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DO’C: You studied film at IADT [Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dún Laoghaire] but came to this training as a mature student. Can you tell me about your early life prior to studying at IADT? KW: I grew up in Portarlington, Co. Laois in a Church of Ireland family. From the age of twelve I was sent off to boarding school in Co. Westmeath and then to do my Leaving Cert in High School, Rathgar, Dublin. I studied Geography and Sociology at Trinity for two years and had a ball. Then I took up a place in London on the Erasmus programme . I had an even better time there. I got a part-time job in the biggest gay night club in Europe and was staying in the halls of residence . For financial reasons I dropped out of college and got a job in a post-production company. I didn’t really know what the company did other than they were involved in television. I worked as a runner in the tape library for about a year without learning how to use the tape machine. After this I took off travelling, came back to work for an architect friend who had won a contract for the Nike stores in London. I took an office job with him. Again, this developed into something bigger. The office grew from two people to twenty and I learned how to start up a business; it was a great training, particularly developing my organisation skills which stood to me later on in the film business. I eventually got bored with this job, had done an interior design course but didn’t stick with this too long. I worked for a while in the Almeda Theatre following a drama course. I saw wonderful productions which got me back into the performances and production zones. Soon after I returned to Ireland. It was the summer of 1999. Looking for work I dropped into FÁS and saw a poster advertising for a stage manager for The Undertaking, a wonderful stage production about a crowd of friends coming back to 135 Díóg O’Connell interviews Ken Wardrop, Director of His & Hers (2010)* * His & Hers was the highest grossing Irish film at the box office in 2010. It started out on ten prints, increasing to 14 across 35 sites, with the final box office figure reaching €330,000. Ireland; one guy comes back to the family farm with his black boyfriend. I met great people and really enjoyed it and then applied to do a drama course at Trinity. Meanwhile I was living with a group of people and one of the women was getting a portfolio ready for IADT. I hung out with her and enjoyed what she was doing and decided to apply to IADT myself. I applied to the Film Production course. At that time, lots of people wanted to be directors but because of my experience in London I interviewed for the producer role and got it. It was the right time for me, I was twenty-six and I was passionate. This thing had come into my life and I knew I wanted to do it. I had done the background research. Going in saying I wanted to be a producer was already saying something. DO’C: You spent four years at IADT culminating in your graduate film, Undressing My Mother (2004), which won lots of awards. What appealed to you about documentary as a form? KW: I wasn’t a cinéfile, I had no background in film. I wasn’t a kid who messed around with a camera at twelve. I was starting quite fresh and first year was so exciting. We did lots of different types of projects all the time. We got to experiment with equipment. I always found myself drawn to telling real stories as opposed to fiction. I was favouring documentary over fiction. Two films I particularly liked at this time were Festen (1998) – the Dogma project – which was less about the art of film-making and more about the story, and a film by Michael Winterbottom which was a wonderful composite of four or five lives . . . it felt real . . . ordinary lives up on the big screen but still fascinating characters. I think they intrigued me but I had no possibility of doing that with the college resources – you had to use members of the class as actors, the emphasis then was on fiction. So rather than...

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