Celtic Media Festival Shortlist announced

CELTIC MEDIA FESTIVAL SHORTLIST ANNOUNCED AS OPENING EVENT SET TO TURN FESTIVAL ‘UPSIDE DOWN'

Celtic Media Festival today (Tuesday, 18th January 2011) announces the prestigious shortlist of the 2011 Bronze Torc Awards for Excellence, which celebrate the very best of film, television, radio and digital media to emerge from within the Celtic nations.

98 productions, companies and personalities have been shortlisted across the 19 award categories  - including  factual, arts, drama, entertainment, sport, current affairs, children and young people's programmes, as well as radio station of the year and radio presenter - with a total of 450 entries having been submitted from across Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, the Isle of Man and Ireland.  The winners will be chosen by an esteemed panel of judges and announced over the three days of the festival. 

Shortlisted titles include; Spotlight: The Iris Robinson Investigation, the explosive exposé of the scandal involving the wife of Northern Ireland's First Minister; the controversial Scottish factual series The Scheme; and the hugely popular television drama series Sherlock which was produced in Wales.

The festival, which this year returns to its birthplace of Scotland's Western Isles and will run from April 13-15th, also unveils the opening event - a special screening of the new documentary feature Upside Down: The Story of Creation Records. 

The screening will be followed by a Q & A with the label's enigmatic founder, Alan McGee, film director Danny O'Connor, and musician Mark Gardener (Ride) who also curated the soundtrack.  Later, Alan McGee will take to the decks in an evening of music no-doubt inspired by the Creation's portfolio, including Jesus and Mary Chain, Teenage Fanclub, Primal Scream, Super Furry Animals, and of course, Oasis.

Upside Down, produced and directed by Danny O'Connor, is the definitive and fully authorised documentary of the highs and lows of the UK's most inspired and dissolute independent record label - Creation Records.  Millions of sales on both sides of the Atlantic, near bankruptcy, pills, thrills, spats, prats, successes, excesses, pick-me-ups and breakdowns; all spiralled together to create some of THE most defining music of the twentieth century, which will be brought to the Stornoway community as part of this year's Celtic Media Festival.

Donald Campbell, Chairman of the Celtic Media Festival comments: "We're extremely excited to be returning to the Western Isles, where the Festival laid its roots. In the Festival's 32 year history, we've watched it go from strength to strength and are confident this year's fantastic line up will make this one the best yet."

Alan McGee, founder of Creation Records, comments: "Danny O'Connor is a genius. The film is way past my personal expectations of what I expected.  This film will make Danny famous as a director and an artist and for once it's deserved."

Danny O'Connor, director of Upside Down, comments: ""The fifties gave us Elvis and Sun Records, the sixties threw up Tamla Motown, Stax were amazing during the seventies but for the last two decades of the Twentieth Century a small independent label from North London took over. Creation was an independent label, but it didn't wear a cardigan, it didn't apologise. There was a real power in its punch on every level from the Mary Chain and ‘Upside Down' to Oasis and ‘Rock N Roll Star'. If you think that rock'n'roll is all about swagger - this is your film.This is the story of rock n roll in all its majesty and all its accompanying nightmares.The story of the last great rock n roll label." D. O' Connor