Reflecting on 1990-91, there can rarely have been a more complex or exciting period in career, family and political terms. I was acting Clerk of Brussels Meeting and, in the Commission, was trying to negotiate my promotion out of the Spokesman’s Service and back into DG X.

Justin was coping, as he said he would, with the ending of his university degree and was in employment which more than met his minimum requirements of desk, telephone and terminal.

Patricia was launched into her first university year at Edinburgh and enjoying the social life of her Hall of Residence. Anne and I were fascinated spectators of the political kaleidoscope represented by such events as the election of Mary Robinson to the Irish Presidency, the Gulf War, and the dramatic falls of both Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev.

1990 also became the year in which my film-making efforts reached their highest point to date. And looking back, the pleasure of that success was probably the year’s warmest experience. It also seemed to provide objective evidence that I had the potential to make documentaries of quality.

The news that my friend Pat Harris was to have an exhibition in the Taylor Gallery in Dublin triggered off the successful film project. Anne and I had been thinking of buying another picture from him. I suggested that I would instead make a short documentary video, showing him at work in Flanders, which could be shown at the exhibition opening and would be available to visitors subsequently. He was delighted at the suggestion and I set to work planning the film so that there would be no more than a day’s shooting involved. I would pay my cameraman friend André and his soundman for a Saturday’s shoot in and around Pat’s house and studio in Tielrode. I saw this as an ideal location. Tielrode is a small town in West Flanders on the river Durme. Pat’s house was formerly the manager’s house for a small brewery in the centre of the town, opposite the church. His studio was in converted stables in the garden behind the house and the dyke where he often went to paint the river and water meadows was a short walk down the narrow street separating his garden from the shops and houses in line with the church. While Tielrode was dominated by the church’s clock tower and steeple, the profile of cranes in the shipyards of Temse, the next large town upriver, hovered over the acres of green polder behind the dyke.

I made several visits to Tielrode, some of them without disturbing Pat and his family, so that I could draft an outline scenario and draw up a storyboard. Thanks to my viewer, I was able to list camera positions, noting the possibilities of zoom or tracking shots. This preparation worked well when the day of shooting came.

On the way from Brussels to Tielrode, André filmed the tourist and town road signs I had identified as ideal for initially establishing the setting. The weather was just about adequate, rather chilly and breezy with changeable light. When we began filming on the dyke, Pat had difficulty holding his canvas steady on the easel against the gusts of wind.

Once inside Pat’s studio I was happy to let André range far beyond my story board. I had already learnt that for documentary filming you can never have too much footage to edit. It is also clear to me that film-making is very much a team effort and that the suggestions of anyone involved are always worth considering. Both Pat and the sound man made useful suggestions as we went along. One spontaneous and continuous long take by André, with Pat explaining the picture on which he was working, turned out to be the heart of the completed nine-and-a-half minute film.

After the scheduled Saturday’s shooting, André gave me a copy on VHS of everything he had videoed in Betamax. Working at home with a stopwatch I was able to do a sort of pre-edit in my head which I could then set down on paper. Work on this pre-edit also helped me to think about the voice-over commentary required and the background music. As soon as my package was ready, I booked Saturday edit time in André’s new studio in the hope that I could complete the film in a second day’s professional work.

Editing, recording the voice over myself, and using an extract from a CD of John Field Nocturnes to add to the soundtrack, was tremendously exciting and all-engaging, like a satisfactory day of oil painting. I was thrilled with the finished product and was particularly pleased that a cut from a mirror image to the studio reality – one the professional editor said should never be done – turned out to be the best visual effect in the film. The finished tape was ready in time for Pat to take it with him to Dublin. I had, in addition, extra copies and press release material with which I tried to attract some TV, radio or newspaper interest for his exhibition. Nobody reacted. On his return, Pat told me that the gallery dared not show the video at his opening because even the exhibition lights had blown a fuse just half an hour before the first visitors were expected to arrive!

In the process of trying to educate myself as a documentary film-maker I had watched a lot of short films about art and artists. I believed my “Pat Harris, an Irish Artist in Flanders” was good enough to “make the grade” in this particular genre. I was also aware that a number of film festivals in France and Belgium focussed entirely on such films. In the published 1990 festival schedule there were programmes under the auspices of the Pompidou Centre and of UNESCO which seemed to offer submission possibilities. The Pompidou Centre replied quickly, saying they would not be able to show my film in their programme, but that my dossier would be placed in the Museum archive. I had not heard from UNESCO when we went to Edinburgh in August for another visit to the Festival there.

When we got back to Brussels, in the mass of post-holiday mail, there was a letter saying that my film had been accepted for showing at the 24th International Festival of Art Films to be held in Paris from 19-27 November. This news was one of the great thrills of my life and, after contacting the organising member of the jury, I worked with André on a remake of the video in low-band format, with professional titling, and a French voice-over by Michael Hourican, one of Liam’s sons who had an interest in acting and good European-school French. Anne and I booked into Paris for the scheduled showing. Pat Harris himself came to join us, as did Pat and Karl Jonietz.

Unfortunately, the great moment in the film theatre of the UNESCO Headquarters was spoiled by the fact that the version shown was my submission tape rather than the more polished French tape. I wanted to stand up and protest but didn’t. And I knew from the quality of some of the films I had already seen in the festival that, in any case, my effort was unlikely to be a prizewinner.

To have had a film selected for an international festival is, nevertheless, a rare enough achievement. Certainly, that Paris experience helped to add to the pleasure Anne and I got from visiting film festivals as mere spectators.

Film Festival aside, our evening in an Italian restaurant on the Île de France with the Jonietzs and Pat Harris proved unforgettable. The restaurant turned out to be owned by a young Englishman who telephoned his mother in the course of our dinner so that we could have details of the latest Conservative Party voting on the Thatcher leadership.

Read More: 1991 – A Luxembourg Project and a Philosophy