Category: OTL14 Film

Director: Michael Cumming. Featuring: Chris Morris.

Made from hundreds of hours of unseen material from his personal archive, director Michael Cumming’s film shares insights into the process of making the legendary TV series Brass Eye. Michael directed both of the pilots and the series and, over a two -year period, witnessed the highs and lows of Brass Eye from a very personal perspective.

Part documentary, part artwork – the film is designed solely for live screenings and is made up almost entirely of never before seen footage. Oxide Ghosts carries the blessing of Chris Morris and provides a rare glimpse of his extraordinary working practices.

Michael Cumming is a director and filmmaker, successfully working at the cutting edge since the ‘90s. A graduate of the Royal College of Art Film School and recent recipient of an honorary doctorate, Dr Cumming’s back catalogue also contains such gems as Jo Brand’s improvised comedy drama Going Forward, cult classic Snuff Box, political pranks and polemics on The Mark Thomas Product, The Mark Steel Lectures and Matt Berry’s BAFTA winning sitcom, Toast Of London.

Michael will be doing a Q&A after the film – spilling beans, shattering myths and letting a few cats out of the bag. This film & Q&A session are a must for fans of the series but will appeal to anyone with a curiosity about how great comedy is made.

‘[Oxide Ghosts] offers a well-judged and very rare insight into [Brass Eye’s] making, encapsulating the fun and covert excitement that went on while the project was still under wraps, before all the legal wrangling kicked in. If you’re an admirer of the show and the opportunity should arise for you to see Oxide Ghosts, have some self re-cocking-spect and do so without hesitation’ – CHORTLE

Doors 2:45pm | Unreserved Seating

Screening as part of Troubles: Films from the Archive – a season of films looking at life during the conflict, Second Chance Cinema present three archive films made about, or by, some of Northern Ireland’s great poetry talents.

Where Genesis Begins (25 mins)
A film Seamus Heaney made about Patrick Kavanagh and his ‘poetic imagination’ for BBC television in 1979 with director Bill Miskelly. Kavanagh was raised and self-educated on a small farm in County Monaghan. He longed for the liberation and stimulus of Dublin. Disillusionment with the city brought in his closing years a ‘return to simplicity’.

Something to Write Home About: A Tribute to Seamus Heaney (30 mins)
Heaney made this film in 1998 with his great friend and collaborator, David Hammond. The film is a tribute to Seamus Heaney, exploring his home ground, and the bogs, of Castledawson, the boundaries and divisions and ‘the possibility of true understanding’.

Devices of Detachment (30 mins)
Made in 1992 by Damian Gorman for the BBC, this film has the reputation as a masterwork of televisual communication. Gormans words, spoken over footage from the conflict, examine coping strategies of ordinary people with powerful effect.