Box offices: Filmbase, Curved Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2
Cineworld, Parnell Street, Dublin 1
contact Details: Tel 01 672 8861 Email info@dubliniff.com www.dubliniff.com
INTRODUCTION
DIRECTOR’S INTRODUCTION
welcome to the all new 6th jameson Dublin International Film Festival.
we have a brand new look for this year’s festival programme, but as in previous years we bring the cream of Irish and international cinema to the best audiences in the world. It has been a personal pleasure to explore the incredible range and diversity of world cinema over the past year and I am delighted that we have been able to secure key titles from such emerging national cinemas such as Lebanon, Israel and estonia for this year’s event.
our opening night film is something very special indeed: martin mcDonagh’s In Bruges is undoubtedly one of the films of the year, boasting an outstanding Irish cast including colin Farrell, Brendan gleeson and ciarán hinds, and this witty and mischievous tale will enthral all who fall under its spell. our final presentation is the world premiere of another eagerly awaited Irish film. playwright eugene o’Brien has adapted his award-winning stage play Eden for the screen, and the result is a beautiful slow-burning melodrama about small town Ireland.
Film history is represented by the special presentations of joseph Losey’s wonderful Don Giovanni and g.w. pabst’s Pandora’s Box (which will have musical accompaniment by 3epkano), while the festival will spotlight the work of the filmmaker, artist, writer, critic and curator, jonas mekas, a driving force behind american independent cinema and the founder and artistic director of anthology Film archives in new York. with a series of portraits of musicians, such as (Return to Goree with Yossou n’Dour and The Mali Project with Liam o’maonlai and the aural and visual extravaganza that is U2 3D), we will explore the contemporary connections between film and music. we have placed Dublin centre stage in our Dublin on screen programme. a series of outdoor screenings will showcase the role of Dublin has played as both backdrop and character in front of the camera and through a series of talks, the festival will highlight the role that local cinemas have played in the lives of Dubliners since james joyce opened the Volta in 1906.
named after the Volta cinema, the Festival Board will recognise the contribution made to the Irish cinema by presenting a Lifetime achievement award to Leo ward, an important member of the Irish cinema landscape. This year, we have singled out two actors who will receive this year’s career achievement award the Volta, the great Brendan gleeson is one of the stars of our opening film and the festival wishes to applaud both his role in this film and his wonderful body of work. Daniel Day Lewis’ performance in There Will be Blood has drawn superlatives and paul Thomas anderson’s epic tale of turn of the century prospectors is another festival highlight.
with the support of the Irish Film Board, the festival has developed a number of initiatives this year, our international film critics panel, our celebration of Irish cinema both past and present and our Irish Talent spotlight. outside of the festival, but very much inkeeping with this increased commitment to Irish filmmakers, the festival is delighted to announce the walt Disney studios motion pictures (Ireland) screenwriting award 2008.
This year’s ambitious developments are made possible through two key partnerships, our title sponsor jameson and the arts council, and our thanks go to both for their ongoing support. I endorse michael’s thanks to our Board of Directors and joanne’s recognition of a wonderful team of colleagues who are recognised elsewhere in this programme. on a personal note, I wish to recognise the enormous contribution of filmmakers and distributors who have given so generously of their films to our event, it is much appreciated and we hope we can do justice to their faith in our event.
my final words are directed to my fellow film fans: it’s an unique opportunity to see such a diverse and exciting range of films and for many, the festival represents their sole Irish screening. enjoy.
Gráinne Humphreys, Festival Director
Gráinne Humphreys, Director, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival
INTRODUCTION
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER’S INTRODUCTION
hello and welcome. having been at the helm as the new ceo of the jameson Dublin International Film Festival since august, I have had the perfect opportunity to see ‘behind the scenes’ of the festival. The dedication and enthusiasm that is shown by everyone involved is truly astounding and humbling.
The jameson Dublin International Film Festival is the largest film festival in the country and we have instigated a three year development strategy to consolidate our place within the Irish and international film landscape. we have deepened our relationships with our core supporters and look towards the next three years to developing the festival. we are committed to developing our artistic programme, and increasing our international relationships with film makers, producers and distributors.
For the first time in the festival we have an outdoor programme, Dublin on screen, which brings cinema to the public, and highlights the festival around the city centre. This initiative is as a result of increased support from Dublin city council and the Irish Film Board. we also acknowledge the increase in funding from BcI and Failte Ireland which allow us to expand the breadth of the festival event programme. we are delighted to be working with our funding partners, and look forward to their investing in the festival as we develop this strategy.
as our title sponsor since 2002, jameson has provided the festival with vital support that allows us to grow from year to year and for this we thank them heartily. The team at jameson are extremely supportive and together we look forward to the future. once again, The Irish Times, cineworld & Fm104 are giving tremendous support to the festival. This year we are delighted to welcome the support of The conrad hotel, mcconnells advertising, windmill Lane post production, msL mercedes-Benz, carlton screen advertising, Tower Records & cine electric.
our venues for the jameson Dublin International Film Festival in 2008 are cineworld, savoy, screen, the Irish Film Institute and this year we welcome the addition of movies@Dundrum. Thank you to the staff at each and every one of these cinema venues who are so supportive to the festival. every year we are supported by the representative embassies and consulates who collaborate with us by supporting their national films. This assistance is always welcome, and in particular this year we especially recognise the Instituto Italiano who have invested in our Italian series.
I am indebted to the team in the jameson Dublin International Film Festival office for all their hard work, not only at festival time but year round. my special thanks to the fulltime jDIFF team who have helped me in my first year as ceo and also huge thanks are also due to our fantastic festival team and all our wonderful volunteers. Last but by no means least, I must especially thank gráinne humphreys, Festival Director, for working with me on the preparation of this years jameson Dublin International Film Festival. gráinne’s festival programme is exciting, diverse and thought provoking. I hope you enjoy it.
Joanne O’Hagan, CEO
Joanne O’Hagan, CEO, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival
INTRODUCTION
CHAIRMAN’S INTRODUCTION
all things must pass, as the late george harrison observed on the title track of his adventurous 1970 triple album. or, as David mamet noted in the title of his 1988 movie, Things Change
a great deal has changed at jameson Dublin International Film Festival over the past 12 months, with many of the original team moving on to new challenges and responsibilities.
I extend my appreciation to former hospitality manager Una spillane and former production manager mick o’connell, both of whom remained admirably calm and organised throughout the rollercoaster ride of the festival over those five years.
Thanks to Richard carolan, for his valuable contribution as festival manager last year; to glenn hogarty as programme manager in 2007 and to his predecessors in that role, martha kirby and anne Rice; and to martin mahon for his support and his programme notes over those five years.
particular tribute is due to Rory concannon for all his dynamism, imagination and resourcefulness from the inception of the festival up to the end of last year’s event. and all of us on the board of directors owe a great deal to David mcLoughlin, who cofounded the event with me in 2002 and served as an impeccable chairman for the past five years. The good news is that David is staying on the board.
my personal favourite event at the festival has been the annual surprise Film. I savoured all the anticipation that built up to the revelation of the movie’s title when the curtains opened on the savoy 1 screen. It was my turn to be surprised a few hours later on closing night last February, when David presented me with one of the festival’s newly created awards, the Voltas, to mark my service as festival director since 2002. I treasure that.
what has not changed this year is the festival’s stated commitment to celebrate world cinema in all its forms and to transcend the experience of a visit to the cinema by bringing as many Irish and international guests to discuss their films with the audience after the screenings.
Film speaks a universal language, with or without sub-titles. however, such are the vagaries of distribution and exhibition, and such is the increasing dominance of mainstream movies, that many of the fine films showing in the festival never again will be seen on an Irish cinema screen.
The festival serves a vital function in presenting the dedicated audience with an annual opportunity to discover and savour world cinema on a vast scale and in the unique shared experience of a cinema - which continues to transcend home viewing regardless of how large one’s new plasma screen is, or how hi-tech one’s sound system is.
This festival is designed for people who love movies – the audience, from the hardcore season ticket holders who will take holiday time to immerse themselves in the event, to the more casual cinemagoers who will purchase maybe a couple of tickets for high-profile presentations and then will be tempted to take a chance on some less well-known films that attract their attention.
The new jameson Dublin International Film Festival director, gráinne humphreys, has worked assiduously to assemble the exciting, wonderfully diverse programme of films that awaits you over 10 days in February. having long been aware of gráinne’s passion for cinema and her flair for programming, it came as no surprise to me that she has responded to this task with such distinction.
The festival’s new chief executive, joanne o’hagan, has a background in production that has served her very well indeed as she tackled all the complexities involved in bringing together all the disparate elements constituting what is now Ireland’s most ambitious and comprehensive film event. joining joanne and gráinne in the front line is the new festival operations manager, sarah smyth, who has applied her considerable expertise to several areas of the event in previous years.
