It was a fairly awesome audience for a film premiere but Deirdre Green seemed not a bit fazed. She was the recipient of the 1997 Fitzpatrick Hotel Group Film Scholarship, worth £10,000, which funded her study in Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design. On Wednesday night her resulting short film, Heartstone, got its first airing at the Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel in Killiney to an appreciative audience. The Minister for Arts, Culture et al, Sile de Valera, apologised for being late and explained that she had just passed a "rather important piece of broadcasting legislation" that afternoon. The new chairman of the Arts Council, Brian Farrell, came along as did Sheila Pratschke, director of the Irish Film Institute. Film censor Sheamus Smith and film producer Greg Smith were also there - no surprise as the scholarship was originally their idea. Greg grinned as he described how, when he was staying in the Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel while shooting The Olde Curiosity Shop, he had approached Paul Fitzpatrick with the notion that it was high time the family put something back into the industry - half the film crews in Ireland stay at the Killiney Castle Hotel. Both Sheamus and Greg were loud in their praise of Paul, who "just ran with the idea" while Paul, a little more modest, declared "I'm just the man who signs the cheques."
Deirdre, who invited her grandmother May Green, her aunt Nancy Green and her sister Sioban O'Brien Green, seems destined to have a fine career in film. She has already snaffled the role of trainee editor on Animal Farm, which will start shooting in Ardmore in August. Produced by Greg and directed by John Stephenson, it will re-tell Orwell's story using a mixture of animatronics (the technique used in the film Babe) and real animals. "We've 126 of them in training at the moment," says Greg.