I haven’t blogged an update on ADAM for quite some time, and taking inspiration from Hunter S Thompson, who once wrote that every glittering ounce of good news should be cherished and hoarded and worshipped and fondled like a priceless diamond, here I am — doing just that and sizzling from the news that ADAM has been officially selected to screen at The Richard Harris International Film Festival 2013, [2014] in conjunction with the The Newport Beach Film Festival (Official).

The Richard Harris International Film Festival select just ten short films to screen, with only one of them officially selected to screen at the Newport Beach Film Festival. It is an amazing honour for ADAM to be ‘one of the ten’ and I am humbled, honoured and thrilled for the bunch of legends who put their time and talent where the money wasn’t and helped me get it made. Director, Denise Pattison, Cinematographer, Gar Daly, Sound, Brynmor Pattison and Jane O’Connor, Catering and Stills Photography, Errol Farrell, Make-up, Amy O’Neill, Editor, John King, and cast, Johnny Elliott, Sinead Monaghan, Aideen McLoughlin, and young actor, Eric McGuirk, who brought ADAM to life – and what a wise and talented soul that young actor possesses!

The script, in first draft, was a quarter-finalist in the 2010 American Short Film Awards, and came out of a short story I wrote many years earlier, which I titled Camouflage.  It was in response to my asking the questions as to why so many of our young boys, barely out of their teens turn to violence, end up in detention centres, prisons, or find themselves homeless or worse, lost in the mire of junkie hell. ADAM is by no means the answer to any of those questions, but it is possibly one scenario as to why a young boy might begin to withdraw from a potentially amazing life, to disconnect from family, and in so doing, lose himself. The film does not preach. It is not a work of blame or pointing of fingers. It simply shows, through a little boy’s eyes, how things can be seen and interpreted, or misinterpreted, by an impressionable and fertile imagination. Along the way,  I had much encouragement and interest in making it, but as is often the case, money, or lack of, was the deciding factor. Until I made a decision to trust the universe and push forward with it myself. Connecting with Director and co-producer, Denise Pattison cemented the journey. We were on it, the collaboration began, and I am so proud, and grateful, for the vision she attached to it.

During the making of ADAM, my first sojourn into film production, my only hope was that it might connect with people in the way that I meant it to. The writing of it was a labour of love, the making of it was a labour of love, I think, for everyone involved, and sharing it, as far as it can go, is still a beautiful affair.