Martin Duffy (filmmaker)

Radio Telefís Éireann in the late 1970s, he expanded into writing children's shows in the 1980s with the Lambert Puppet Theatre, Wanderly Wagon, Fortycoats & Co., Bosco and Scratch Saturday. He left Irish national television in 1989 to become a freelance editor and in 1995 found funding for his first feature film, The Boy from Mercury, a film set in 1950s Dublin about a young boy whose life revolves around the escapism of Saturday afternoon Flash Gordon serials at his local cinema. The film received international critical acclaim and several awards, but was a commercial dud. Martins book about the making of the film, The Road to Mercury, is an insightful look into the mechanisms of the Irish film industry