This festival could not have happened - and grown on such a scale - without the invaluable support of jameson Irish whiskey, the event’s title sponsor from the beginning. happily, jameson continues to provide the vital backing that secures the existence and development of the festival.
on behalf of the board of directors, thanks to jameson, to The arts council and the Irish Film Board, and to all the festival’s sponsors. and I gratefully acknowledge all the time, energy and commitment so generously given by the members of the festival board.
welcome to jDIFF 2008.
Michael Dwyer, Chairman
Michael Dwyer, Chairman
Jameson Dublin International Film Festival
INTRODUCTION
IRISH DISTILLERS CHIEF EXECUTIVE INTRODUCTION
Paul Duffy Chief Executive Officer, Irish Distillers
jameson whiskey is world renowned for its great taste. This is one of the reasons for its growing International appeal and it’s one of the key things which draws new consumers into the brand. It also has great taste in film and is proud to support the Dublin International Film Festival for the 6th consecutive year.
This year we have developed an intensive marketing campaign to leverage our partnership with the festival. It will consist of TV, print and outdoor advertising, film promotions in bars and off-licences around Dublin, a film competition for up and coming film makers and a website for all the latest news on the festival and our activities.
THE ARTS COUNCIL INTRODUCTION
It is a great honour to introduce the jDIFF programme for 2008.
since its inception in 2003, the Festival has shown an impressive mix of indigenous and international film. This year, however, marks an important moment in DIFF’s growth and evolution: it is gráinne humphreys’ first full year as Festival Director, and will undoubtedly reflect the experience, passion and ambition that she invests in the world of film.
DIFF represents a fusion of two worlds: the world of the festival and the world of film. This combination is powerful.
Festivals provide invaluable opportunities for artistic risk-taking and the development of new and different audiences. The electric atmosphere of an arts festival motivates the public to venture to places that they would normally go, to saturate themselves in an artform, to stretch themselves as audience members.
Research consistently points towards Irish audiences’ interest and commitment to film and cinema-going. The Irish public’s love affair with the silver screen is relentless: seemingly no innovations in home movie viewing can entice us away from our cinemas.
capitalising on this fusion, DIFF creates a concentrated opportunity for audiences to immerse themselves in the wonderful world
The past 12 months have been very exciting for jameson as the brand continues to go from strength to strength around the world. our marketing activities have played a crucial role in sustaining our dynamic growth rates. we are continuing to focus a significant part of our promotional activity around the world on film. In the last year we have added a partnership deal with Robert De niro’s Tribeca Film Festival in new York to the list of other major international festivals we have an involvement with.
we look forward to a successful 2008 festival and invite you to join us for a drink at one of the after show parties and discover the great taste of jameson for yourselves!
Paul Duffy, CEO, Irish Distillers
of the weird, the offbeat, the rude, the personal –at its best, cinema allows audiences a glimpse of what it means to be human.
The possibility for risk-taking within the festival means that audiences have the chance to engage with a broader range of films than they could ever imagine – from all across the world –and at a good festival, like DIFF, this exposure is met with opportunities for critical reflection and debate.
In Ireland, our film industry continues to punch above its weight. Irish screenwriters continue to impress us and those abroad with their originality of voice. But the challenges of the industry’s marketing and distribution systems often meant that much of this work does not reach an audience. The Dublin International Film Festival has demonstrated a commitment to Irish film, ensuring that these films reach a public, that these films’ creators are recognised for their unique and valuable contribution to the artistic landscape. From the arts council’s point of view, this is vital, and we are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to see so much exciting work on the big screen.
I would like to congratulate gráinne, her team, the Board of the festival and the extensive network of volunteers and wish them every success with this year’s festival.
Mary Cloake, Director, Arts Council
Mary Cloake Director, Arts Council
SCHEDULE
IN BRUGES Savoy 1 / 8.30pm H
BATTLE IN SEATTLE Savoy 1 / 11.00am H
MAN OF CINEMA: PIERRE RISSENT IFI 1 / 1.00pm
CASSANDRA’S DREAM CIneworld 17 / 1.00pm
SATURNO CONTRO SCreen 1 / 1.30pm
ISk A’S JOURNEy SCreen 2 / 1.45pm
CIT y OF MEN CIneworld 17 / 3.45pm
UNDER THE BOMBS SCreen 1 / 3.45pm
CALIFORNIA DREAMIN SCreen 2 / 3.45pm
THE MALI PROJECT IFI 1 / 6.00pm
TRICkS SCreen 1 / 6.15pm
PINGPONG SCreen 2 / 6.45pm
THERE WILL BE BLOOD Savoy 1 / 7.00pm H
SILENT LIGHT SCreen 1 / 8.30pm
THE MILky WAy SCreen 2 / 8.50pm
LUMIERE BROTHERS FOOTAGE o’Connell St / tbC H
H Gala PreSentation. H PleaSe check our webSite For ScreeninG tiMeS
JONAS MEk AS PROGRAMME 1 IFI 2 / 1.00pm
ANGEL SCreen 1 / 1.30pm
MALA NOCHE SCreen 2 / 2.00pm
MARGOT AT THE WEDDING CIneworld 17 / 2.00pm
yOU, THE LIVING SCreen 1 / 4.00pm
JOy DIVISION SCreen 2 / 4.00pm
LATE BLOOMERS + FAREWELL PACkETS OF TEN CIneworld 17 / 4.00pm
PANEL ON INTERNATIONAL FILM CRITICISM IFI / 4.00pm
CHACUN SON CINEMA IFI 1 / 6.00pm
A MAN’S JOB SCreen 2 / 6.20pm
THE BAND’S VISIT CIneworld 17 / 6.20pm
PRICELESS SCreen 1 / 6.30pm
WAR ON DEMOCRACy SCreen 1 / 2.00pm
AUTUMN BALL SCreen 2 / 2.00pm
VACATION SCreen 1 / 4.00pm
JONAS MEk AS PROGRAMME 2 IFI 2 / 4.00pm
CARGO 200 SCreen 2 / 4.30pm
COMRADES IN DREAMS SCreen 1 / 6.00pm
FAIRy TALE OF kATHMANDU IFI 1 / 6.00pm
SAVAGE GRACE CIneworld 17 / 6.10pm
ESTAMAGO SCreen 2 / 6.30pm
UNRELATED movIeS@dUndrUm / 8.15pm
RETURN TO GOREE SCreen 1 / 8.20pm
CHARLIE BARTLETT + THE SOUND OF PEOPLE CIneworld 8 / 8.20pm
CONFESSIONS OF A GAMBLER movIeS@dUndrUm / 8.00pm THE ORPHANAGE CIneworld 17 / 8.30pm
kAT yN CIneworld 17 / 8.30pm H
NIGHTBUS SCreen 2 / 8.30pm
FUNNy GAMES SCreen 1 / 8.40pm
BLIND MOUNTAIN SCreen 2 /8.45pm
qUACkSER FORTUNE HAS A COUSIN IN THE BRONX GravedIGGerS / tbC H
SAVIOR’S SqUARE SCreen 1 / 2.00pm
FREE WILL SCreen 2 / 2.00pm
JONAS MEk AS PROGRAMME 3 IFI 2 / 4.00pm ONCE SCreen 1 / 4.15pm
VALzER SCreen 2 / 5.30pm
IFB SHORTS IFI 1 / 6.00pm
HONEyDRIPPER CIneworld 8 / 6.00pm
THE MOURNING FOREST SCreen 1 / 6.10pm
REDACTED movIeS@dUndrUm / 8.15pm
IRINA PALM + THE WEDNESDAyS SCreen 2 / 8.20pm
My BROTHER IS AN ONLy CHILD + BLIND EyE CIneworld 17 / 8.30pm
As a consequence of censorship and licensing requirements relating to the temporary importation of films for the Festival, it is necessary under Irish law that the Festival operate as a private club. Possession of a ticket for any film during the festival ensures membership to the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2008 and the cost of membership is included in the ticket price at the time of purchase. As a result, it is an inflexible condition of the Festival
that membership is limited to those aged 18 years or older. Membership will not be charged on those films already certified.
sPeCial noTes:
The managements of both the Festival and the relevant venues reserve the right of admission.
Possession of a ticket does not reserve a specific seat position excepting at Opening and Closing Galas.
A booking fee of €1 applies to phone and online booking.
Latecomers will only be admitted at the discretion of festival or venue staff.
Concessions: Students and OAPs are entitled to a 10% discount on all screenings starting before 5.30pm daily. Proof of identity required. all ticket purchases and festival attendance are subject to Terms and Conditions, which can be found at www.dubliniff.com.
DUBLIN ON SCREEN
DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL LIBRARy EVENTS
Since the opening of Dublin’s very first dedicated picture house – James Joyce’s Volta in 1909, cinemas have offered us entertainment, escapism and education. They have provided us with a unique way to enjoy films as part of an audience, be it in the simple venues of the 1910’s, the lavish movie palaces of the 1930’s, or the sleek multiplexes of today. We have met and mingled here, courted and kissed, re-enacted Westerns, shouted at the screen, laughed and cried, sought distraction or shelter, queued for the latest blockbuster release, discussed our favourite film stars and anticipated the trailers, only to finally sink back into our seats and enjoy the show. We grew up with them, saw the change and too often disappear. Cinemas are woven into the city’s fabric; they are part of our memories and our worth. Their purpose and the value of their heritage are manifest. For which we can make small efforts with very positive consequences.
