The Oscar-winning Italian film-maker, Bernardo Bertolucci, will be the subject of the central retrospective programme at the 14th Dublin Film Festival, which runs from April 15th to 25th. Bertolucci, who was 59 last Tuesday, will attend the festival and will participate in a public interview on the closing day. The festival will screen seven of his films, among them four outstanding works from the earlier part of his career - Before the Revolution, The Conformist, The Spider's Stratagem and Last Tango in Paris.
The retrospective will also include Bertolucci's epic, The Last Emperor, which was nominated for and won, nine Oscars, including best picture and best director, along with his other works, The Sheltering Sky, Stealing Beauty and his new film, Besieged. A chamber piece which began life as an hour-long drama for Italian television, it features Thandie Newton as a refugee from an oppressive regime in an unnamed African country and David Thewlis as an eccentric pianist who hires her as a cleaner in Rome, and falls in love with her.
The programme for the festival, which will be launched in Dublin next Wednesday evening, will feature the latest Woody Allen movie, Celebrity, which boasts a stellar cast including Leonardo DiCaprio and Kenneth Branagh; Willard Carroll's Playing By Heart, featuring Sean Connery, Angeline Jolie, Gena Rowlands and Nastassja Kinski; and Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan, with Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton and Bridget Fonda.
Advance booking for the festival opens on Thursday morning at Arthouse in Temple Bar. The box-office number is (01) 605 6848; for general information, call (01) 679 2937.
Shooting started in Dublin last Monday on All About Adam, Gerry Stembridge's second feature as writer/director after Guiltrip. Described as "a wicked contemporary comedy", All About Adam features the fast-rising Irish actor, Stuart Townsend, as an enigmatic young man who arrives into the lives of a Dublin family "with hilarious and bizarre results", according to Anna Devlin and Marina Hughes, the film's producers.
The cast also includes the Australian actress, Frances O'Connor (soon to be seen in Patricia Rozema's movie of Mansfield Park), Kate Hudson (who features in the imminent 200 Cigarettes and whose mother, incidentally, is Goldie Hawn), and Rosaleen Linehan. The film is financed by HAL, Miramax, BBC Films and Bord Scannan na hEireann.
Gerry Stembridge wrote the screenplay for Thaddeus O'Sullivan's Dublin crime drama, Ordinary Decent Criminal, starring Kevin Spacey and Linda Fiorentino, which is now in postproduction. Following leading roles in Shooting Fish and Resurrection Man, Stuart Townsend recently finished working with Daniel Auteuil and Liza Walker on Michel Blanc's The Wrong Blonde.
Filming is now underway in Los Angeles on the new Wim Wenders film, Million Dollar Hotel, written by Nicholas Klein from a story by himself and U2 lead singer, Bono, who is one of the film's producers. Jeremy Davies, Milla Jovovich and Mel Gibson head the eclectic cast which also includes Jimmy Smits, Peter Stormare, Amanda Plummer, Bud Cort and Gloria Stuart.
From over 200 applicants, six short film projects have been selected for funding by Bord Scannan na hEireann and RTE in the latest series of Short Cuts. The successful projects are Forecourt (writer: Katy Hayes; director: Orla Bleahen Melvin; producer: Anne-Marie Casey); Majella McGinty (writer: Morna Regan; director: Kirsten Sheridan; executive producer: Ed Guiney); Dogsbody (writer-director: Karl Golden; producer: Martina Niland); In Loving Memory (writer-director: Audrey O'Reilly; producer: Barry Dignam); Mir Friends (writer: John Fagan; director: Peter Kelly; producer: Neal Boyle); and Between Dreams (writer-director: Ian Fitzgibbon; producer: Paul Donovan).
Spike Lee's critically acclaimed documentary, 4 Little Girls, is one of six feature films to be showcased in a touring programme of US independent productions which plays the IFC in Dublin from April 9th to 15th. Lee's film deals with the bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960s, which caused the deaths of four young girls.
The programme will also feature Steven Soderbergh's "guerilla project", Schizopolis, a satire on late-20th century anxieties; Bob Gosse's picture of shoplifters, played by Henry Thomas and Ronin Tunney, in Niagara Niagara; Toni Collette, Lisa Kudrow and Parker Posey as dissatisfied office workers in Jill Spreecher's Clockwatchers; Nick Stahl, Martha Plimpton and Kevin Anderson in the story of a troubled marriage in Tim Blake Nelson's Eye of God; and Hilary Brougher's offbeat science-fiction film, The Sticky Fingers of Time.
Meanwhile, Cinematek at Triskel Arts Centre in Cork has four first-run features on its March-April programme, among them Alexandr Sokurov's highly regarded Russian film, Mother and Son (March 23rd to 27th); Mohsen Makhamlbaf's Iranian film, A Moment of Innocence (April 20th to 24th); and Jacques Rivette's Secret Defense, featuring Sandrine Bonnaire (April 27th to May 1st). Showing today and tomorrow at Cinematek is Jean Eustache's extraordinary 1973 French film, The Mother and the Whore.
Erick Zonka's first feature film, La Vie Revee des Anges (The Dreamlife of Angels) took the major award for best film at the 24th annual Cesar awards, France's equivalent of the Oscars, which were announced recently in Paris. The film's co-stars, Elodie Bouchez and Natacha Regnier, who shared the best actress prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival, both received Cesars - best actress for Bouchez and best up-and-coming actress for Regnier.
However, it did not take the Cesar for best first film, an award which went to Bruno Podalydes for Dieu Seul Me Voit (Only God Sees Me), which was shown at the French Film Festival in Dublin last December with Podalydes in attendance.
The Cesar for best director went to Patrice Chereau for his sixth feature, Ceux Qui M'Aiment Prendront Le Train (Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train), which received two further Cesars; to Dominique Blanc for best supporting actress and to Eric Gautier for best photography.
Having previously received only a single Cesar nomination despite a series of box office hits, writer-director Francis Veber finally got an award. He received the best script nod for his hugely popular comedy Le Diner de Cons, which has grossed more than $52 million in France. DreamWorks is planning an American remake of the film. Two of the film's actors also took awards, with Jacques Villeret winning best actor and Daniel Prevost best supporting actor.
The award for best foreign film went to Roberto Benigni for La Vita e Bella.
The Galway-based production company, Magma Films, has secured a major breakthrough into the American television market. The Fox network has acquired 26 half-hour episodes of Magma's animated series, Pigs Next Door, for primetime transmission in the autumn.
