The twelfth annual Irish Film Festival returns to Somerville this week.

Rookie feature Director Ian Power arrives in Somerville

By Andrew Firestone

In the town of Mallow, County Cork, Ireland in 1983, a Colombian plane crashed, spurring a community effort to see the plane take to the air again.

Now on  Friday, March 25 at the Somerville theater, writer-director Ian Power will premiere “The Runway” showcasing the modern-day legend, and hopefully, sending a few people home happy.

The Twelfth Annual Irish Film Festival returns to Somerville this week, bringing with it the Wexford, Ireland native to tour his rookie feature film. Produced on location in Ireland as well as Luxembourg and Sweden, Power promises to bring the American audience a new Irish trope, the upbeat adventure-comedy.

“It had shocked me that in the past, there’s been a slew of Irish films before my generation and the outlook tended to be… that everything was bad and it was sort of miserable,” he said. “There was something in me that was rebelling against that in making “The Runway.” If I was a Hollywood filmmaker I probably would have made something very serious off the bat.”

In his newly minted approach, Power hopes to bring the spirit of the people of Ireland with a taste of what makes the culture so attractive to begin with, a quirky good natured romp that throws a delightful spin on traditional values but without stilted yearning. “It’s not say that there isn’t nostalgia in the film; some people look at the film and say it’s very nostalgic,” said Power. “It’s really just about being true to what it was… It’s of the moment, yea?”

The film stars Jamie Kierans as Paco, the son of a single mother Grace (played by Kerry Condon of HBO’s “Rome”), who befriends crashed pilot Ernesto (Fidel Castro in “Che,” Mexican actor Demian Bichir). Being the only person who speaks Spanish, Paco devises a plan to save the pilot, bringing his fractured community together.

“The job of film has always been to say: ‘there’s hope, there’s optimism,’” Power said of his message.

“When I started to write it, the thing that inspired me was the fact that we had all this money, and we had forgotten where we were. Now people don’t have money again and they watch it and they think ‘yea, well? So what?’”

Power graduated first honors in his Masters of Film at the Dublin Institute of Technology in 2000, and was able to gain funding for the film after a long resume of commercials and a few award winning shorts. He listed his influences among  Stephen Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Orson Wells.

“I wanted to shoot the film without complicating it with identity. If Spielberg came to Ireland for this story, he wouldn’t be preoccupied with Irishness he’d just being going ‘what is the story about?’” he said.

In reference to his style, Power remarked that he tried to be “beautiful, but not in a lingering way.”

“I grew up in rural Ireland in the 80s’ and when you’re a kid, you’re surrounded by all this beauty but to you, it’s not beautiful, it’s just kind of boring. You feel almost trapped by the countryside, and there’s something comical about that,” he said.

However, the Irish are the Irish, and some traditions have to be born.

On production in Ireland, Power once wasted an hour or two searching for some lost extras, who, he thought looked perfect for the scene. He figured out that, in fact, the men were not extras, but merely dressed in the older “pitched cap” style

“If you try and avoid the stereotypical icon or iconography, you’re ignoring the truth of it,” he said. “That was an eye=opener for me.”

Power told the story of a Golden Age Hollywood director looking for the great American film. “He disguised himself as a pauper, and he goes out into depression-era America, to see out what the people, what the poorest of the poor, would really want to see. And he leaves thinking this is all about ‘I’m going to make a serious movie.”

“In the midst of that, he goes to see a cartoon or a comedy and it’s a respite. It’s like a breathe of fresh air. These people laugh, and they’re entertained and they’re uplifted! And that’s the film he goes away the experience wanting to make.”

“The Runway” is 101 minutes long and starts at 7:30 p.m. March 25 at the Somerville Theater.