Marc zimmerman, The History of Dublin Cinemas
Pearse St, Administrative Headquarters, Dublin City Centres
The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, in association with the Dublin Library Services is delighted to present a programme celebrating Dublin Cinemas. A series of twelve talks will take place across the festival dates in libraries across the city. Starting in Pearse Street Library on February 16th, these events will explore the history of cinema-going in Dublin, identify the local cinemas in these areas, the film programmes, premieres and guests, the architecture of such buildings and the memories, past and present these venues provoke. A wonderful line-up of film writers, historians, filmmakers and critics will participate in this city wide celebration.
To celebrate the vital role which Dublin has played on screen, the festival is delighted to present 6 programmes of films and non-fiction material shot on the streets of Dublin since 1897. Many Dubliners will remember the shooting of such classic Dublin films as Quackser Fortune Has A Cousin in the Bronx and The First Great Train Robbery, while our archive presentations will chart the changes in Dublin’s cinematic landscape.
I hope that Dublin on Screen will be an opportunity for DIFF to go out on the streets of Dublin and to bring a little bit of Irish cinema history to the citizens of our capital city.
NOTE: Please check our website for details of screening times – www.dubliniff.com
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold Smithfield Market, Dublin 1 (1965 / United kingdom / 112 minutes)
THE VOLTAS
THE FESTIVAL CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
Following our successful launch of our Volta awards last year, the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival is delighted to celebrate three individuals who have made significant contributions to the world of film. The recipients of the awards are chosen at the discretion of the festival’s board of directors.
The awards are named the Voltas after Ireland’s first dedicated cinema, the Volta Picture Theatre on Mary Street in Dublin, which opened on December 20, 1909. The idea for the cinema came from no less an artistic figure than James
BRENDAN GLEESON
Joyce. He was living in Trieste at the time and he persuaded a group of Italian entrepreneurs to establish a cinema in Dublin along the lines of their Volta Picture Palace in Bucharest.
THE VOLTAS - THE DESIGNER
The festival commissioned Bettina Seitz to design its new award, the Volta. Now based in Ireland, she was born in Germany and studied sculpture there and in Italy. Drawing on nature and emotions as a source for exploring shapes, her sculptures revolve around the human form, especially the female form. Through
the stylisation of the figure into flowing curves and full volumes, they often possess a meditative quality.
Working mainly in bronze and reconstituted stone, Bettina Seitz is especially known for her larger scale sculptures for private garden and public spaces. She has exhibited her work regularly in various European countries and has worked on many private and public commissions, including portrait commissions.
A former teacher, Irish actor Brendan Gleeson spent the 1990s earning an increasing amount of acclaim for his work in a variety of films, most notably John Boorman’s The General (1998). Gleeson, who made his feature film debut in Jim Sheridan’s The Field (1990), first made an impression on audiences in the role of Hamish, William Wallace’s hulking ally in Braveheart (1995).
In 1997, the actor was given his first crack at a starring role in I Went Down, a likeable black comedy that cast him as a thick-skulled hitman. The role brought him a greater dose of recognition and respect on both sides of the Atlantic, but it was Boorman’s The General that truly received international attention. The story of real-life Irish criminal Martin Cahill, the film featured Gleeson in its title role, and his cocky, assured portrayal of Cahill was widely deemed the best part of an altogether excellent film.
His career flourishing, it was only a matter of time before Gleeson had the opportunity to expand his resumé to include the occasional Hollywood blockbuster. That opportunity came by way of John Woo’s Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), which cast Gleeson as one of the film’s resident villains. After carefully balancing his roles between the mainstream and the more low-key, character-driven films in later 2000 and into 2001, Gleeson headed back to Hollywood with his lively turn as Lord Johnson-Johnson in Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Gleeson remained a presence in high-profile films over the ensuing two years. In 2004 he could be seen in both the M. Night Shyamalan brain-bender The Village and the sweeping historical epic Troy while the following year found the actor in the fourth installment in the Harry Potter franchise, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Subsequent years found him teaming with Cillian Murphy for the Neil Jordan comedy Breakfast on Pluto and reprising his role of Alastor “Mad Eye” Moody in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007).
Rebecca Flint
DANIEL DAy-LEWIS
An actor whose on-screen intensity is rivalled only by his off-screen intensity, Daniel DayLewis is one of the most acclaimed performers of his generation.
Born in London on April 29, 1957, he was the son of Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis and actress Jill Balcon. The influence of the cinema was particularly strong on his mother’s side: she was the daughter of Sir Michael Balcon, the onetime head of Ealing Studios.
It was in 1986 that Day-Lewis first stepped into the realm of international acclaim. Two films which featured him in prominent roles, My Beautiful Laundrette and A Room With a View, opened on the same day in New york.
The New york Film Critics Circle took particular note of his talent, naming him the year’s Best Supporting Actor for his work in both films. For his performance as the cerebral palsy-stricken author and artist Christy Brown in Jim Sheridan’s My Left Foot (1989). Day-Lewis won American
LEO WARD
A former professional footballer with Manchester City, Leo Ward decided to get into the cinema business in the 1940s. Following the outbreak of World War II, Leo returned to Dublin and resumed his professional football career with Drumcondra in the League of Ireland.
Using the £500 he earned from his testimonial match, he hawked a film called The Hills of Donegal to cinemas in Dublin, but it was rejected. Undeterred, he put it on in Cork and quickly doubled his investment.
He formed the film distribution company Abbey Films on the back of this success. He then united with his half-brother kevin Anderson, and they started to buy cinemas around the country with rapidity. In 1955, the pair purchased their first cinema in Lucan, Co Dublin, Ward then toured the country and struck deals with small-town cinema owners - either buying them out or taking a controlling interest.
As astute film buyer, Leo sourced distribution rights of many of the first Carry On movies including Carry On Sergeant and Carry On Nurse from the producers
and British Academy Awards as Best Actor for his work, sealing a reputation as one of the most engaging leading men of his generation. Day-Lewis’ screen appearances subsequently took on a more sporadic quality, but he was drawn out of his self imposed exile for his role as Bill the Butcher in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. Day-Lewis’ methodic approach to creating convincing screen characters would ultimately pay off as many cited his Oscar nominated performance as one of the most convincing of the talented actor’s career. His current picture, There Will Be Blood, screening in this year’s festival, sees him digging for gold in California then striking lucky in the oil business, the film charting the corrosive effect of his pursuit of wealth and power.
Rebecca Flint
Anglo Amalgamated Films. He made money on the individual titles then later coupled up some of the titles as double-bills to great effect.
Leo bought the re-issue rights for the first seven James Bond films for £500, 30 years ago. He ran them back-to-back at his cinema on St Stephen’s Green in Dublin to enormous success.
While continuing to buy some existing cinemas, he also began to build new sites. He continued his investment in Irish cinema and took over Capitol & Allied Cinemas which gave him a foothold in Dublin city centre in the form of The Ambassador and The Regent Cinemas.
In 1984 the Ward Anderson Group bought Rank which included The Savoy, Screen D’Olier Street and The Screen Eden quay. Today Ward Anderson is one of Ireland’s most profitable family businesses and in 2005, Leo Ward attended a gala evening at the Savoy to celebrate the cinema’s 75th birthday.
With a genuine interest in film and over 60 years in the film business, the Festival is delighted to recognise Leo’s contribution to the Irish cinema going landscape.
JONAS MEk AS RETROSPECTIVE
IN ASSOCIATION WITH SOLUS
Jonas Mekas was born in 1922 in Semeniskiai, Lithuania. With his brother, Adolfas, he was imprisoned in a forced labour camp in Nazi Germany for eight months. After the war, he studied philosophy at the University of Mainz from 1946-48 and, at the end of 1949, emigrated with his brother to the United States, where he settled in Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Two weeks after his arrival, he borrowed the money to buy his first Bolex 16mm camera and began to record moments of his life.
He discovered avant-garde film at venues such as Amos Vogel’s pioneering Cinema 16 and began screening his own films in 1953. He has been one of the leading figures of American avant-garde filmmaking or the “New American Cinema,” as he dubbed it in the late ‘50s: in 1954, he became editor and chief of Film Culture; in 1958 he began writing his “Movie Journal” column for the Village Voice; in 1962 he co-founded the FilmMakers’ Cooperative (FMC) and the Filmmakers’ Cinematheque in 1964, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the world’s largest and most important repositories of avant-garde films.
His output ranges from narrative features (Guns of the Trees, 1961) to documentaries (The Brig, 1963) and to “diary films” such as Walden (1969), Lost, Lost, Lost, (1975), Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania, (1972), Zefiro Torna, (1992) and As I was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2001).
