THE CHAMPION (REMEMBERING ALAN PARKER)
When I was 16, I entered a Young Film Critics contest run by Belfast's Queen's Film Theatre. I was one of two runners-up in the schools competition and the both of us had reviewed Roland Joffe's Jesuits in the jungle drama 'The Mission'. My prize was a film on VHS video for my school and a trip to the Dublin set of the Channel 4 miniseries of Maeve Binchy's 'Echoes'. My fellow runner-up and I also went to a Dublin Film Festival screening of the Coen Brothers' 'Raising Arizona' with the QFT's Michael Open and an Italian embassy reception in honour of the director Francesco Rosi where we met Ken Russell. The winner of the competition, however, reviewed Martin Scorsese's comedy 'After Hours' and Alan Parker was the judge. Unable to attend the event announcing the winners, Parker sent a typically tongue in cheek message to us all, commending us on our reviews but explaining that the reason the rest of us didn't take the top pr