Bob Gallagher, the Irish video director who has made videos for Girl Band, Villagers and Myles Manley amongst others has started a Patreon page to share his documentary work.
“So far it’s the two shorts that I made in Cuba but I’m still shooting and editing my way through quarantine so the plan is I’ll have a new short documentary each month,” Gallagher said. “I’m just making these for myself so I’m not limited to any specific brief other than finding interesting people and asking them to share a little glimpse into their lives. It’ll be a series of portrait films. At the moment I’m working on something about my friend Vincent turning 100 during quarantine in New York. He’s amazing so I’ll be looking forward to sharing that with people.”
The two films currently available, The Impossible Flight of the Stone and Salon were both filmed on location in San Antonio De Los Banos, Cuba as part of a workshop ‘Filming in Cuba with Werner Herzog’.
“The first film came about because I stumbled on Yoel’s barber shop. Herzog had given us the vague brief of ‘through the window’ so I was wandering around the town trying to spot something interesting from the street. The first thing Yoel said when I pulled out the camera was “There was a Latin American writer called Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and he defined the barber in this way – a barber of a small town is a philosopher, and the barber of a big city must be a scientist”. He didn’t disappoint as a philosopher, or as a barber, but it also turned out that he had a third talent as a brilliant oil painter. I shot with him for a bit and was so excited about him that I showed Herzog some very rough footage.”
“Herzog said ‘you’ll be the first one finished, make another film’. I told him another idea I’d had and he grabbed my hand and started pretending to paint my nails. That will sound less strange if you see the film, though it was still a bit strange even with some context. On his instruction I made the second film, ‘Salon’. I think they work nicely as a set, sort of companion pieces about the experience of being a barber, and then the experience of being a customer at a hair salon. Hopefully, they gave a small sense of how rich a small town, or really any situation can be with stories.”
You can sign up to Bob’s Patreon page here to see these films and receive updates on his other documentary projects.