In its annual selection of 25 films, Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania was esteemed by the United States National Film Preservation Board to be selected for preservation at the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. His films were also screened at Art Basel Miami and Mekas was honored at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s award ceremony for his significant contribution to American film culture.
Most recently, the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center was established in Vilnius, Lithuania; exhibitions will focus on the work of Jonas Mekas and on that of his friend and artistic collaborator George Maciunas, founder of the Fluxus movement.
www.jonasmekas.com
pRogRamme 1: AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD, OCCASIONALLy I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUT y
USA / 2000 / 288 minutes / Colour / 16mm
Sunday 17th February at 1pm in IFI
My film diaries 1970-1979: my marriage, children are born, you see them growing up. Footage of daily life, fragments of happiness and beauty, trips to France, Italy, Spain, Austria. Seasons of the year as they pass through New york. Friends, home life, nature, unending search for moments of beauty and celebration of life friendships, feelings, brief moments of happiness. The film is also my love poem to New york. It’s the ultimate Dogme movie, before the birth of Dogme
Jonas Mekas
Print Source: Arsenal kino, Berlin
pRogRamme 2: THE BRIG
USA / 1964 / 68 minutes / Black & White / 16mm Monday 18th February at 4pm in IFI
The Brig, written by a veteran who survived incarceration in a U.S. Marine Corps prison during the 1950’s, is a chilling portrait of the brutality of military prisons. Mekas shot the the 1964 Living Theater production of the play in one night, with a hand-held camera; his film won the Leone D’Oro for Best Documentary at the Venice Film Festival the following year.
Print Source: Jonas Mekas
NOTES ON THE CIRCUS
USA / 1972 / 12 minutes / Colour / 16mm Monday 18th February at 4pm in IFI
Ringling Bros., filmed in 1966, in three sessions (three ringed circus), colours, motions and memories of a circus. Edited in camera (an exercise in instantaneous structuring). Dedicated to kenneth Anger who provided the Ektachrome film stock, in one of my many dry periods
Jonas Mekas
Print Source: Light Cone
pRogRamme 3:
REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNEy TO LITHUANIA
USA/ 1971-1972 / 82 minutes / Colour / 16mm Tuesday 19th February at 4pm in IFI
The film consists of four parts. The first part is made up of footage I shot with my first Bolex, during my first years in America, mostly from 1950-1953. The second part was shot in August 1971, in Lithuania. Almost all of the footage comes from Semeniskiai, the village I was born in. you see the old house, my mother (born 1887), all the brothers, goofing, celebrating our homecoming. The third part is in Elmshorn, near Hamburg, where I spent eight months in a forced labour camp. The fourth part is in Vienna and ends with the burning of the Vienna fruit market, August, 1971. The film deals with home, memory, and culture.
Jonas Mekas
Print Source: Light Cone
pRogRamme 4:
A LETTER FROM GREENPOINT
USA / 2004 / 80 minutes / Colour / Video Wednesday 20th February at 4pm in IFI
I consider this to be my first real video work, where I finally mastered video. I was just collecting footage, just filming because I’m always with a camera in my pocket. And then my friends began asking, “So, how is your life in Greenpoint? How do you feel there?” After hearing those questions and trying to explain, I said, “Okay, I will select some material and put it together and then you can see for yourselves”
Jonas Mekas
Print Source: Jonas Mekas
1. AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD, OCCASIONALLy I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUT y
SOLUS
A LETTER FROM GREENPOINT
SOLUS was formed in 1998 in Dublin, Ireland: an independent film collective and platform for film-makers working in Super-8mm/16mm/ DV. It has the dual aim of showing Irish short and avant-garde films abroad and international short & and avant garde film in Dublin. For more details about our film-makers and programmes please see www.moiratierney.net/solus.htm
THE BRIG
NOTES ON THE CIRCUS
REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNEy TO LITHUANIA
MUSIC ON FILM
4. yOUSSOU N’DOUR, RETURN TO GOREE 5. HONEyDRIPPER
1. CALLAS ASSOLUTA
2. DON GIOVANNI
3. PANDORA’S BOX
THE MALI PROJECT
EVENTS
CELEBRATING CINEMA – BEHIND THE SCENES, BEHIND THE SCREEN
Alongside our Dublin Cinemas programme, the festival presents a short season of films which celebrate the lives of those filmmakers, publicists and projectionists who labour to bring cinema to the screen. In Comrades in Dreams, cinema owners from the four corners of the world (India, Bangladesh, Dakota and most surprisingly North korea) take us inside their cinemas, revealing their programming secrets , while Chacun son Cinema presents 33 of the world’s greatest filmmakers insights into their art.
‘FROM STOP SIGN TO SIGNPOST ’: THE STORy OF SCREEN CENSORSHIP IN IRELAND
Film Censor, John kelleher, illustrates - with movie clips, stills and posters - how his Office has changed from its original remit as moral guardian of the nation to its present role as provider of a consumer service for parents and the public. This event will be followed by a ‘censorship’ screening where you join John and his team in classifying an upcoming film.
Pierre Rissient: Man of Cinema is a fascinating profile of one of the cinema’s greatest showmen and the reasons why Cannes Film Festival is the most influential film festivals in the world.
Comrades in Dreams
Monday 18th February at 6.00pm in Screen 1.
Chacun Son Cinema
Sunday 17th February at 6.00pm in IFI 1.
Man of Cinema: Pierre Rissient
Saturday 16th February at 1.00pm in IFI 1.
The festival will distribute tickets for this unique event through a lottery, if you are interested in attending this event, please send an email address to the events@dubliniff.com quoting censorship screening in the subject line by February 15.
Wednesday 20 February at 11.00am in Irish Film Censor’s Office, 16 Harcourt Terrace, Dublin 2.
PANEL ON INTERNATIONAL FILM CRITICISM
This year, we are inviting a panel of distinguished film critics, journalists and commentators to the festival to discuss the current state of state of criticism, film journalism and the intersection of traditional film writing and blogging. Sunday 17th February at 4.00pm in the IFI.
Todd McCarthy, Chief Film Critic, Variety
Jason Solomon, Film Writer, The Observer
Ciaran Carty, Arts Editor, The Sunday Tribune
Ted Sheehy, Film Correspondent
Michael Dwyer, Film Correspodent, The Irish Times
IRISH FILM BOARD SHORTS
Once again the Jameson Dublin International Film festival is delighted to present a showcase of new work in the short film format. This exciting programme will feature of both established and emerging short filmmakers and the films diverse range of subjects and high standards of technique and style have already been recognised both in Ireland and internationally.
Screens Tuesday 19th February at the IFI at 6pm.
Running Time: 109 minutes.
1. FRANkIE
Director: Darren Thornton
Frankie is fifteen and preparing for fatherhood. He is determined that he is going to be the best Dad ever, but as his day goes on, he starts to realise how difficult this will be for him. (12mins)
2. THE RED BALL
Director: Alan Holly
A story about a purple boy, a green ball, a red ball, a green girl, a red girl and a purple boy. (3mins)
3. BUA
Director: Sonya Gildea
Within this young girl’s story, there comes a single moment of human darkness. A fragile and disturbing turning point appears between her grandfather and this young girl. The grandfather is, above all, every man, who finally betrays even himself, and in that moment takes us fleetingly to a darker place because of it. This is the story of this young girl’s fierce will to survive and above all else, to be free. (14mins)
4. PUMP ACTION
Director Frank Reid
An unusual interview becomes an extraordinary race ( 4mins)
5. ROLLA SAOR
Director: Cathal Watters
A chance photograph that Marc takes of Ruth on the beach, sparks off a new found interest in photographing each other. Their mundane relationship takes a turn until the local pharmacist calls… he needs to see them regarding their photographs. (25mins)
6. AN CRéATúR
Director: Peter Foott
An Créatúr spans the first fifteen years of Conor Buckley’s life. A childhood prank leaves Conor paralysed by guilt; forcing him to correct his own mistake the only way he knows how…( 24mins)
7. BASkET CASE
Director: Owen O’Neill
Ambrose is walking calmly through a biblical storm, to buy among other things, a dead pig for his dying wife. But what is he building for her? A dark, twisted, comic tale of love, devotion, death and debt, set in small town Ireland. ( 16mins)
8. NEW BOy
Director Steph Green
Based on a short story by Roddy Doyle, this poignant and comedic short film deftly captures the experience of being the new boy in school through the eyes of Joseph, a nine year old African boy.( 11mins)
AWARDS
WALT DISNEy STUDIOS MOTION PICTURES (IRELAND) SCREENWRITING AWARD
WRITE HERE, WRITE NOW.
Film has the power to literally change the way people perceive the world and their place in it, whether imaginatively, or as citizens in search of information and knowledge. The Dublin International Film Festival has developed alongside the emergence of a new generation of Irish writers, directors and producers whose cinema entertains and challenges audiences around the world. The festival is delighted to announce the Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, (Ireland) Screenwriting Award 2008.
