Person to Person: I can't wait to watch my latest film on the big screen at Cork festival

Tell us about yourself:

I’m a film director and artist known for making experimental and defiantly independent films. I’ve lived in Cork City for 25 years, over which time I’ve made seven feature films and many shorts.

This year, I’ve had the privilege of being the UCC/Arts Council Film Artist in Residence, a fantastic residency that allows for a rich interaction with UCC staff and students as well as much-needed space to develop my own work.

My most recent feature, Solitaire, is having its premiere at Cork International Film Festival on Thursday, November 16 in the Triskel. It’s a ghost story that explores family, home, identity and gender. Like many of my films, it takes a wordless, visually poetic approach to its story.

I can’t wait to watch it on a big screen with an audience and get some reactions. 

A film is never complete until it reaches an audience.

I was born in London and grew up on the Beara Peninsula in West Cork. My recent short Daughter of the Sun celebrates the Beara heritage with an experimental re-imagining of the legend of the Cailleach Beara or Hag of Beara. Both of my parents were artists.

My father was the well known children’s book illustrator Errol Le Cain. My sister, Frederika, still lives in Beara where she owns a health shop in Castletownbere.

Earliest childhood memory?

I think my first memory is the floor of a carpeted room where the walls were being painted. It was covered in newspapers to protect from paint splashes. There was a photograph of a statue of a knight in armour on it. The sunlight coming in through the window that illuminated it passed through the branches of a tree, causing it to gently flicker.

Person you most admire?

Hard to say as people have so many different admirable qualities. To take one from my own life: my friend, the film-maker Rouzbeh Rashidi for his uncompromising artistic integrity and his relentless ability, creates amazing films against all odds, especially in the face of the toughest hurdle of all: sustained and unfair indifference.

Person who most irritates you?

Shhhh… I don’t even want to bring them to mind!

Where was your most memorable holiday?

My holidays invariably involve filming, life bleeding into cinema and back out again. I had a ball recently in Atlantic City with my partner, the filmmaker Shelly Kamiel, and our friend Larry, a toy alien. 

Editing the footage we shot there gives a warm after glow. It doesn’t always feel this way.

Favourite TV programme?

In recent years, Painting With John.

Favourite radio show?

I’ve recently been listening to a wonderful podcast called Night Vale that plays out like local radio in an imaginary town and this has somewhat supplanted ‘real’ radio in my listening.

Your signature dish if cooking?

Pasta.

Favourite restaurant?

The truly fabulous Sicilian Delights. Yes, more pasta.

Last book you read?

Earwig, by Brian Catling.

Best book you read?

Oh, William Burroughs’ The Place Of Dead Roads comes to mind. Why not…

Last album/CD/download you bought?

I’m not much of a music collector – or collector of anything – these days so when I buy an album it tends to be from current Irish artists I admire and like to support. I can’t remember if it was the most recent purchase but the marvellous Katie Gerardine O’Neill’s Into the Beyond was a recent one that got many plays.

Favourite song?

A fluctuating assortment of John Cale tracks. And some by Nico… Anything from The Marble Index would fit the bill.

One person you’d like to see in concert?

Nico, who died in 1988. Too late now.

Do you have a pet?

No, but hopefully the right set of circumstances and the right cat will come along one day.

Morning person or night owl?

Inconsistent.

Your proudest moment?

Hopefully still to come.

Spendthrift or saver?

Fickle.

Name one thing you would improve in your area in which you live?

I live close by The Lough at the moment, an area I like in many ways. I’ll say ‘install a public toilet’ but only as a generic response which I have to many places. 

The Lough is great.

What makes you happy?

Good films, friends, food, music, creating, observing, sleeping… Many things.

How would you like to be remembered?

As someone whose creative work encourages and inspires other people to take chances with theirs.

What else are you up to at the moment?

One thing which I’m getting a lot of satisfaction from at the moment is programming a quarterly event called CineSalon along with the poet and filmmaker Benjamin Burns at The Guesthouse arts space in Shandon. CineSalon aims to provide a platform for film artists to share and discuss their work with adventurous audiences in a relaxed atmosphere. It was set up in response to a current explosion of inspiring and under-acknowledged experimental filmmaking in Ireland. The response has been fantastic with capacity audiences responding very warmly. Hopefully this will keep going from strength to strength.

See https://corkfilmfest.org/ for more on what is happening as part of the Cork International Film Festival