THE late Gene Kelly, who died last Friday aged 83 will live on forever in the exhilarating classic musical, Singin' In The Rain. He will also be remembered for his work in many other movies including An American in Paris, On The Town, It's Always Fair Weather and Les Demoiselles De Rochefort.
One of Australia's most versatile and prolific actors, John Hargreaves, who died last month at the age of 50, first made his mark as the eponymous host in the caustic comedy, Don's Party, and went on to deliver vivid performances in a wide range of movies, including Long Weekend, Beyond Reasonable Doubt and My First Wife. His last leading role was in Richard Franklin's Hotel Sorrento and he will be seen in a cameo in Paul Cox's imminent Lust And Revenge.
The flamboyant American producer, Don Simpson, who died two weeks ago aged 52, worked as a studio executive before embarking on a lucrative producing partnership with producer Jerry Bruckheimer in 1980 with American Gigolo. They scored hit after hit in the Eighties with Flash dance, Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop and its first sequel. After a long lapse, the pair bounced back last year with a trio of hits Bad Boys, Dangerous Minds and Crimson Tide.
Best known in the west for playing the eponymous role in Tarkovsky's Stalker, the Russian actor and director, Alexander Kaidanovsky, has died in Moscow at the age of 49. His feature films included Nikita Mikhalkov's debut film, At Home Among Strangers, A Stranger At Home and he directed a version of Jorge Luis Borges's The Garden and a parable of good and evil set in the year of Stalin's death, The Kerosene Seller's Wife.
DAMIEN O'DONNELL's clever and engaging short film, Thirty Five Aside, has won both the Audience Prize and the Jury Prize for best short film at the prestigious Angers Film Festival in France. The first short film ever to win both awards, Thirty Five Aside was produced by the Dublin based company, Cling films. A week later the film pulled off another double at the Bombay International Film Festival where it took the awards for best short film and best first time director. It will be screened in the Short Cuts programme in the Dublin festival next month.
Meanwhile Little Bird's feature film, My Mother's Courage, also on the Dublin programme, has taken the prizes for best production and best cinematography at the 1995 Bavarian Film Awards Written and directed by Michael Yerhoeven, who made The Nasty Girl, it stars Pauline Collins and is set in 1944 during the German occupation of Budapest. Another Little Bird production, The Hanging Gale, the four part television drama set during the Famine, has won the Gold Awards for best series or serial and for best actor (Michael Kitchen) at the Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuels in Biarritz.
And Xtra Vision's in store video programme, The Xtra Channel, was chosen as one of the finalists from a total of 3,388 entries spanning 35 countries at the annual International Non Broadcast Awards held in New York last month. The award was accepted by Xtra Vision's marketing manager, David Conn, and marketing assistant Ken Robinson.
GALWAYS Film Society launched its new season at a new venue, the Town Hall Theatre, last Sunday night. The very attractive programme includes Land And Freedom, Exotica, Eat Drink Man Woman, Chunking Express, Les Roseaux Sauvages, The Secret of Roan Inish, and Burnt By The Sun. For membership details, contact the venue on (091) 56977.
THE great Sam Peckinpah, who died in 1984, is the, subject of an excellent nine film retrospective programme at the IFC, beginning tomorrow week with his 1964 Major Dundee, which was the victim of studio butchery, and culminating on March 29th with the release of his masterpiece, The Wild Bunch, a victim of censorship butchery when first released here in 1969, and showing here for the first time in its director's cut.
The Peckinpah programme also promises The Ballad Of Cable Hogue, Straw Dogs, Junior Bonner, Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia and The Osterman Weekend. One complaint why is The Wild Bunch, magnificently photographed by Lucien Ballard, relegated to the smaller IFC 2 when it could be shown to much far better advantage on the larger IFC I screen?