With its long time commitment to nurturing Irish talent, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Ireland has been proud to work with such celebrated screenwriters as Mark O’Rowe, Paul Mercier, John Carney, Conor McPherson, Gerard Stembridge, Stephen Bradley, David Gleeson, Pearse Elliott and Roddy Doyle.
With this screenwriting competition it is hoped that the dynamic partnership of WDSMPI and DIFF will inspire Irish writers to tell their stories and thus will facilitate the ongoing development of Irish screen storytelling, both in Ireland and abroad.
THE AUDIENCE AWARD IN ASSOCIATION WITH CINE ELECTRIC
The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival introduces another prize this year, the Audience Award for the most popular feature film shown over the course of the event. Every festival member will be given the opportunity to vote for their favourite film with the results being announced at the end of the festival.
The two organisations have come together to recognise the centrality of the writer to the filmmaking process. This substantial award will acknowledge and support the creation of original and innovative scripts, through a combination of development funding, as well as extensive promotion within the film industry.
“Ireland is rightly famed world wide for its storytelling ability – and for its love of cinema.
The Dublin International Film Festival’s innovative work is vital to the growth and development of writers and filmmakers in Ireland. The Walt Disney Studios have shot many fine films in Ireland. We have also acquired and distributed many Irish-originated films, which gives us particular pleasure in the Irish office. In teaming with DIFF, WDSMP Ireland is happy to have found a new and exciting way to further encourage quality Irish screenwriting and filmmaking with this award”.
Trish Long, Vice President & General Manager.
More information will be available on the festival website from April 7th www.dubliniff.com
Details of the Audience Award winner will be available from Wednesday 27th February. Visit www.dubliniff.com.
IRISH FILM TALENT
IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE IRISH FILM BOARD
Bord Scannán na héireann/the Irish Film Board (IFB) is delighted to be a working closely with the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival on the new Irish Talent Spotlight. The initiative is designed to profile and foster exceptional new and established talent working in all areas of the Irish film industry, which is fundamental to what the IFB exists to achieve.
The Irish Talent Spotlight will promote three internationally recognised Irish film talents Margo Harkin, Tim Fleming and ken Wardrop.
MARGO HARkIN
Producer
Margo recent produced the IFB funded documentary Waveriders due for release in 2008. Waveriders, which has already generated huge press interest, showcases the world class surfing destinations available off the North West coast of Ireland. Her work as a Producer/ Director has spanned many genres from short film, to feature film, to long and short format social issue documentary. Her award winning first film `Hush-A-Bye Baby’ has been distributed worldwide and has been described as ‘a groundbreaking film in the history of Irish Cinema’. One of Margo’s recent and highly personal documentaries, the award winning Bloody Sunday – A Derry Diary, was made over a period of 6 years in the lead up to the publication of the Tribunal of Inquiry Report into the events of Bloody Sunday.
Waveriders screens on Friday 22nd February at 8.30pm at Cineworld.
TIM FLEMING
Director of Photography
Tim has a wealth of experience in the Irish film industry. From working on the Oscar winning short film Six Shooter to the very successful television drama Murphy’s Law and the internationally acclaimed feature film Once.
Once screens on Tuesday 19th February at 4.15pm at Screen 1.
kEN WARDROP
Writer/Director
ken has directed arguably the most successful Irish short film of all time, Undressing My Mother, which experienced unprecedented success scooping a host of international awards in 2005.
ken has gone on to have two short films selected for the Sundance Film Festival this year, Farewell Packets of Ten and Scoring. Both films will screen in competition in the Documentary section. ken currently has a number has a number of projects in development.
Farewell Packets of Ten is a comic confessional where two old ladies consider their addictions to cigarettes. It has previously won the Best Short film award at the Worldwide Short film festival in Canada and will also screen at the prestigious Rotterdam Film Festival in the New year. Scoring is a poignant short piece that explores the sensual power of a kiss for a young man that has been left paralyzed after a freak accident.
Farwell Packets of Ten screens on Sunday 17th February at 4.00pm at Cineworld.
Scoring screens on Saturday 23rd February at 5.30pm at Cineworld.
Markin Harkin, Tim Fleming & Ken Wardrop
SHORTS SCREENING AT JDIFF
1. THE WEDNESDAyS
(Conor Ferguson / Ireland / 13 minutes)
Mr and Mrs O have been prisoners of their old age for too long. So when they discover a way to feel young again, and to re-discover the love they had almost forgotten about, they seize the opportunity.
This short film will be shown before Irina Palm on Tuesday 19th February at 8.20pm in Screen 2.
2. THE SOUND OF PEOPLE (Simon Fitzmaurice / Ireland / 7 minutes)
A moment in the life of an eighteenyear-old boy, standing on the brink of his past and fiture, staring straight into the face of his own death.
This short film will be shown before Charlie Bartlett on Monday 18th February at 8.20pm in Cineworld.
3. BLIND EyE
(Damien de Burca / Ireland / 12 minutes) Dublin, 1939. An immigration official has been sent to deport a young Jewish woman to Nazi Germany. Her family have already been sent to the Warsaw Ghetto. Adapted from the real life story of Sabina Shortts who died in Dublin in 1990.
This short film will be shown before My Brother is an Only Child on Tuesday 19th February at 8.20pm in Cineworld.
4. SCORING
(Ken Wardrop / Ireland / 3 minutes)
Following an accident, a young man has been left with no sensation from his shoulder blades down, and now expresses his sensuality through a kiss.
This short film will be shown before In Search of a Midnight Kiss on Saturday 23rd February at 5.30pm in Cineworld.
5. FAREWELL PACkETS OF TEN (Ken Wardrop / Ireland / 3 minutes)
Two elderly women, Ethel and Nancy discuss their attempts at giving up the cigarettes, and the pros and cons of the dreaded weed.
This short film will be shown before Late Bloomers on Sunday 17th February at 4.00pm in Cineworld.
6. LE FORET
(Daniel Graham / England / 13 minutes)
The story of a man and his young daughter who are forced to leave the safety of their home as the father searches for work.
This short film will be shown before The Inheritance on Friday 22nd February at 6.00pm in IFI.
VOLUNTEERS, UPDATES & FEEDBACk
JDIFF VOLUNTEERS
One of the key factors to the success of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival every year is the outstanding contribution by its volunteers. People of all ages , from 18 to 60+, from all walks of life, take time out of their busy schedules to come and help out at the event. We have a high influx of international volunteers every year from Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Poland and in more recent times volunteers from as far as Iran, Brazil, Canada, United States, Russia, China, Nigeria and Greece were represented within the Volunteer body.
Despite the diversity of volunteer’s backgrounds, they all share a passion for cinema. There is a buzz about the festival and it provides an opportunity to form new friendships and contacts with the people they meet on the programme. Many, whom have never met prior to working together on the festival, go on to become the best of friends. There is a strong
FESTIVAL
UPDATES & FEEDBACk
For updates on last minute additions, interviews and podcasts, go to www.dubliniff.com
Tell us what you think – good or bad! Email us on feedback@dubliniff.com
social element attached to volunteering and many congregate in the festival bar after their shifts to discuss the films and filmmakers featuring in the festival. This volunteer community remains in place throughout the year outside of the festival with groups regularly getting together for quiz nights, film screenings and parties.
Anyone can volunteer, all that is required is a passion for film and an enthusiasm for meeting new people. Many volunteers sign up to work full time for the festival period, showing up to work all day, everyday. Their dedication to celebrating cinema is an integral part of the festival, and their contribution is invaluable to the success of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. For their generosity, enthusiasm and goodwill we here at the festival are extremely grateful to each and every one.
PLEASE NOTE
All information in this programme is correct at the time of publication. Programme is subject to change.
FILMBASE SCREENINGS
Filmbase is delighted to present a selection of Irish language short films as part of the JDIFF 2008, which includes a number of shorts made through the Lasair scheme. This scheme, administered by Filmbase and funded by TG4, aims to encourage emerging filmmakers to express their creativity through the development of imaginative Irish language (or bilingual) short films. Since it was launched in 2001, it has led to the production of 17 short films in a range of genres. Films made through the Lasair scheme and included in this programme are James Finlan’s black and white film noir spoof Éireville, Declan de Barra’s animation An Fiach Dubh and Colm Bairéad’s poignant drama Mac an Athar. Also screening is Neasa Hardiman’s short Olive, a coming of age film that looks at a young girl exploring her sexuality and An Cruthaitheoir (meaning ‘the inventor’) which investigates a family under strain.
Also included is the 2003 hit Yu Ming is Ainm Dom. This short, directed by Daniel O’Hara, has screened worldwide and has scooped numerous awards at festivals including the Aspen Shortsfest (2004), Galway Film Fleadh (2003) and the Celtic Film and Television Festival (2004).
Finally, An Bonnán Buí, made through the Filmbase/RTé Short Film Award scheme, is also included. This beautiful short animation is based on the poem by Cathal Buí Mac Giolla Ghunna.
