Cin É: First up let me start by congratulating on the response to the film, particularly from the United States.
Pat Collins: The reviews from America have mostly been very good, especially from the trade papers. The Hollywood Reporter and Variety have been fantastic reviews. And they're very important ones to get. It is very satisfying when you get positive reviews from America first, when you think about the content of the film, the fact that it is translating across. That's it's more universal. So there is something satisfying about that alright. It might make Irish people notice it more if somebody from outside Ireland has said that it has a value. I don't think that every Irish person thinks like that, but some people are swayed by what America or the UK think first. They take more notice if the praise comes from outside Ireland. There's a good few films that have been like that. Even The Crying Game. That didn't do that well in Ireland, then it did really well in America and was released again in Ireland. And did a lot better the second time around.
A film like this, which tells such a uniquely Irish story, could have been off-putting for foreign audiences, but that doesn't appear to have been the case.
I think it goes to show that the more that you stick to your guns. The more that you go deeper into something that could be seen as a local thing. In a way there's a difference between what is parochial and what is provisional. And I think that in a way Song of Granite is sort of more parochial, and I mean parochial in a positive sense. That it goes deeper into one locale...and I think that the deeper you go...a bit like Patrick Kavanagh and his poetry...the deeper you go the more universal it becomes. A lot of cinema in Ireland and the UK falls between two stools. It's neither fish nor fowl, it's not American not local. This is very much straight down the line. It's very much Irish content, but it does it in such a way that it real universal. It can be dangerous trying to make a film. You have to be determined. You can't make it like another film. A lot of filmmakers, and a lot of funding agencies too, are trying to make films like other films. And really that kind of peters out. It's not going to work. But filmmakers need a chance to develop, whether that's with short films or getting a chance to make a second feature, a third feature, they need the chance to develop their style. It's very difficult to get funding so there are probably a lot of great filmmakers who never got the funding to make their second film or their third film. I'm lucky in the sense that I've always been working in documentaries. I've always been making films. I've always made a film every year whether a documentary or two documentaries. I've never been where it's three years or four years between films. You have to keep working at it to find out what it is that you can do and what it is that you might be good at. I think that making documentaries is a really good means of learning your craft. Maybe a lot of filmmakers don't get that opportunity. I don't know.
PAT COLLINS
32 CinÉireann / December 2017