Career
Connolly directed the short film Angel on the Rocks in 1985. He co-produced, with Helen Fahy, the short movie Horse (1993) directed by Kevin Liddy. This film won an award for "Best European Short" at the Premiers Plan Festival in Angers, France in 1994. Working with co-director Hilary Dully, he worked on multiple television documentaries for RTÉ, Channel 4 and TG4. These include Framed! (1987), No Comment (1988), ...and finally France (1988), For Better Or Worse (1989), No Comment II (1991), Notice To Quit (1992, rights of older tenants), 50,000 Secret Journeys (1994, abortion), and Comely Maidens (1995). As a single director, Connolly has directed the documentaries Sisters (1998), Priests (1998), Out Of Nowhere (2000, asylum seekers), Ainé’s Journey (2000) and Singleton (2002).
Connolly made his feature film directorial debut with Flick in 2000 in conjunction with producer Fiona Bergin. The film starred David Murray, Isabelle Menke, David Wilmot, Gerard Mannix Flynn, Catherine Punch and Alan Devlin. The plot focuses on two small-time drug dealers going about their business in Dublin. Connolly wrote the film's script with little expectation of it being made. He shot the film in 18 days with no budget. The movie had its world premiere at the 44th Murphy's Cork Film Festival in October 1999. The Sunday Independent said “In many ways, Fintan Connolly’s first film, Flick is a breath of fresh air. We get to see Dublin on the screen - a very contemporary Dublin, too. It’s about time. In Flick, there are no horses in lifts. You won’t spot the Chieftains playing trad on Moore Street. This is real Dublin - and what first strikes you about the film is that Flick is a love letter to Connolly’s native city.”
This was followed in 2005 by Trouble with Sex, starring Aidan Gillen and Renée Weldon, for which he received two Irish Film and Television Awards nominations. The film was premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival in February 2005. The film tells the story of a young career woman who quarrels with her boyfriend at a party. She leaves the party and wanders in to a local pub, where she falls for the bartender. The movie follows the early days of the relationship that follows. Trouble with Sex was the second feature created through a director/producer partnership between Fintan Connolly and Fiona Bergin. Connolly told Jennifer Hough “only 20 per cent of directors get to make a second feature, so I’ve been really lucky.”
In 2012 Connolly made Eliot & Me, a children’s adventure drama, co-written with Fiona Bergin and featuring his daughter Ella Connolly. The movie had its world premiere as the opening film at the Film Festival Zlin in May 2012.
In 2012 he also completed a documentary about Aosdána, an affiliation of Irish artists, called The Art Tribe This film explores the position of artists in Irish society, public funding for the arts, as well as broader issues of creativity and culture.
Read more about this topic: Fintan Connolly
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)