Screens Thursday 21st February at the Filmbase at 7pm. Total running time: 91mins
1 an cRUThaITheoIR Damon silvester 2002 / 13mins
2 éIReVILLe james Finlan 2001 / 24mins
3 an FIach DUBh Declan de Barra 2003 / 4mins
4 oLIVe neasa hardiman 2002 / 11mins
5 mac an aThaR colm Bairead 2005 / 21mins
6 YU mIng Is aInm Dom Daniel o’hara 2003 / 13mins an Bonnán BUí maria murray, padraig o’neill, edith pieperhoff 1995 / 5mins
opening g ALA iN BRuGES
FrIday 15 FeBruary
Savoy 1 / 8.30Pm
Director: Martin McDonagh
2008 / UK / Belgium / 107 minutes
Principal Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes
For our Opening Night Presentation, we are delighted to introduce one of the most anticipated and astonishing new films of the year. Academy Award-winning writer/director Martin McDonagh takes audiences on a killingly funny trip In Bruges, which is worldpremiering as the opening-night film of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Mr. McDonagh makes his feature directorial debut on the film, from his own original screenplay. His plays (which include The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Pillowman) have brought him two Olivier Awards and four Tony Award nominations. He wrote and directed Six Shooter, starring Brendan Gleeson, which earned him the 2006 Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Film. In Bruges was filmed on location; Bruges (pronounced “broozh”), the most well-preserved medieval city in the whole of Belgium , is a welcoming destination for travellers from all over the world. But for hit men Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson), it could be their final destination; a difficult job has resulted in the pair being ordered right before Christmas by their London boss Harry (two-time Academy Award nominee Ralph Fiennes) to go and cool their heels in the storybook Flemish city for a couple of weeks.
Very much out of place amidst the gothic architecture, canals, and cobbled streets, the two hit men fill their days living the lives of tourists. Ray, still haunted by the bloodshed in London , hates the place, while Ken, even as he keeps a fatherly eye on Ray’s often profanely funny exploits, finds his mind and soul being expanded by the beauty and serenity of the city. But the longer they stay waiting for Harry’s call, the more surreal their experience becomes, as they find themselves in weird encounters with locals, tourists, violent medieval art, a dwarf American actor (Jordan Prentice) shooting a European art film, Dutch prostitutes, and a potential romance for Ray in the form of Chloë (Clémence Poésy), who may have some dark secrets of her own. And when the call from Harry does finally come, Ken and Ray’s vacation becomes a lifeand-death struggle of darkly comic proportions and surprisingly emotional consequences.
Producers: Jeff Abberley, Julia Blackman, Tessa Ross Screenwriter: Martin McDonagh
Print Source: Universal Pictures International Ireland www.universvalpictures.ie
speciAL presentAtion
BATTLE iN SEATTLE
SaTurday 16 FeBruary
Savoy 1 / 11.00am
Director: Stuart Townsend 2008 / Ireland / 100 minutes
Principal Cast: Martin Henderson, Michelle Rodriguez, Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson, Ray Liotta, André Benjamin, Rade Sherbedzija, Connie Nielsen
The riots that confronted the World Trade Organization’s 1999 meeting in Seattle forced politically minded citizens into some tough intellectual deliberation. First there were the horrible images of smashed windows and police brutality on the news. Questions sprang up: When does a protest stop being peaceful? And what constitutes the appropriate application of law and order in such a situation? At the same time, the politics of globalisation came under the microscope. increasingly unfettered multinational business seems to be increasing wealth in developing nations –but at what cost to the social fabric? All of these issues and more lie at the heart of irish actor Stuart Townsend’s provocative and heartfelt debut as a director.
The film follows multiple fictional storylines about people affected by the crisis, crossing the spectrum of debate and confrontation to examine what was going on inside and outside the Seattle convention space. The film grounds the sometimes heady politics of civil liberties and global economics by focusing on people’s individual experiences of the event. While its political sympathies clearly tip toward the protestors, Battle in Seattle maintains a certain open-endedness that allows for reasoned continuing debate.
Terrific performances from a wonderful ensemble cast help the director immeasurably. Townsend’s real-life partner, Charlize Theron, is heartbreaking as Ella, the wife of a police officer, who is forced to contend with unexpected violence, finding herself on the wrong side of authority. Ray Liotta as Seattle mayor Jim Tobin and Woody Harrelson as Ella’s husband, Dale, one of the city’s SWAT-like policemen, are key figures; we watch as their ordered view of the world slowly unravels. Michelle Rodriguez, Martin Henderson and André Benjamin play the most prominent protestors, their often naive enthusiasm dulled by mass arrests and mood swings as media reports blame them for the destruction and violence. The wonderful Rade Sherbedzija provides an alternative – even ironic – perspective as Dr. Maric, who is fighting for lives in the developing world. inside the convention centre, he defends his cause to uncaring bankers and trade representatives. His pleas become even less relevant to the room after the well-meaning protests outside become incandescent. Noah Cowan, Toronto International Film Festival
Print Source: Hyde Park Entertainment
Producers: Mary Aloe, Kirk Shaw, Maxime Remillard Screenplay: Stuart Townsend www.battleinseattlemovie.com
SaTurday 16 FeBruary
IFI 1 / 1.00Pm
director: Todd mcCarthy
2007 / uSa / 110 minutes
Principal Cast: Pierre rissient, Clint eastwood, Werner Herzog, abbas Kiarostami, Bertrand Tavernier, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Claude Chabrol
Well-known to film industry insiders but virtually unknown to the public at large, Pierre Rissient is one of the most intriguing of the figures who work behind the film production process. His close friend Todd McCarthy, chief film critic of the respected industry trade paper variety, has taken up his camera make an affectionate portrait of Rissient, a cinephile of obsessive dimensions who has had a considerable impact on the lives of many a young filmmaker.
Rissient started his career as a critic and cinema programmer, subsequently directing two non-commercial films before shifting his focus to uncovering new talent. Scouting for the Cannes Film Festival, he became linked to directors such as Clint Eastwood, Sydney Pollack, Quentin Tarantino and the Asian masters Hou Hsiao-hsien, Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou.
Wonderful anecdotes from many of these luminaries abound in the film, as well as tales of Rissient’s friendships and fights with Fritz Lang, Joseph Losey and Mike Leigh, while carefully selected archival footage evokes the spirit of this rich period in the history of cinema.
Piers Handling, Toronto Film Festival Programme
H Director Todd McCarthy will participate in a post screening discussion hosted by Simon Perry, Chief Executive of irish Film Board.
C ASSANDRA’S DREAM
SaTurday 16 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 17 / 1.00Pm
director: Woody allen 2007 / united Kingdom / 108 minutes
Principal Cast: Hayley atwell, Colin Farrell, Sally Hawkins, ewan mcGregor, Tom Wilkinson
With the beguiling Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell in the lead roles, Woody Allen’s powerful new work commands us fully from its opening shot. Terry (Farrell) works in an auto-body shop and is recovering from struggles with liquor and gambling. ian (McGregor) is clean-cut, ambitious and tired of helping their dear old dad manage his restaurant. He wants to move to California to become a resort owner and hopes ultra-sexy actress Angela (Hayley Atwell) will want to come along with him.
The brothers manage to scrape together enough dough to buy a sailboat, and know they can always count on Howard (Tom Wilkinson), their benevolent uncle who is always good for a favour and never asks for anything in return. At least, not until now.
Cassandra’s dream has a whole lot of swagger and a whole lot of brains. Allen winds the coil of this drama tighter and tighter, leading us to a conclusion of startling emotional strength. McGregor and Farrell obviously enjoy themselves immensely, sinking their teeth into what begins as a spirited tale of ambition, only to reverse with breathtaking ease into sinister noir.
Toronto Film Festival
SaTurday 16 FeBruary
SCreeN 1 / 1.30Pm
director: Ferzan ozpetek
2007 / Italy / France / Turkey / 110 minutes
Principal Cast: Pierfrancesco Fauino, marguerita Buy, Stefano accorsi
A group of friends meet up for dinner. The hosts of these regular gatherings are the dynamic Lorenzo and his life partner, the successful writer Davide. The somewhat uptight Angelica is helping to prepare the food, while her Antonio has yet to appear. Also on the guest list is the abrasive Neval and her husband Roberto, Davide’s embittered ex Sergio, the spirited Roberta, and a new arrival, the budding writer Paolo.
This is one of the evenings during which these 40-somethings will remember the carefree existence of the past two decades, now edged out by everyday concerns and the somewhat perplexing spectre of the beginning of the rest of their lives. Brilliant group portrait artist Ferzan Ozpetek brings his characters towards a critical moment when they are forced to cast off their stiffened masks and to return to the very essence of the friendship which unites them.
Leading actors give themselves up to the sensitive guidance of a director whose originality lies in his ability to view life in all its melodramatic dimensions, naturally without resorting to cheap sentiment.
