All talk was of films, films, films at the lead-up party to this year's 45th Murphy's Cork Film Festival. In Loving Memory, a short film by Audrey O'Reilly, is to be screened. Her interest in film is due to her father, Tom O'Reilly, who, as a former Murphy's Brewery employee who retired after 40 years, brought them to every festival.
Matt Naughton, from Dublin, is delighted to have a short film called Time in the festival's programme. Anthony O'Keeffe has made Millennium, an overview of Irish culture through time. It's a comedy, he adds.
Kevin Cullinane, brand manager of Murphy's, says the festival involves four venues over eight days and nights, with in excess of 300 films. Mick Hannigan, festival director, says the Irish feature films "from About Adam to Peaches to The Most Fertile Man in Ireland are fresh and cosmopolitan, not grim or set in the 1950s".
Denis McArdle, from Booterstown, is delighted that his film The Nook, which took 10 years to make and was screened on RTE recently is going to be in the festival also. Fintan Connolly, writer and director of Flick, is keeping his eyes open for someone suitable to play the female central character in his next film, Bousies. It will be a road movie, he explains. Marena Hughes and Anna Devlin of Venus Productions say they're "the women behind the genius of Gerry Stembridge". Their film, About Adam, opens the festival, on Sunday October 15th, and runs for a week.