feature documentary in development – directed by Tomás Sheridan

We have some good news:

A year and a half after starting the work on BM we finally got some real development funding from the Turin Film Commission. It’s not much but it should help to open doors for the project. We are ecstatic!!! Thanks to Peter and Gianni for the hard work so far…way to go!!!

Sure the film might have gone through tremendous transformations, not least its budget’s ambitions adapting to the current financial situation but we’re glad we have the chance to work on this important and personal project.

Hello guys,

Sorry for the mediatic silence. Rest assured we have not been in hibernation, work and efforts to get Babel’s Market made have been relentless.

Lets just say our work was transfered  from the smells, colours and alleys of Porta Palazzo to our dark rooms and cluttered desks. We have applied to Piemonte Doc Film Fund, MEDIA (the European audio-visual fund) and Scottish Screen for development money as well as looking at various workshops that may help us develop our story. Of course young enthusiastic filmmakers like ourselves are often rowing upstream but that’s how we like it! It makes for an exciting life.

In the meantime Accidental Media and myself have been working on another doc much closer to home (in more ways than one): After only one month together Liam and Nita find out a baby is on the way. Their reaction to this news is completely different  and they end up separating. Only the birth of a beautiful little girl brings them back together with unexpected consequences in their relationship and secrets from the past arising to threaten their new-found balance…

Like Babel’s Market this is a story of motherhood, belonging and tough decisions that life places before us. Most importantly it’s been a great opportunity to work more with Peter from Accidental; I must say, finding collaborators you just click with in this industry is not easy so I consider myself particularly lucky to be part of the Accidental Media family.

More news will follow… fingers crossed we’ll be telling you about all the money they’re giving us!

PS: Accidental Media is up for 3 (!) BAFTA new talent awards this week so keep your eyes peeled…

We have been a bit quiet lately on the blog. After Sheffield we have been working on polishing our treatment and working on big funding applications. Big as in lots of pages and forms. We are planning to get Tomás back out to Italy in the Spring to continue research and development and further refine the film.

We have also been improving the taster clip:

And thanks to those generous souls who have donated to the production of Babel’s Market. Your contributions are highly valued!

Expect some more words from Tomás before long.

Well, if you think we’ve spent every last penny in the pursuit of a film making career… you’re almost right, but this isn’t why we’ve added this pleasant little donation button to the right of our blog page.

We believe that somewhere between exploitative mega film studios and frenetic pirate downloaders is the future of the moving image industry. Lets stop bottling people into marketing clusters ( I once heard an American commissioning Editor say: “we’re looking for programs for 26 to 35 year-old male middle-class, medium-educated audience. That’s our demographic.”!!!) or forcing them to watch stuff that insults their intelligence. The modern day consumer of moving images is media-savvy. They know what they want, they know when and how they want it and they know they can get it for free off the internet.

BUT! – cry the defenders of the movie industry professionals – This is theft of someones work and energy and time and passion!!! THIS IS THEFT!

Well, I’m pretty sure the pirate “consumer” doesn’t see it that way. They feel cornered, they feel THEY are victims of theft every time they spend £8 to see a recycled formulaic boring blockbuster on the big screen they feel they have the right to see something interesting and thought provoking and challenging.

So what’s the answer? At Accidental Media we grant a great deal of trust in man(and woman)kind, maybe even more than is due; we think the consumer is ultimately a funder and a producer of the films he or she watches; people have not lost all trace of conscience because of torrent sites, they want to feel part of something important, something special, and they want to see good films get made.

So this is the idea behind our donations button:

Making films costs money.

We don’t have much.

You want to see good films and we want to make them.

A coffee or a beer only lasts as long as the caffeine or alcohol are in your system, a good film lasts for ever and is made for many to share.

So put your money to good use: FUND INDEPENDENT CINEMA (to the best of your abilities…that’s all we ask).

How many times sitting in the audience of a pitching session, have I seen fellow filmmakers facing a panel of experienced I’ve-seen-it-all commissioning editors and breaking into a sweat when that  obvious yet always unexpected question comes up: “Why are YOU the right person to make THIS film?”

When the time comes I will not hesitate I know why I’m the right person to make this film: Babel’s Market is about immigration and integration, about identity and the struggle to find one’s place in a foreign land without sacrificing one’s Self.

I am the son of immigrants.

I grew up in Turin (the setting for Babel’s Market) trying to figure out if I was Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Jewish, American, British or what… These doubts followed me around for a long time and to this day my voice trembles when I tell an Irish man that I’m Irish too just in case he replies “You must be joking!”

As if my own identity crisis was not enough I decided to move to Scotland, marry a Hungarian and give my daughter an even harder task when it comes to answering the simple question: “Where are you from?”.

I was lucky enough to belong to a middle-class, white, European-looking family but what about Porta Palazzo, this modern day Babel? The schools in the area have a 95% non-Italian demographic. These children often translate work permit applications for their parents, they speak Italian perfectly but don’t look it and they are cought between their culture at home, the culture at school and the cocktail of cultures surrounding them in Porta Palazzo.

This is why I’m fascinated with places like Porta Palazzo, I feel that if I look hard enough at how others deal with these split identities maybe I’ll get closer to answering my own questions: Where am I really from? And even more importantly… does it really matter?

We are pleased to announce that Tomás Sheridan won the runner-up prize for his pitch of Babel’s Market at Engage in Finland last month. Engage is an exciting Media funded program bringing together up-and-coming writers, directors and producers from Ireland, Scotland, Finland and Estonia to take part in 3 super intense four-day workshops over a 5-month period. The aim of the program is to encourage international collaborations through the development of existing projects.

Babel’s Market was well received and held its own ground in the pitching session at the last workshop in Helsinki where industry professionals were handing out cash prizes and passes to the Mannheim development forum. The cash prize will be a booster to start building our production budget for the film.

If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, watch it now.