Karlovy vary Film Festival Programme
If you like this, you may also consider Comrades in Dreams
Print Source: Optimum Releasing
Producers: Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum, Gareth Wiley
Screenplay: Woody Allen www.cassandrasdreammovie.com
Principal Cast: mária varga, marian ursache, rozália varga, marius Bodochi, Ágnes Csere
Iska’s Journey tells the harrowing story of a twelve-year-old girl who shows courage in the face of harsh poverty, only to succumb eventually to its ravages. Csaba Bollók’s third feature film is surely one of the most stunning entries of last year for Hungarian cinema.
in her decaying mining town in Romania’s Zsil River valley, iska (Mária Varga) scavenges for scrap metal under deplorable conditions – a practice rife in the aging grey industrialised areas of Eastern Europe. When she haggles over price with a buyer and goes home with nothing, she receives a savage beating from her alcoholic mother and is eventually taken into a youth shelter.
The film centres on the luminous, freckled face of its young lead, Mária Varga, who appears in almost every frame, her innocent large eyes dominating each shot. Iska’s Journey eschews a straightforward plot, emotional grandstanding or easy moral messages, lending the film an authentic, documentary feel. The result is a moving portrayal of the ravages of one girl’s world and the corrupt people for whom she is nothing but currency.
dimitri eipides, Toronto Film Festival Catalogue
CiTY OF MEN (CiDADE DOS HOMENS)
SaTurday 16 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 17 / 3.45Pm
director: Paulo morelli
2007 / Brazil / 106 minutes
Principal Cast: douglas Silva, darlan Cunha, rodrigo dos Santos
uNDER THE BOMBS (SOuS LE BOMBES)
SaTurday 16 FeBruary
SCreeN 1 / 3.45Pm
director: Philippe aractingi 2007 / France / 98 minutes
Principal Cast: Nada abou Farhat, Georges Khabbaz, rawya el Chab, Bshara atallah
From the same sun drenched beaches and narrow concrete alleyways that spawned City of God and the spin-off TV series City of men comes, what director Paulo Morelli describes, as the concluding chapter in the Brazilian drama. Ace (Douglas Silva) and Wallace (Darlan Cuhna) have grown up in front of the cameras, and at the age of 18 they face the most stern test of their friendship.
Morelli, who worked on episodes of the series, builds up the atmosphere that was evident throughout City of men. While the film’s two main protagonists had managed previously to escape the grasp of Dead End Hill’s gang culture, they soon find themselves being dragged into it. Ace now has a young son to look after and feels trapped by his responsibilities, while Wallace has renewed his quest to find his father.
This voyage of self-discovery is played out against a backdrop of a favela war, with armies of drug runners clashing amongst the shacks, disrupting the peaceful lives of the slum’s citizens. in addition to this, the heroes must also contend with the realisation that their respective pasts are linked by a tragic event.
Kobi annobil, London Film Festival Programme
Print Source: Magyar Filmunió
Producer: Ágnes Csere
Screenplay: Csaba Bollók
www.filmunio.hu
Screenplay: Elena Soarez, Paulo Morelli www.cidadedoshomens.com.br/en/
Philippe Aractingi’s under The Bombs was made in Lebanon in the immediate aftermath of the war last year. Aractingi was living in Beirut during the israeli attacks on the city and filmed some footage at the height of the conflict. This may have been a project conceived in chaotic circumstances and shot on the hoof, but it is deftly scripted, boasts two fine central performances and is far more than a piece of reportage dressed up in dramatic clothing.
The central character is Zeina (Nada Abou Farhat), a young mother who has been living in Dubai. She returns to Beirut in search of her young son, who has been living with her sister. She hopes and prays that she will find him safe in the south of the country. Toni is the taxi driver who reluctantly agrees to take her on a quest to find her son. Zeina is Shiite. Toni is Christian. Driver and passenger have little in common and, at first; however, as their journey continues, a strong rapport builds up between them.
under The Bombs offers a closely focused account of a single bereaved woman. Her experiences show in microcosm what an entire society is undergoing as a result of a war which few would disagree now should never have been allowed to happen.
Geoffrey mcNab, Screen daily
H Director Philippe Aractingi and producer Paul Raphael will attend the screening
Source: Artificial Eye
If
Print Source: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Ireland
Bel Berlinck, Fernando Meirelles, Paulo Morelli, Andrea Barata Ribeiro
C ALiFORNiA DREAMiN’ (ENDLESS)
SaTurday 16 FeBruary
SCreeN 2 / 3.45Pm
director: Cristian Nemescu
2007 / romania / 155 minutes
Principal Cast: armand assante, razvan vasilescu, Jamie elman, maria dinulescu, Ion Sapdaru
While we would normally herald the Balkan epic California dreamin’ (endless) as further proof of the glorious rise of new Romanian cinema, a tragedy must first be noted. Director Cristian Nemescu was killed in a car accident along with his sound editor, Andrei Toncu, on August 24, 2006. Nemescu’s prodigious debut was posthumously awarded the un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival last year.
The film is based on a real-life incident. in June of 1999, a top-secret NATO radar system is en route to war torn Kosovo by train. However, the urgent mission sees its progress halted by Doiaru (Razvan Vasilescu), the station master and local heavy of a small Romanian outpost named Capalnita. He insists that all appropriate custom forms be filled out before the cargo can pass, despite having received consent from the government. Soon a battle of wills begins between the powerful black-marketeer and united States military squadron accompanying the system.
Though Nemescu’s death was a huge loss to global cinema, he has left us a masterful and ambitious film that honours his great promise. michèle maheux, Toronto Film Festival Catalogue
THE MALi PROJECT
SaTurday 16 FeBruary
IFI 1 / 6.00Pm
director: dearbhla Glynn
2007 / Ireland / 90 minutes
SaTurday 16 FeBruary
SCreeN 1 / 6.15Pm
director: andrzej Jakimowski
2007 / Poland / 96 minutes
Principal Cast: damian ul, ewelina Walendziak, rafal Guzniczak, Iwona Fornalczyk, Tomasz Sapryk
Showing as part of the festival’s Music on Film season, The Mali Project is a fascinating musical journey through modern day Africa. Described by Bono as is “the best white soul singer in the world”, Liam O’Maonlaoi’s musical talents also encompass the bódhran, tin whistle and piano. Alongside the global success of Hothouse Flowers, O’Maonlai remained true to his traditional roots and his native language. in 2006, he teamed up with famed uillean Piper Paddy Keenan to travel to a number of music events in Mali, culminating in a unique performance at the world’s most remote music festival – ‘Festival au Desert’. Himself and Paddy played with musicians from the greater region from very well known artists to local tribes people. Along their journey they meet and collaborate with musicians ranging from Grammy award winners to nomadic herders, Director Dearbhla Glynn and producer Vanessa Gildea have created a wonderfully authentic portrait of these traveling players, their endless curiosity about music and the musicians they meet, and their truly extraordinary musical ability is both inspiring and quietly humbling.
This seriocomic second feature by Polish helmer Andrzej Jakimowski won the Europa Cinemas Label prize for best European film in the independently programmed Venice Days sidebar, assuring his realistic yet poetic gem extended theatrical exposure and extra promotional support on the continent.
The charming, bittersweet narrative unfolds from siblings Stefek (Damian ul), 6, and Elka (Ewelina Walendziak), 18, and Elka’s car mechanic boyfriend Jerzy (Rafal Guzniczak) during a sun-drenched summer. The siblings live with their shopkeeper mother and Stefek’s worldview is shaped by Elka’s constant bargaining with destiny, which she attempts to shape in slyly practical, semi-magical ways.
One day, Stefek notices a commuter (Tomasz Sapryk) changing trains who reminds him of his absent father. He structures a risky game with fortune, designed to make the man remain in town and reach his mother’s shop.
Compelling performancess by the unconventionally attractive leads give the picture a poignant authenticity, spontaneity and uniqueness. Stylisation and momentum come from Adam Bajerski’s gorgeous, dappled gold lensing and Tomasz Gassowski’s alternately jazzy and melancholy score.
alissa Simon, variety
H Andrzej Jakimowski will attend the screening
Print Source: Media Pro Distribution
Producers: Iuliana Tarnovetchi, Dan Badea, Andrei Boncea
Principal Cast: Sebastian urzendowsky, marion mitterhammer, Clemens Berg, Falk rockstroh
A family‘s crises come to the surface in this drama, the first feature from filmmaker Matthias Luthardt. Stefan (Rockstroh) and Anna (Mitterhammer ) are a petit bourgeois couple who live a bland existence in the suburbs with their nebbishy son Robert (Berg), who they all but ignore. One day Stefan and Anna’s teenage nephew Paul (urzendowsky) arrives at their home without warning and announces he’s moving in, since Paul’s father recently committed suicide. Paul makes a token effort at bonding with Robert, but it doesn’t take Anna long to realise that her nephew is sexually attracted to her. When Stefan is called away on business, Paul attempts to seduce Anna, though she seems to regard his efforts as quaint rather than arousing. Eventually, Paul can no longer deal with the tensions of the household, leading to an emotional explosion.
mark deming, all movie Guide
With this graduation film, Matthias Luthardt and his young team have produced a highly professional work, an intimate psychological study of several characters in a situation which slowly turns out to be less innocent than it seemed at the start.
