Here’s the little film that I directed. Please click through and rate it if you like it, it’s part of the Dublin Pride Film Shorts Awards, and on Sunday the highest rated gets a gold star or something. All nine films are here.

For more info on how we made the film, please take a look at the film’s blog. Thanks to everyone involved, it was fun. It’s showing in the Galway Film Fleadh on Saturday 11th July, at 10pm in Cinemobile, before the superb Identities.

The accusation that Cathal Ó Searcaigh is an exploitative sex-tourist is a lie. This is the conclusion drawn at the end of a twenty-minute film, The Truth about Kathmandu, which will be shown as part of Féile na Gréine: the Solstice Arts Festival, which runs in Waterville, Co. Kerry from Sunday 21st to Tuesday 23rd June. The film consists of interviews that the poet Paddy Bushe conducted with many of those who played important parts in the film Fairytale of Kathmandu. “What I heard in Kathmandu raises huge questions for both Vinegar Hill Productions and RTÉ”, Bushe says. “The young people to whom I spoke felt extremely angry at being exploited. They were angry, however, not at Ó Searcaigh, but at the way they felt used, abused and exploited by the film. These are the Nepalese young people a joint RTÉ/Vinegar Hill statement dismissed as being peripheral subjects, whose permission was not needed.”

Naryan Pant was the young man who was central to accusations made by Fairytale of Kathmandu. In an interview with Bushe, he makes very specific claims of intimidation, bribery and rehearsed answers in relation to his interview in the Vinegar Hill film. He also says that he contacted the film-maker soon after that interview was done, and requested that the interview should not be used, an interview for which he did not sign a permission form. A student leader says he was offered money to give an interview critical of Ó Searcaigh, an offer he declined. The young man in the advertising poster for the film, still on the film website, expresses his anger at how he was manipulated into something “false”. He signed no permission form, and says he would never give permission to be used in the film Fairytale of Kathmandu became. “Would young Westerners have been treated like this?” asks Bushe at the end of the film.

It was in the context of this filmed material that Cathal Ó Searcaigh agreed to go on the Late Late Show earlier this year. The show’s production team had seen some of the material, and it was to have been background material for the interview. RTÉ management’s subsequent insistence on a pre-recorded interview, with pre-conditions and with an RTÉ lawyer present, caused Ó Searcaigh to withdraw from what, in effect, would have been an appearance censored by RTÉ’s corporate management..

The film will be shown in Tech Amergin, Waterville, Co. Kerry on Monday 22nd June at 2.30 pm. See www.feilenagreine.com for full programme.

Anyway, I have been using team blogs to keep people informed of a couple of creative projects I’m planning. They’re a remarkably simple and effective way of keeping a team of people involved, generating interest and enthusiasm, brainstorming and networking.

One of them is about a five-minute documentary I’m going to be making, as part of the excellent Filmbase Documentary Filmmaking course. It’s about adolescence, memory, and emerging gay identity across the generations. When our little team of five have something to show for ourselves, the blog can go public, and so people will be able to read about the gestation process behind the end product, the final film.

I am happy to say I’ve no problem finding young people to take part in the film. But what I’ve come across is the sad fact that elderly gay people are really hard to find. Of course, they exist, but they are not in contact with younger gay people, or even middle-aged gay people. They are disconnected from the gay community, which makes me really question our claim to call it a community. President Mary McAleese asked the question “Where are all the old men?” last year, and has successfully begun to address that question by piloting an outreach programme for old men in Ireland. So, I’m asking, where are all the old gay men and women?

Naturally, the pub and club scene is not for them. But I’m surprised there isn’t a social group for them somewhere, at least in Dublin. In general, gay old people aren’t grandparents, so the chances are that they are much more isolated than their heterosexual counterparts. Are they back in the closet, living in old people’s homes dotted around the country? Who is remembering them? Who is looking after them?

Neasa Ní Chianáin suggested making a film which would explore ‘‘the harem of young men’’ befriended by Cathal Ó Searcaigh in a proposal made two years before filming the controversial Fairytale of Kathmandu documentary.

Documents obtained by The Sunday Business Post also show that the filmmaker said the film would focus on ‘‘Cathal Ó Searcaigh, in love’’ and would deal with how the poet tried to exert control over his relationships in Nepal.

I feature in it, although I’m not sure how much. A story of mine (in Diary of a Man), about the so-called phenomenon of “bug chasers”, caught the eye of the director, Richard Pendry. So, I spent a pleasant afternoon in Clapham Common last summer talking to the reporter, Ricky Dyer, about life, death, the internet, and sexual fantasy. I have a good feeling about the programme, despite the fact that the subject is horribly easy to sensationalize. The reality is very complex and subtle, which is not, generally, television’s forté. But I got the sense that everyone involved was trying their best to tackle it with integrity and sensitivity.

I’ll look at the programme, but I’m not sure I’m going to like it. I saw the review last Friday on Newsnight Review and I wasn’t encouraged.