After comments from the jury about how agencies must present their work better if they want to return from Kinsale with shoals of shark heads, it was time for the festival’s top billing. British filmmaker Tony Kaye took to the town’s Temperance Hall stage, alongside some of his paintings warning a puzzled audience to expect ‘Raw truth’.

Stooped over the mic like an aged rock star, Kaye shared excerpts from his 50-year career. From Saatchi & Saatchi’s sepia-tinted British Rail Intercity Relax, complete with chess-playing rabbi and sleepy Penguin logo, he talked technical: “that’s my job”. From ads to movies to music videos, his style is rich and with stand-out characters.

Kaye, 60, insists ads must engage and entertain. The worst crime anyone in adland can commit is to bore people. Sound plays a big role. Even in the days of silent movies, a piano player was banging away. To make his point, he shows a black and white ad for VW Passat (1988) set in New York and featuring Billie Holiday’s God Bless the Child.

In 1990, Kaye was hired by Britain’s Central Office of Information (COI) to make a Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives ad. Kathy Can’t Sleep was one unbroken, unmoving shot of a young girl with curly hair as she watches her mother shout and rage at her father, who has been convicted of killing a young boy while under the influence.

For Kaye, the power of the idea was to focus on the crying child watching in horror as her parents argued – 30 seconds may seem like an eternity, but, in reality, it’s not.

Kaye’s Jewish roots are never far away. Abbey National has Lionel Bart playing the piano for some kids. His work for the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan is a memorial to the Holocaust. It features a series of comments from neo-Nazis who either completely deny that six million Jews were exterminated or condemn Jews outright.

When he was making the movie American History X, he came up with a plan. In the US, motorists can personalise their nameplates, so he decided to drive to Orange County in California in his Lincoln, with a registration which read ‘JEWISH’. He told the white supremacists he met up with he was producing a documentary about neo-Nazism.

“I was scared, heart pounding all the time,” Kaye said. “I come from a very emotional family. We take disadvantages and turn them into advantages. We try and learn more and teach people to get better. Go all over the place in search of truth, even in the form of a music video. It must never be boring or dull, seek originality with flair – show, not tell.”

The power of American History X (1998) is a chilling depiction of racism. Edward Norton is a skinhead white supremacist who goes on a crusade of hatred after his father is murdered. Kaye showed the scene where a violent row breaks out between Norton, his mother (Beverly D’Angelo) and her new Jewish boyfriend, played by Elliot Gould.

His second movie, Lake of Fire (2006), was a documentary about the abortion debate in the US. It opened in Toronto to favourable reviews and was nominated for awards. His second movie feature, Black Water Transit (2009), could not be finished as the production company went bust. Last year, he made his third feature film, Detachment. The movie, which won best picture at this year’s Ramdam Film Festival in Belgium, is a harrowing drama about the decline of the education system in American high schools.

Detachment stars Adrien Brody from The Piano as a substitute teacher who observes school life over a month. The cast also includes Christina Hendricks, better known as Joan in Mad Men. Kaye’s daughter, Betty, plays Meredith, one of the troubled students.

He believes the movie is essentially about love and people reaching out to help others.

In 2006, he got a call from record producer Rick Rubin, who was anxious he met up with Neil Diamond. The introduction led to other gigs, not least his two-day shoot of Dani California for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. He says making videos demands a different sort of creative discipline. With commercials and movies, you cast performers and actors for parts, but with music videos you are dealing with a singer, or band, and its work.

When directing a film, he sees his job as knowing his place and helping an actor do the best he can in the role. Sometimes it’s about what you don’t show, but sometimes you have to show things. There’s a difference between a feeling and emotion. A feeling is deep but emotion comes and goes. He thrives on working with American actors.

Johnny Cash’s foot-tapping God’s Gonna Cut You Down won him a Grammy in 2006. The monochrome video has a host of cameos, including Bono, Johnny Depp, Kris Kristofferson, Kanye West, Sharon Stone, Justin Timberlake, Keith Richards, Sheryl Crow, Dennis Hopper, Kate Moss, Woody Harrelson and The Dixie Chicks.

In Cherry Coke’s Do Something Different an ostrich is ridden around a department store and does