinemas across France and the UK getting great reviews in both territories. Garage won all the major film categories at the 2008 IFTAs. Also in collaboration with Mark O'Halloran, Lenny made Prosperity, a series of four one-hour films for television, broadcast September 2007 on RTE. Prosperity won Best Director (Television) and Best Script (Television) at the 2008 IFTAs.
SHARON HORGAN is an award winning Irish writer, actress and comedienne. After studying an English degree at Brunel University, Sharon won the BBC New Comedy award for sketch writing in 2001 with her writing partner Dennis Kelly. Sharon is the star and co-writer of the BBC comedy show, Pulling, for which she was BAFTA nominated in 2009 and won best Television Comedy Actress at the British Comedy Award 2008. She has written and appeared in shows such as Angelo's, The Pilot Show and the first series of The Friday Night Project while her acting credits include Stanley Park, The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, Free Agents, Absolute Power, Broken News and Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive. She appeared in the feature film Imagine Me and You, and provided a voice in the animated film Valiant. She has written for many comedy shows, including the acclaimed animated sketch show Monkey Dust. Horgan also writes an occasional column for The Guardian.
Playwright and novelist PAT McCABE was born in Monaghan. He is the author of several novels, including The Butcher Boy (1992), a black comedy narrated by a disturbed young slaughterhouse worker, which won the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Fiction; The Dead School (1995); and Breakfast on Pluto (1998). The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto were both shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.. A film adaptation of The Butcher Boy directed by Neil Jordan was first screened in 1996. He collaborated with Jordan again on the screenplay of Breakfast On Pluto which was produced in 2007 starring Cillian Murphy. His novel, Winterwood, was published in 2006, and was named the 2007 Hughes & Hughes/Irish Independent Irish Novel of the Year. His latest novel is The Holy City (2008). Pat is the co-writer of Chez Spuds, the online series shortlisted for RTÉs Storyland competition in 2009. Currently he has a number of feature film projects in development and has just completed a screenplay with Kevin Allen entitled The Man From God Knows Where.