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Under The Hawthorn Tree, adapted from the best-selling Irish book of the same name, was our first full-length feature film, shot in 1997. Choose from the links below to find out more about the film. Under The Hawthorn Tree runs at 90 minutes and was produced by Mike Kelly for RTE & Channel 4. Ireland 1845. The three O'Driscoll children, Eily, Michael and Peggy set out on a great adventure - to walk across Ireland and try to find their great-aunts, Nano and Lena, whom they've only heard about in their Mother's stories. But their great adventure turns into a terrible battle for survival against hunger, disease and possibly death. For this is the Ireland of the 1840's, laid waste by the ravages of the Great Famine. With their village devastated, their parents missing and their baby sister, Bridget, dead and buried under the hawthorn tree, they are forced to set out on a perilous journey to find what's left of their family - but first they have to survive. This is a survival story of epic proportions set during the Great Famine, the most traumatic event in Irish history when over one and a half million men, women and children died from hunger and related diseases. The unique structure of the Young Irish Film Makers within the Irish film industry made producing UNDER THE HAWTHORN TREE a difficult task. As the film was made entirely by children we couldn't approach the usual sources of funding for adult professional film production such as the Irish Film Board and the Media Programme of the European Union. The budget for the entire film was £100,000, a very modest amount for a full feature film but an enormous amount for a group of young film makers to raise. In January 1996 our young people became film producers when they took an option on the book and then Avid Technology became our first sponsors with a promise of a loan of a film Composer 8000 for the entire post production period. Mike then approached John Richmond of Channel 4 Schools who, when he had read the script, offered us £50,000. At the same time the Leader Fund of the EU offered us a £15,000 grant for equipment so we geared up for production in Summer 1996. We thought that people would now be interested in putting money into the production but nobody was committing, and it was to take us nearly a year to put the rest of the money in place! In April 1997 we undertook our first trip to America in search of funding with three of our young cast, Liane Murphy, Peter Ryan and Chris Bollard. This turned out to be a major success when Tom Costello from San Diego put £25,000 of his own money into the production. The final shooting date was fast approaching when RTE put up the final £15,000 to complete the financing for the film. For seven long weeks over 50 young cast and crew members aged seven to nineteen gave up their summer holidays, worked 10-12 hours a day, six days a week, and braved all weathers in an effort to get their film finished before they had to return to school. One week we had four days of rain and Phillip O'Dwyer, our film insurance man (and Speilberg's) visited the set. He told the kids that Speilberg had the same wet weather problem on his film SAVING PRIVATE RYAN in Wexford. One of the kids said "Yeah, but Speilberg dosen't have to go back to school in September!" During those weeks the young people learned everything about professional film production from how digital cameras and sound equipment worked to catering for 100 people to building realistic indoor and outdoor sets. Visitors to the set included Channel 4 advisor Peter Logue, Marina Hughes (producer of the new Irish film THE BOY FROM MERCURY) and Patrick Bergin (star of SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY and ROBIN HOOD) who remarked that it was like any other working professional film crew except these were so very young! In fact, when we talk about a small crew in the Young Irish Film Makers we usually mean a crew under 4 foot tall !!! A unique event in Kilkenny's artistic history came to an end when the cameras finally stopped turning in September 1997 on the Young Irish Film Makers feature film UNDER THE HAWTHORN TREE. For the first time ever in Ireland a group of young people had raised £100,000 from Channel 4, RTE, The Leader Fund and the US to make a full length children's film for the international television market. Another first in Ireland for Kilkenny's own film production organisation was shooting a drama programme on the new digital tape format DVCPRO from Panasonic - even RTE is not shooting on digital yet! With the shooting over the young editors turned the 24 hours(!) of filmed material into the final 90 minute film before the February delivery date to RTE where it was broadcast in early 1998. Channel 4 broadcast the film in September 1998. All the editing was done on powerful non-linear editing computer sponsored by AVID TECHNOLOGY. Making a film like this was a wonderful learning experience for all the young members and although the film was funded by C4, RTE, The Leader Funds and Tom Costello in the US it wouldn't have been possible to make it without lots of local help from parents, friends and business people - thank you all! Special mention must be made of the contribution made by The Ireland Funds, the Arts Council of Ireland, and particularly to FAS, the Irish government's employment and training authority, who supports both our film and ongoing programmes in the form of CE workers. Please note that the download times indicated below are an approximation for each connection speed. Internet slowdowns and excess processes running on your computer may affect actual download times. 56K Modem (Dialup) : 8 minutes View clip from Under The Hawthorn Tree|
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