Summer review - IT CAME FROM CONNEMARA!! by Brian Reddin

Brian Reddin nostalgically recalls the years in which B-movie mogul Roger Corman swept the isolated region in western Ireland named Connemara off its feet in his tribute documentary It Came From Connemara!!, presented in the Summer section of the 22nd Raindance Film Festival.
 
Having directed more than one hundred films, produced well over four hundred others and still going strong for this day, it's not just the quantity of work Roger Corman dished out that makes him an influential figure in the history of cinema. It's also the way in which so many people that went on to become big names in cinema went through what was known at the time as the Corman school. Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Jack Nicholson, Robert Town, Sandra Bullock...and the list goes on ad infunitum. Yet, not many people know that the filmmaker responsible for titles such as A Bucket of Blood, The Little Shop of Horrors, Bloody Mama and so on, also set up a studio in a desolate part of Ireland, more precisely in County Galway, mostly made of cattle and stones named Connemara.
Around the mid nineties, Irish cinema had finally shifted into gear with names such as Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan producing quality work recognised the world over. However, Corman had little interest in it. Producing an average of twenty films a year, in order to keep up his prolific ways and go around new European laws that taxed American produced films, Corman cleverly looked to the West of Ireland to make some now mostly forgotten action, sci-fi, horror films with micro-budget. Now, these titles are mostly forgotten and perhaps rightly so. Nevertheless, these whacky five years shook the Irish film industry right to its core.
 
Through the use of interviews with the people involved in these rushed and intense productions in both English and Irish language, as well as priceless contributions from Corman himself and access to footage and clips from Corman's back catalogue, Reddin looks upon these days nostalgically and even with an aura of mystery. In the process, he pays tribute to the important cinematic figure of Corman, but also pays tribute to the people who really threw themselves inside this whacky and messed up world, which inevitably ended up teaching them priceless lessons through insane work hours and back to back production demands. All the while, we the viewers learn a lesson about cinema as well, a type of straight to video cinema that was quite short lived just before the dawn of the digital era.
 
It Came from Connemara!! is a work of love and admiration for the man and the times it is set in, and its down to Earth approach, its sense of humour and its sensibility to the naivity of the people makes it a lot of fun and more than a simple piece on cinema history trivia.