The 11th Galway Film Fleadh, which opens on Tuesday, July 6th and closes on Sunday, July 11th, promises a wide-ranging and stimulating programme from around the world. Once again, the fleadh has succeeded in acquiring an impressive selection of new Irish and Irish-related movies, along with a particularly strong international line-up.
The prolific Irish actor, Gabriel Byrne, will be present for a tribute programme, while the versatile young English director, Michael Winterbottom, will give this year's Directors' Masterclass. And as ever, the programme offers a selection of documentaries and short films, and a number of seminars and workshops.
The venues, once again, will be the Town Hall Theatre and the Omniplex cinema.
Opening Film: Agnes Browne
Given its world premiere at Cannes in May, the film adaptation of Brendan O'Carroll's novel, The Mammy, is set in Dublin in 1967 and directed by Anjelica Huston, who also plays the eponymous Moore Street trader struggling to raise seven children after the death of her husband. The film is at its most successful in etching the firm friendship between Agnes and another trader, Marion, and the two women are appealingly played by Huston and Marion O'Dwyer. O'Carroll's humour, however, is very much a matter of taste.
Closing Film: Felicia's Journey
Writer-director Atom Egoyan has fashioned a thoughtful, intensely atmospheric film from the 1994 novel by William Trevor. It features a remarkably expressive central performance from the young Irish actress, Elaine Cassidy, as the naive 17-year-old Felicia who travels from her home in Co Cork to Birmingham to find her boyfriend (Peter McDonald) when she becomes pregnant by him. Instead she catches the attention of a middle-aged bachelor (a perfectly understated Bob Hoskins) who preys on vulnerable young women.
One of Egoyan's most compelling reflections on his recurring theme of marginalised characters, the film deftly and effectively employs a non-linear structure which cuts seamlessly between past and present as it outlines the personal histories of the two principal characters and draws them together. And it creates and sustains an eerie, chilling mood of foreboding and fear.
Tribute Programme: Gabriel Byrne
The Irish actor will be the subject of the special tribute programme at the fleadh, where he will participate in a public interview on the afternoon of July 11th in the Town Hall Theatre. Six of his films will be screened: David Drury's Defense of the Realm, Joel Coen's Miller's Crossing, Mike Newell's Into the West, Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects, Randall Wallace's The Man in the Iron Mask, and Theresa Connolly's recent film, Polish Wedding, which also features Claire Danes and Lena Olin.
Director's Masterclass
Michael Winterbottom will give this year's Directors' Masterclass on Saturday, July 10th in the Town Hall, and his new movie, Wonderland, arriving fresh from Cannes, will be screened the night before. Winterbottom's credits include Butterfly Kiss, Jude, Welcome to Sarajevo, I Want You, and the imminent Old New Borrowed Blue. Wonderland, his latest film, weaves together the inter-connected experiences of 13 characters over four days in London. Shot with a minimal crew and a hand-held camera, and without lights or extras, Wonderland is accompanied by a gorgeous, swelling Michael Nyman score and features a strong ensemble that includes Molly Parker, Kika Markham, John Simm, Gina McKee, Ian Hart, Shirley Henderson and Stuart Townsend.
Special Events
The film fleadh will feature a strand on new films made in the digital format, with a workshop on digital film-making and screenings of the first three Scandanavian films made under the Dogme '95 intiative - Thomas Vinterberg's Festen, Lars von Trier's The Idiots, and Soren Kragh-Jacobsen's Mifune, a critical favourite at the Berlin Film Festival this year.
Beyond 2000: Training in Film and Television is the theme of this year's fleadh debate on July 8th. A round table discussion with animators will discuss the financing of animation on July 11th.
New Irish Cinema
Among the many new Irish or Irish-related films confirmed for the fleadh are the world premiere of Nichola Bruce's I Could Read the Sky, adapted from the photographic novel by Timothy O'Grady and Steve Pyke, and featuring, among others, Dermot Healy, Stephen Rea and Maria Doyle Kennedy; John Carney and Tom Hall's stylish and compelling Park, which deals with a traumatic encounter between a 14-year-old schoolgirl (Claudia Terry) and a predatory 63-year-old park-keeper (Des Nealon); and the world premiere of Liam O Mochain's low-budget road movie, The Book That Wrote It- self, which features O'Mochain as an Irish writer travelling around the country, with narration by Michael D. Higgins. Two Irish films for children will be screened, the animated feature, Carnivale, and the adventure story The White Pony.
New Irish-related Films
The young Irish director, Damien O'Donnell, makes a remarkably assured feature film debut with the touching and hilarious serious comedy, East is East, which is set among an immigrant Pakistani family in early 1970s Manchester. O'Donnell will attend the fleadh, as will Irish director Eoin Moore with his Berlinmade Break Even. Martin Duffy's US-made drama, The Bumblebee Flies Anyway, which is also screening, is set in a clinic where all but one of the young patients has a terminal disease.
The fleadh will screen three new American movies centred on Irish characters: Nelson Hume's Sun- burn, featuring Cillian Murphy and Barry Ward as Irish students on summer jobs on Long Island; Bill Muir's picture of a young man's involvement with a proRepublican group in an IrishAmerican community in Exiled, featuring Paul Ronan and Jenny Conroy; and George Bazala's picture of two young Irish immigrants in New York in Beyond the Pale.
International Cinema
New American cinema on show includes Go, the eagerly awaited new movie from Swingers director Doug Liman, and starring Sarah Polley, Desmond Askew, Scott Wolf and Breckin Meyer; David Moreton's picture of a boy becoming aware of his homosexuality in Edge of Seventeen, which is set in the 1980s; and Robert Altman's latest, Cookie's Fortune, featuring Glenn Close, Julianne Moore, Liv Tyler, Chris O'Donnell, Patricia Neal and Charles S. Dutton.
From Australia comes the Northern Ireland comic, Jimeoin McKeown, with his hit comedy, The Craic, and Stephan Elliott's long-delayed Welcome to Woop Woop with Rod Taylor. Andreas Dresen's prize-winning German film, Nightshapes, is a loose, episodic story of a dozen outsiders in present-day Berlin. A programme of Asian cinema will include actress Joan Chen's directing debut, Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, Shunji Iwai's April Story, and Tony Bui's Sundance prize-winner, Three Seasons, starring Harvey Keitel.
Documentaries
The subject of last year's fleadh tribute programme, Donal McCann, is also the subject of Bob Quinn's new documentary, It Must Be Done Right, which features contributions from Bernardo Bertolucci, John Turturro et al. Lionel Mill's Us Boys deals with two men in Northern Ireland who have avoided the trappings of the 20th century. Donal Haughey's Books in the Blood follows the story of the Galway bookselling family, the Kennys. Sinead O'Brien's documentary, Luke, reflects on the life and times of the late Luke Kelly.
Ulrike Koch's award-winning documentary, The Saltmen of Tibet, follows a group of Tibetan herdsmen to a holy lake. A Sundance prize-winner this year, Genghis Blues deals with a blues singer discovering the art of "throat-singing". Chuck Workman's The Source looks back at the Beat Generation and contains interviews with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.
Advance booking is now open at the Town Hall. Tel: 091-569777. For further information on the Fleadh call 091-751-655.
