ABOUT Donal Foreman has been making films for 11 years now—that is, since he was 11 years old. In those 11 years, he has written, directed, produced and shot dozens of short films, ranging from comedy to cinema verite documentary, and from drama to experimental. His teenage years were occupied with the creation of a series of twisted comedies that screened four years in a row at the Fresh Film Festival in Limerick, picking up awards in 2001, 2002 and 2003. In 2003, at the age of 17, his film The Unmentionable won first prize and the audience award, and went on to be screened in the IFI “First Cut” showcase, and in the Galway Film Fleadh shorts section. A section of it was also screened on RTÉ2. Tony Keily of Film Ireland wrote "could stand with the very best short cinema this country has produced in recent years.” Since then, Donal has become a member of the board of directors for the Fresh, and has appeared several times on RTÉ radio and TV promoting the festival. In his four years at the National Film School at IADT, he focused on character-driven dramas, and his shorts have been screened in the Galway Film Fleadh, the IFI, the Cork Film Centre, the Kerry Film Festival and internationally in Italy, Hungary, the Phillipines and Los Angeles. In 2007, a retrospective of his experimental and documentary work was organised by the Cork Film Centre alongside the work of great Irish experimental filmmaker Vivienne Dick. As a freelance film critic, Donal has been published in Cahiers du Cinema, Film Ireland, Experimental Conversations, Estudios Irlandeses, Karnival, Start Magazine, Filmmakers Alliance Magazine in LA, the Berliner Zeitung in Germany, and the Manilla Bulletin, the largest daily newspaper in the Phillipines. He has also worked as a film workshop facilitator for young people, as a promo director for Irish Modern Dance Theatre, and as a film programmer for Dublin’s recently established Experimental Film Club. He is an alumnus of the Berlinale Talent Campus and is currently developing a feature film as part of the Irish/Scottish/Estonian co-production programme ENGAGE. He has a blog, a MySpace, a Bebo, and a Flickr, and enjoys describing himself in the third person. Download Donal's CV here.   PRESS Paul Lynch, "Dún Laoghaire students show what they are made of", The Sunday Tribune, June 15 2008: "The most ambitious short was written and directed by Donal Foreman. You're Only What I See Sometimes is a film about a one-night stand very much inspired by the fleeting impression ism of love and memory in the work of Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wai. This was ambitious, confident stuff, told with visual aplomb. Foreman's film contained the cinematic moment of the night: a burst of spontaneous bedroom dancing from Hannah McDonnell that reminded me of Godard's freewheeling cinema. Anna Karina couldn't have done better herself. "   Tony Keily, "The Birth of Cool", Film Ireland 93, July/August 2003: "The Unmentionable (Donal Foreman/Danny McMahon, Dog Day Films) was in a class apart. It deservedly took both First and Audience Prizes. The film managed to squeeze the blackest comedy out of a horrible premise. A gang of guys know what their pal doesn't: he's lost his girlfriend in a car crash. But it's his birthday so, hell, let's have a party anyway. Just don't mention... you know. Featuring defecation, vomiting, binge-drinking, violence, on- and off-screen death and saturated with what people used to call 'language', this was hilarious and daring filmmaking. It didn't do what it was told, and it successfully pushed out the boundaries of what anybody would consider acceptable or funny. The fact that the young audience so totally identified with it (female almost more than male) was also telling. The performances were perfect (the cast have been working together for years as an independent group), and pacing, camerawork and use of locations were all excellent. According to the makers, they couldn't agree on a scenario down to the last week before the submission date for Fresh. They finally hammered the script out in a flash, shot it in four days, and edited it in three, VCR to VCR! The last fact went unnoticed because the piece was in every way so accomplished. "[The Unmentionable could] stand with the very best short cinema this country has produced in recent years."