Following on from his award-winning thesis in film-studies, Rancid Ashes, Alan has gathered a team of like-minded film enthusiasts who are willing to follow him unquestionably in my odyssey to capture the purity of documentary-making and complete character analysis therein.
I tend to pick from a shallow pool of filmic references, oevres and people that I would say inspire me. Alan would readily credit D.A. Pannebaker’s “Don’t Look Back” as his earliest influence, showing me for the first time that one could make a film and go out on the tear at the same time. And with famous people at that.
Cinema Verité (or Green Cinema) is something that Alan comes back to again and again in my work. Like Warhol’s Always Leave Them Wanting Less, I favour this ethos of filmmaking as you never need a proper editor, and you can leave in all mistakes you’ve made and call them art. Green for go.
According to Wikipedia, Alan would also fall under the bracket of DogMe 95 film directorsb(Lars Von Trier & Thomas Vinterberg), and tends to follow the rules of their manifesto, “Vows of Chastity“. Though having scanned through it he would change a couple of their golden rules. Because he loves music. And action.
Like the manifesto itself (which was written in apparently 45 minutes) the award-winning Rancid Ashes is Alan’s film of himself at his desk in the kitchen, writing his final year film project, and how it would come together 3 and 1/2hrs before the final submission. Rigorous adherence to the conventions of Green Cinema meant that this was shot on location and in real time, 3 and 3/4hrs before final hand-up.
In all of his previous films on such subjects as grey-hound racing {Dogs}; fresh-water fishing {Fresh-Water Fishing In Ireland and Wales 1&2}; underage drinking {God Bless The Little Palsy Monsters}; and architecture {Spaces Within Spaces Within Space}; Alan strove for finding beauty in the banal and everyday, much like his great-granduncle Patrick Kavanagh, the poetry guy (not sure if he’s actually an uncle, but definitely a cousin anyway).
It’s not just film he’s interested in, architecture is also influential. Like the Dutch mystros Neutling’s Riedijk, whose paper On Laziness, Recycling, Sculptural Mathametics and Ingenuity is something I like to re-read again and again. I find their point of view particularly relevant. Plus they live in Holland.
See also Alan Watts, John-Luke Goddard, Werner Herzog and Michael Moore
