Advance Party II | Film Ireland Online

Issue 128 - 8 Is the Magic Number

Fri, May 1, 2009

8 features, 8 directors, 8 rules. Gavin Burke investigates the octically-obsessed Advance Party II.

With the Catalyst Project asking its filmmakers to deliver a film on €250,000, Advance Party II’s budget of €1.5 million will seem like a luxury. Finding its inspiration from the competitive and creative community of the dogme movement, Advance Party I (API) brought together a new group of filmmakers and created a new and unique set of rules to govern the conception and production of their new films. These primarily concerned the use of a pool of pre-determined characters, which had to be played by the same actors in all the films.

Advance Party II (APII) builds on the success of Andrea Arnold’s Red Road, which picked up numerous awards, including the Jury Prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, and Morag McKinnon’s forthcoming Rounding Up Donkeys, which were produced under the innovative conditions of Advance Party I. Aoife O’Sullivan at Subotica is behind the project: ‘Following the success of the first Advance Party project, Sigma and Zentropa approached Subotica to join them in launching a new version of the scheme working with emerging European writer/directors. It was felt that the scheme is a great opportunity to nurture new and emerging talent and to help writer/directors realise their ambition of making their first feature film.’

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 128