February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Galway’s Power Pictures has won two of the top awards at the recent 21st Celtic Film and Television Festival.
The Best Documentary award went to "A Year ‘Til Sunday," while "Michael Hartnett: Necklace of Wrens" took home the Jury Award. David Power, producer of both documentaries, and Pat Comer, director of "A Year ‘Til Sunday" were in Aberystwyth, Wales, to accept the awards.
"A Year ‘Til Sunday," a 52-minute documentary that aired on RTE in January 1999, is the story of the against-the-odds march to success of the Galway Gaelic football team that won the All-Ireland championship in September 1998 for the first time in 32 years. Comer was the team’s reserve goalkeeper and had unprecedented access to the behind-the-scenes activities of both players and management. The film had been released as a 73-minute version in December 1998 and went on to become the highest-grossing sell-through sports video in Ireland, selling over 20,000 units.
"Michael Hartnett: Necklace of Wrens" is a poignant portrait of English/Irish-language poet Michael Hartnett, in his own words. The 40-minute documentary, directed by Pat Collins, looks at the obsessions that consumed the poet, who died last year: the Irish language, poetry and
alcohol. Jury Chair, Peter Stead, noted that the Jury Prize went to "the entry we felt the most affection for. We thought it was a brilliant evocation of [Hartnett’s] life and his poetry. It was the most moving thing we saw in the whole judging process."
"A Year ‘Til Sunday" has already won the Best Sports Film award at the Slovenia Film Festival in July 1999 and was shortlisted for Best English Language Documentary at the inaugural Irish Film and Television Awards in November 1999.
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"Michael Hartnett: Necklace of Wrens," won the Bronze Award for Biographical Documentary at Worldfest Houston, in April 1999, and was shortlisted for Best Irish Language Documentary at IFTA.
Power Pictures was established in 1997 and has produced a number of documentaries and documentary series that have aired on RTE. Among these are "China: From Here to the Ends of the Earth," which dealt with the experience of Irish couples adopting Chinese babies, and "The Green, Green Grass of Home," a six-part series on Irish comedians revisiting their home towns, featuring Tommy Tiernan and D’Unbelievables.
The company is currently in the latter stages of postproduction on a documentary examining the tradition of the Irish funeral.