Cork on screen
Being a full-time filmmaker in Cork city is neither easy nor particularly lucrative, but Benjamin Rupprecht is giving it a go. He’s also organised a monthly meet-up for filmmakers in his adopted city.
Out of Frame, a monthly film talk and meet-up event that takes place upstairs in The Roundy Bar, is the brainchild of Benjamin Rupprecht, a filmmaker and recent graduate from U.C.C.’s Film & Screen Media Masters course.
Rupprecht, originally from Munich, has been hugely active in film circles since he moved to Cork and this week T+D spoke with him to discuss the filmmaking scene in the city, his recent involvement in the inaugural forty eight hour film challenge and his plans for an upcoming one day film festival.
“The idea for Out of Frame came about because there were all these films that me and my classmates had made while we were in college but we had nowhere to show them, so I decided to start a monthly event.”
“Usually we invite three filmmakers a month to show a piece of work and then have a talk with them afterward and discuss their film and practice in more detail.”
Rupprecht wasn’t the only one to have noticed the lack of screens available to show some new work in the city, because another event, The People’s Picturehouse, launched in The Pavillion a month before his own. When he realized this, Rupprecht decided there was no point in having the exact same format happening across two evenings.
“We tend to focus a little more on the industry side of things. We had our first event last October so we’re having our eleventh in August, and before we started there wasn’t really anything like it in Cork.”
While these meetings have had great turnouts and a lot of aspiring filmmakers have been able to show their films, at industry level it is a completely different story and trying to find paid work in the city is a real challenge.
“The film scene in Cork is barely existing. When I came out of my course I got some work on The Young Offenders and some short films, but this year has been very quiet for film in Ireland, except for maybe in Dublin and Wicklow where there’s been some big productions.”
What does Rupprecht put this lack of work down to?
“Well there was a backlog after Covid and everyone was really busy for a while, but maybe the money that wasn’t used up during that time has slowly run out.”
“Also the actor’s strike in Hollywood affected Ireland, because it is mainly big productions that happen here.”
This lack of professional work however, hasn’t stopped Rupprecht and others like him from creating their own projects and coming together to share their films. At a recent event held in Cork, camera crews popped up all over the city.
“Recently I was the producer on a film in the forty eight hour challenge, which was in its first year in Cork. It was The People’s Picturehouse idea.”
“The general concept is you get the rules and restrictions the day before you can start work on the piece. We knew in advance one scene had to be shot on Grand Parade and we knew the genres and titles, but we didn’t know which genre or title we’d be getting so it is difficult to come up with something beforehand because you risk it not working.”
“We had an idea for a kind of folk film which we thought might be useful, but then we got the title Ephemeral 5 and the genre of war movie, so nothing we had planned really worked anymore!”
“I was able to bring a big team together through various connections and although I hadn’t worked with the director SallyAnn Ní Chiarba before, she is a friend of the cinematographer who I knew. I really like her work though and we are working on a funding application together, so it was good to make something together and see how she works.”
And how did they come up with their idea for Ephemeral 5?
“I was driving to Limerick to pick up the director when we got the title and on the one and a half hour drive back to Cork we came up with a very different story about a journalist trying to bring out information in a totalitarian system, taking photos of wars and riots etc.”
“We had a team and some actors in mind, then we shot it on Friday night to get some night scenes and then more shooting on Saturday and edited through the night. I’d say we got about three hours of sleep.”
There were fourteen entries into the forty eight hour challenge and a panel of judges watched each film and afterward an awards ceremony was held in The Pavillion attended by the Lord Mayor.
“It was great, we won Best Film and the prize for that is a screening at the Indie Cork Film Festival so that means the film will have another proper screening and more people will get to see it.”
While this event was a huge success, the question remains what could be done to make filmmaking more accessible in the city and get more big productions to the city of Cork?
“Getting Screen Ireland to focus on Cork City and county would be an important step. I think they should start offering more workshops and there should be a short film fund. At the moment I think Cork is the only county in Ireland without one. It did exist before but doesn’t anymore for some reason.”
“I have high hopes for a film called ‘Christie’, which I worked on as a Trainee Assistant Director and was shot up around Knocknaheeny. I think that’s coming out next year so we’ll see how that goes.”
And back to his monthly meetup Out of Frame; what does he have planned for the next event?
“This coming month we’re extending it, so it’s going to be a whole day event from 12am to midnight, so like a one day festival, and we will focus on queer themes and have a special panel on inclusivity, a workshop on screen writing and we’ll have some special guest speakers.”
“The programme has been launched on our website and anyone who wishes to attend is more than welcome.”
For more information on Out of Frame and the event on August 25 in The Roundy, please visit here
And to learn more about The People’s Picturehouse, see here.