JANE Campion's film of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady - which was withdrawn at short notice as the opening film of next month's London Film Festival- is set to have its Irish premiere on the opening night of the Foyle Film Festival in Derry on November 16th. The film, which stars Nicole Kidman, John Malkovich, Barbara Hershey and Martin Donovan, was pulled from the London line-up just 10 days before the festival's programme was launched last week.
The Foyle festival has scooped two additional Irish premieres in Ken Loach's Carla's Song, starring Robert Carlyle as a Scot in Nicaragua, and Barry Levinson's Sleepers, based on the current best-selling novel by Lorenzo Carcaterra and featuring Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro, Kevin Bacon, Dustin Hoffman and Jason Patric. The programme for Foyle Film Festival will be launched in Derry next Tuesday.
Two Irish movies figured prominently in the awards at the San Sebastian Film Festival last weekend. Gillies MacKinnon's Trojan Eddie, scripted by Billy Roche and starring Richard Harris and Stephen Rea, shared the Golden Shell for best film with the Spanish entry, Bivana. Trojan Eddie will be shown as the closing film at the Cork festival on Sunday week.
Terry George's Some Mother's Son won the Audience Award for best film at San Sebastian, having been chosen as the festival audience's favourite at Edinburgh in August.
WELL received at a number of recent international film festivals such as Edinburgh and Montreal, Geraldine Creed's first feature film, The Sun, the Moon and the Stars, will have a gala screening in the Screen at D'Olier Street, Cinema, Dublin on Tuesday week, October 15th. The film features Angie Dickinson, Jason Donovan, Gina Moxley and young Irish actresses Elaine Cassidy and Aisling Corcoran. Proceeds from the gala screening will benefit Women's Aid. Tickets, costing £30 each, include admission to the screening and the party afterwards at Renards nightclub. For further details, call (01) 874-5303.
THE great but volatile talent that was Orson Welles, is the subject of an illuminating new book - David Thomson's Rosebud: The Story of Orson Wells - and of a commendable seven-film season which opens at the IFC in Dublin today with Othello and a new 35mm print of Touch of Evil. The IFC season, which continues into next month, also promises The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai, Macbeth, The Immortal Story and inevitably, the wonderful Citizen Kane.
FILM societies all over Ireland are back in action for the autumn and winter months, giving audiences outside Dublin, in particular, a rare and welcome opportunity to see some of the cream of recent world cinema. More than 100 different movies will be screening at more than 26 venues from Cork to Cavan and Sligo to Wexford. Two societies, Galway and Waterford, have converted to 35mm projection facilities for the new season, broadening the range of titles available to them and improving the viewing standards for their members. New societies starting this autumn include Bantry, Co Cork and Ballymahon, Co Longford.
Among the most heavily booked titles on the circuit this year are Smoke, Secrets And Lies, The Flower Of My Secret, Shanghai Triad, Il Postino, Land And Freedom, Dead Man, Burnt By the Sun, The Confessional and classics such as Les Enfants du Paradis and The Big Sleep. For further details of your nearest film society, or for information on how to start one, contact the Federation of Irish Film Societies, 6 Eustace Street, Dublin 2. Tel: (01) 679-4420.
LAST Tuesday was United Nations Day on Ageing and to mark the occasion, the national agency, Age and Opportunity, has organised Images of Ageing, a season of films which have been specially chosen to raise awareness of the range of older people's experience. The season, which runs for three days from today at the IFC, features a strong international programme consisting of Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries. Cynthia Scott's The Company Of Strangers, Claude Sautet's Nelly et M Arnaud, Beeban Kidron's Used People and Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D.
