`There has never been a more exciting time for film," Mick Hannigan, director of the 45th Murphy's Cork Film Festival declared when he launched this year's attractively diverse programme. "Superb feature films are being made here in Ireland and across the world, as well as creative documentaries and wonderful short films. This year in addition, we want to reflect the groundbreaking and hugely entertaining work being done by artists working with digital media."
The festival opens at the refurbished Cork Opera House on Sunday, October 15th, and runs there and at Kino, Triskel and the Gate until October 22nd. Here is a selection of the highlights.
Opening Film
The festival kicks off on an exuberant note with the Irish premiere of Gerry Stembridge's contemporary, Dublin-set romantic comedy, About Adam, with Stuart Townsend as a charming young Dubliner who seduces three sisters from the same family. They are played by Kate Hudson, Frances O'Connor and Charlotte Bradley, with Rosaleen Linehan as their mother.
Closing Film
Following the closing night awards ceremony, the festival will screen the Irish premiere of The House of Mirth, based on the novel by Edith Wharton and marking a fine return to form for director Terence Davies. This enthralling drama features X-Files actress Gillian Anderson cast against type as a New York socialite in the early years of the 20th century, with Eric Stoltz, Laura Linney and Dan Aykroyd.
International Features
The diverse line-up includes Woody Allen's latest comedy, Small Time Crooks; Christopher Nolan's complex American thriller, Memento, starring Guy Pearce; the Swedish drama, Faithless, scripted by Ingmar Bergman and directed by Liv Ullmann; Nagisa Oshima's picture of gay Samurai in the Japanese Gohatto; and Jamie Thraves's London-set The Low Down with Irish actor Aiden Gillen in the role which won him an award at this year's Edinburgh Film Festival.
There are two critically acclaimed new Australian movies, Jonathan Teplizky's Better Than Sex and Andrew Dominik's Chopper; along with Dominik Moll's clever, teasing French thriller, Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien; Karyn Kusama's Sundance prize-winner, Girlfight; Hungarian director Bella Tarr's festival favourite, Werckmeister Harmonies; Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong romance, In the Mood For Love; and Lars von Trier's Danish film, Dancer in the Dark, which may well divide audiences in Cork as sharply as it did in Cannes.
New Irish Cinema
The festival will screen the world premiere of the Irish-produced Peaches, written and directed by Nick Grosso and starring Matthew Rhys, which, though set entirely in London, was filmed mostly in Dublin. Fresh from its festival screenings in Toronto and Belfast is Dudi Appleton's Belfast-set comedy, The Most Fertile Man in Ireland.
Eoin Moore's Conamara shows a woman's dull marriage is shaken when an old flame arrives from Germany. John Forte's Mad About Mambo features William Ash as a West Belfast teenager who, dreaming of emulating his Brazilian football hero, takes Latin American dance lessons. The festival will present five films from the Beckett Film Project: Endgame (directed by Conor McPherson), Not I (Neil Jordan), What Where (Damien O'Donnell), Rough For Theatre I (Kieron J. Walsh) and Catastrophe (David Mamet).
Short Film Competition
Short films have always been an integral feature of the Cork festival and this year the organisers have raised a substantially increased prize fund, making it the largest in Europe for short films.
The Jameson Award for Best International Short Film will be worth £20,000. The Award for Best Irish Short Film, in association with Anner International, is to the value of £25,500. The Claire Lynch Award for Best First Short Film by an Irish Director carries a prize of £8,500, while the Made in Cork Award is now worth £2,000.
Over 40 new Irish short films will be screened, along with the new films from the Frameworks, Oscailt and Premiere series.
Irish Documentaries
The programme includes Brian Friel, Sinead O'Brien's film on the playwright; Pat Collins's Talking to the Dead, dealing with Irish funeral traditions; Estella, Steve Woods's film on the neglected artist, Estella Solomons. Hugh Farley's Ahakista, which concerns the Air India crash off the south-west coast of Ireland 25 years ago. It follows many of the Indo-Canadian relatives as they make an emotional pilgrimage to Bantry Bay. There will also be films on the Book of Kells (The Work of Angels), an eccentric Dublin shopkeeper (The Nook), and a Dubliner's battle against property developers (Essie's Last Stand).
International Documentaries
Highlights are likely to include Chris Marker's film on Andrei Tarkovsky in One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevitch; Oscar-winner Kevin Macdonald's A Brief History of Errol Morris; and one of this year's Oscar-nominated documentaries, Amargosa, dealing with a Broadway dancer who moves to a small town in Death Valley and builds her own opera house.
Look out, too, for Gaea Girls, dealing with Asian women wrestlers; The Alcohol Years, set in the Manchester music scene in the 1980s; Good Kurds, Bad Kurds, dealing with Turkey's treatment of Kurdish immigrants; The Diplomat, on the political situation in east Timor; and The Bradfords Tour America, in which a lesbian and a gay man pose as a married couple and travel through the US with a fake family, exploring prejudices.
Tribute Programmes
There will be three programmes devoted to the work of the enterprising English company, Aardman Animation, which made the Wallace and Gromit shorts and the recent cinema hit, Chicken Run. The Brothers Quay, identical twins from Pennsylvania and resident in London for the past 20 years, will be in Cork to show and discuss their work in stop-motion animation and their only feature film to date, Benjamenta.
Seminars
Screen Training Ireland will present two sessions: one on the realisation and successful marketing of Aardman's Angry Kid shorts, and the other on the transition for film-makers from shorts to features. Short films will be explored in a panel discussion aimed at those intending to continue working in the short film format, and in a discussion of the various short films schemes of Bord Scannan na hEireann.
There will be a focus on filmmaking in Cork, and there will be an exploration of the benefits of sub-titling for international film and television distribution. Peter Wintonick, who made Manufacturing Consent, will give a masterclass on documentary-making. There will be a demonstration of Apple Computers' low-cost, high-performance editing system, and a seminar on digital film-making presented by Soho Images.
For further information call (021) 427-1711, or consult the festival Website: info@corkfilmfest.org
