While Stendhal Festival of Art was winning three awards at The Irish Festival Awards earlier this year, a good friend of the Festival’s organising team was also quite a busy man during the awards season.

Brian J Falconer is the producer behind the Bafta Award Winning and Academy Award nominated short film ‘Boogaloo and Graham’ and he and fellow filmmakers Michael Lennox and Ronan Blaney have enjoyed incredible success with the film in 2015.

“It was typical,” joked Ross Parkhill, Director of Stendhal Festival of Art, “we get a fantastic result of three wins in the Irish Festival Awards and one of the boys goes and gets a Bafta and an Oscar nomination. We thought we would have bragging rights between the lads as far as awards went for a while, but yeah, Brian was the awards boss this year.”

So with their respective awards in their pockets there was really only one thing to do and this year the award winning filmmaker will be showcasing his award winning film at the award winning Stendhal Festival of art.

“We’ve known Brian for a long time and we were thrilled to bits for him when all the Bafta and Academy Award buzz was happening,” continued Ross.

“The Bafta win and Oscar nomination are two truly amazing accomplishments and everyone involved with Stendhal are absolutely delighted that Brian will be coming along to show the film and to host a talk about it at the festival this year.

Bafta Award Winner and Academy Award nominee Brian J Falconer echoed the sentiments saying that he was looking forward to being a part of the Festival programme this year.

“I was here at Stendhal for year one to support the guys and have been to 3 of the 4 years so far,” said Brian. “So when they got in touch to ask if we would come along and do a special screening of the film we were delighted to oblige.

“I think that it is important for everyone within the arts sector in Northern Ireland to look at any and every opportunity they get to further showcase their work, so while yes the Stendhal boys and have been friends for a long time, even if we weren’t, we would have been very happy to get the call to show the film at a festival of the caliber of Stendhal.”

Since the success of Boogaloo and Graham Brian has been working on two new feature projects and also got married to his beautiful wife Marian.

“Its been a crazy year,” he added, “I have been back and forward to LA a couple of times, been selected to take part in a production mentoring programme, got married, moved house and been chipping away at the day job, so it really has been a busy year so far but it’s been amazing.”

Catch this very special screening of ‘Boogaloo and Graham’ at Stendhal Festival of Art which takes place on August 7 and 8 at Ballymully Cottage Farm, Limavady.