Check the Gate: Putting Beckett on Film

Beckett on Film was a project aimed at making film versions of all nineteen of Samuel Beckett's stage plays, with the exception of the early and unperformed Eleutheria. This endeavour was successfully completed, with the first films being shown in 2001. The project was conceived by Michael Colgan, artistic director of Dublin's Gate Theatre. The films were produced by Colgan and Alan Moloney for the Irish broadcaster RTÉ, the British broadcaster Channel 4 and the Irish Film Board. Each had a different cast and director, drawn from theatre, film and other fields. Ten of the films were screened at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival and some were shown on Channel 4 in June 2001 and on RTÉ in Ireland in 2001. On Wednesday 6 February 2002, the series won the Best TV Drama award at the 6th The South Bank Show Award at the Savoy Theatre in London. The films never enjoyed a general cinematic release, but for seven days between 2 and 8 February 2001, all nineteen were screened at the Irish Film Institute (then called the Irish Film Centre) in Dublin. For eight days between 13 and 20 September 2001, all nineteen were screened at the Barbican Centre in London, with live appearances from its leading actors and directors. They were also released in a number of videos and as a four-DVD box set in 2003, comprising a souvenir programme, several additional features, and including the video documentary Check the Gate: Putting Beckett on Film. The video documentary, titled Check the Gate: Putting Beckett on Film, directed by Pearse Lehane, was released first on the DVD. It followed closely the project's work. The ten films screened at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in Canada, were: Act Without Words I (dir. by Karel Reisz), Catastrophe (dir. by David Mamet), Endgame (dir. by Conor McPherson), Happy Days (dir. by Patricia Rozema), Krapp's Last Tape (dir. by Atom Egoyan), Not I (dir. by Neil Jordan), Play (dir. by Anthony Minghella), Rockaby (dir. by Sir Richard Eyre), Rough for Theatre I (dir. by Kieron J. Walsh), and What Where (dir. by Damien O'Donnell). In the US, New York-based PBS television station WNET released a programme titled Stage on Screen: Beckett On Film, which showed eight of the films, which were: Catastrophe (2001) dir. by David Mamet, Ohio Impromptu (2002) dir. by Charles Sturridge, Come and Go (2000) dir. by John Crowley, Breath (2001) dir. by Damien Hirst, Play (2001) dir. by Anthony Minghella, Act Without Words II (2001) dir. by Enda Hughes, What Where (2000) dir. by Damien O'Donnell, and Waiting for Godot (2001) dir. by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. They premiered across two dates on 15 September 2002 and 1 January 2003. This programme later won a 2002 Peabody Award at the 62nd annual awards ceremony for the two main production companies, Blue Angel Films Ltd. and Tyrone Productions.