Acclaimed filmmaker Paul Duane celebrates his favourite Irish cult movie classics...

THE BIRTH OF FRANK POP (Director Joe Wall, 1994)

What is it? A 21-minute short film depicting the cheerless life of drudgery led by assembly-line worker Frank Blank, until he falls through some kind of hole in spacetime and is transformed by a group of weird shamanic figures into the glorious rock star Frank Pop. But how will this transformation appear to those around him? One of Ireland’s great character actors, Frankie McCafferty, plays Frank and the film makes terrific expressionistic use of his angular features.

Why is it important? An unashamedly peculiar film, influenced by cinema of the silent era, surrealism, Alice In Wonderland and David Lynch, Frank Pop avoids narrative realism in favour of fable, and makes terrific use of very minimal resources to craft a world of glowing colours, weird characters and ambiguous redemption. The cast has future name actors David Wilmot and Steve Wall (brother of co-director Joe), while the crew list includes one of Ireland’s most in-demand editors, Eoin McDonagh, in his first ever film job. On one level it also dramatizes, in a bizarrely moving way, the perennial Irish curse of emigration.

How did it get made? Lead actor McCafferty bought a Super-8 camera and with his flatmate Wall, whose band The Stunning had just broken up, decided to make a movie. They self-funded it, pals chipped in with a few quid, there were fundraising gigs involving Elvis impersonators… It sounds like the process was a lot of fun.

How did it go down? It had a good festival run, including the prestigious SXSW in Austin, Texas, until the film caught fire during projection at the Gijon Festival. I thought I saw it broadcast on RTÉ 2, but director Joe Wall says that ever happened.

'Frank Pop avoids narrative realism in favour of fable, and makes terrific use
of very minimal resources to craft a world of glowing colours, weird characters
and ambiguous redemption.'

What should have happened? It would be nice to imagine a world where the same thing happened to Joe Wall as happened to Super 8 pioneers in other countries, like Todd Haynes or John Waters, but 90s Ireland wasn’t the place for wildly experimental splashes of colour soundtracked by thrashy garage rock.

What happened instead? The director made some applications for funding longer projects, none of which were successful. "There seemed to be a preference at the time for films set in rural cottages with crucifixes and general bleakness, which wasn't my style", he says now. He continued to play music with his brother Steve as The Walls, got a record deal and moved to London (eerily echoing Frank Pop’s emigrant narrative).

Where can it be seen? Nowhere right now, but the director is currently restoring the film from Beta tape and hopes to screen it at an Irish film festival for its 30 th anniversary next year.

Enjoy more Irish Cult Movie Classics here.