Fitting festival for our city of culture

Last Sunday night was one of celebration for Cork Film Festival - past, present and future - as the event entered its 46th year…

Last Sunday night was one of celebration for Cork Film Festival - past, present and future - as the event entered its 46th year.

The opening reception brought the 600 guests back to its roots and the original venue, the Savoy on Patrick Street, once a grand 2,000-seater cinema and now refurbished as a music venue. The guests included Vida Breen, whose late husband Dermot founded the festival in 1955, and her granddaughter Aishling Breen, who continues in the family tradition by working on this year's festival, as assistant to the event's publicists, Jean Kearney and Ivor Melia.

For the first time in its history, the festival opened this year on a movie rooted and set in Cork, Kirsten Sheridan's film of Enda Walsh's play, Disco Pigs. The 24-year-old director took to the stage with the only slightly older writer, along with producer Ed Guiney and cast members Elaine Cassidy (who was featured again in the festival last night, acting with Nicole Kidman in The Others), Darren Healy and Michael Rawley.

The post-screening party, again at the Savoy, was buzzing with talk of future plans, when Cork takes on the role of European City of Culture - 2005, in the same year that the film festival celebrates its 50th anniversary.

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Although the tone of the evening was decidedly upbeat and good-natured, one seasoned guest took issue with a particularly unfortunate frock. "She must have no sister to tell her what a mistake that outfit is," the guest commented caustically as she sipped her pint of Murphy's.