Karlovy vary Film Festival Programme
H Actor Sebastian urzendowsky will attend the screening.
Principal Cast: Cornelio Well Fehr, miriam Toews, maria Pankratz, Peter Wall, elisabeth Fehr
This is a deeply considered and unexpectedly gripping film from a director making a giant leap into the first rank of world cinema.
On finally fading to black, it leaves behind on the blank screen, as if on the inside of a closed eyelid, a shimmering sense of having looked into something overwhelmingly powerful.
Moving with unforced, almost geological slowness, Reygadas establishes the setting for a tale of forbidden love in a rural Dutchdialect-speaking community in Mexico.
Johan (Wall) is a hardworking farmer whom we see at the beginning presiding over grace at a family breakfast. There are evidently tensions with his wife Esther (Toews); and we soon learn that he is having an affair with another woman, Marianne (Pankratz) who is apparently unattached. it is a love triangle that is to cause agony and tears, but not the messy anger and voluble recrimination that we might expect from another sort of movie, or indeed from real life.
The sheer ambition of Reygadas has always been startling; now he is developing a maturity and a rigorous visual sense to match it. Here is cinema to wonder at, to argue about.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
THE MiLKY WAY (A ViA L áCTEA)
SaTurday 16 FeBruary SCreeN 2 / 8.50Pm
director: Lina Chamie 2007 / Brazil / 86 minutes
Principal Cast: marco ricca, alice Braga, Fernando alves Pinto
Dusk is falling in Sao Paulo when Heitor and Julia - who have been dating for a long time - have a violent quarrel over the phone. Anguished, Heitor gets in his car and sets off in the direction of Julia`s house, to kiss and make up. First though, he finds himself engulfed in the madness of rush hour traffic which places a considerable delay on his journey. This gives Heitot ample opportunity to ponder the metropolis itself and the city begins to interefere in his thought processes.
Frequently inventive and playful, this film conveys exactly how it feels to admonish oneself for words spoken in anger and the frustration at not being able to make amends because the cruel universe will not co-operate. Through Heitor`s journey into the jammed city, his boiling emotions are enhanced by the teeming expanse of Sao Paulo, Latin America`s most populous city after Mexico City.
Warsaw Film Festival Programme
Screenplay: Carlos Reygadas www.silent-light.co.uk
Print Source: Girafia Filmes
Producer: Lina Chamie Screenplay: Aleksei Abib, Lina Chamie www.avialactea.com.br
If you like this, you may also consider Jellyfish
speciAL presentAtion
THERE WiLL BE BLOOD
SaTurday 16 FeBruary
Savoy 1 / 7.00Pm
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson 2008 / USA / 158 minutes
Principal Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Martin Stringer, Kevin J. O’Connor, Jacob Stringer, Ciarán Hinds
There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic American nightmare, arrives belching fire and brimstone and damnation to Hell. Set against the backdrop of the Southern California oil boom of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, it tells a story of greed and envy of biblical proportions — reverberating with Old Testament sound and fury and New Testament evangelicalism — which Mr. Anderson has mined from upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel oil! There is no God but money in this oil-rich desert and his messenger is Daniel Plainview, a petroleum speculator played by a monstrous and shattering Daniel Day-Lewis.
Plainview is an American primitive. He’s more articulate and civilized than the crude, brutal title character in Frank Norris’s 1899 novel mcTeague, and Erich von Stroheim’s masterly version of the same, Greed. And the film’s opener is a stunner — spooky and strange, blanketed in shadows and nearly wordless. inside a deep, dark hole, a man pickaxes the hard-packed soil like a bug gnawing through dirt. This is the earth mover, the ground shaker: Plainview.
Over the next two and a half mesmerising hours Plainview will strike oil, then strike it rich and transform a bootstrapper’s dream into a terrifying prophecy about the coming American century. it’s a century he plunges into slicked in oil, dabbed with blood and accompanied by H. W. (eventually played by the newcomer Dillon Freasier), the child who enters his life in 1902 after he makes his first strike and seems to have burbled from the ground like the liquid itself.
With a story of and for our times, There Will Be Blood can certainly be viewed through the smeary window that looks onto the larger world. it’s timeless and topical, general and specific, abstract and as plain as the name of its fiery oilman. it’s an origin story of sorts. But the film is above all a consummate work of art, one that transcends the historically fraught context of its making, and its pleasures are unapologetically aesthetic. it reveals, excites, disturbs, provokes, but the window it opens is to human consciousness itself.
manohla dargis, The New york Times
Print Source: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Ireland
Producers: Paul Thomas Anderson, Daniel Lupi, Joanne Sellar
Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, based on the novel by Upton Sinclair www.therewillbeblood.com
H The festival is delighted daniel day-Lewis and Paul Thomas anderson will attend the screening. a post screening discussion will be hosted by Todd mcCarthy, Chief Film Critic, variety.
H ‘There Will be Blood’ Gala presenatation is supporting the charity Heart Children Ireland, the support group for parents of children with a Congenital Heart disorder.
THE LuMièRE BROTHERS FOOTAGE OF DuBLiN
SaTurday 16 FeBruary
o’CoNNeLL STreeT
TIme To Be CoNFIrmed
director: Lumiére Brothers
Louis and Auguste Lumière were pioneer contributors to the birth of film in 1895.
The earliest film in existence of ireland dates from 1897, when the Lumière brothers filmed Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street). in total we have eleven historical pieces of footage – known as ‘actuality’ films –and each are wholly unique showcases of Dublin life at the turn of the century.
The camera operator for each selection is Alexandre Promio and all were filmed between 21 June 1897 and 21 October 1897.
The showcase details the following : the movement of pedestrians, cyclists and cars on O’Connell Bridge ; the panorama of an industrial zone followed by a residential neighbourhood ; a procession of fire trucks followed closely by a surging crowd of onlookers ; the sudden movement of the firemen as they jump into action ; horse riders tackling hurdles; a parade of several soldiers astride their horses as they stand to attention before proceeding on their way.
SuNday 17 FeBruary
SCreeN 1 / 1.30Pm
director: François ozon
2007 / France / uK / Belgium / 119 minutes
Principal Cast: romola Garai, Lucy russell, michael Fassbender, Sam Neill, Charlotte rampling
They don’t make them like this any more –but that hasn’t stopped the intrepid François Ozon, who’s come up with possibly the most unexpected film of an unpredictable career.
Based on Elizabeth Taylor’s novel, angel is a rags-to-riches melodrama in the high style.
Set in Edwardian England from 1905 onwards, it traces the career of would-be novelist Angel Deverell (Romola Garai), whose blithe innocence of the ways of the world doesn’t stop her pen from spilling forth torrid romantic fantasies in the purplest ink. Angel’s literary career is a runaway success, and the headstrong ingénue becomes the Barbara Cartland of her time. Wealth, fame and love come her way, but the one thing that continues to evade Angel is wisdom. Garai is spirited, affecting and finally troubling in a role that might have honoured Bette Davis in her youthful heyday.
angel is a knowing anachronism, harking back to the Hollywood ‘women’s picture’ embodied by Sirk, Minnelli and Cukor, but doing so with love and intelligence rather than kitsch intent.
Jonathan romney, London Film Festival Programme
If you like
Producers: Tanya Seghatchian, Olivier Delbosc, Marc Missonnier Screenplay: François Ozon, Martin Crimp, based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylor www.angel-lefilm.com
If you like this, you may also consider Love in the Time in Cholera
SuNday 17 FeBruary
SCreeN 2 / 2.00Pm
director: Gus van Sant 1985 / uSa / 78 minutes
Principal Cast: doug Cooeyate, Sam downey, Nyla mcCarthy, ray monge, Tim Streeter
mala Noche was the 33-year-old Gus Van Sant’s debut feature and is the first of his bittersweet odes to tender outcasts, remaining the simplest and least burdened.
Arriving on the damp streets of Portland, Johnny (Cooeyate) and Roberto (Monge) set up in a skid-row flophouse and amble into the orbit of a handsome clerk named Walt (Streeter). With its feet on the ground and its head in the time-lapse clouds, mala Noche will be the story of Walt’s unrequited love for Johnny, a rhapsodic slacker noir pitched on the edge of physical and emotional darkness (the title means “Bad Night”).
mala Noche sidesteps potential clichés with an attentiveness to class dynamic and the cultural differences between the grunge gringo and his object of desire. The danger here is an unexamined fetishism of type (inarticulate Latino rough trade), but Van Sant finds a tactful reticence in his characterisation of the Mexicans and complicates Walt with an awareness of his own privilege. in light of elephant, we can see mala Noche as the first act of a mind interested in graphing the knowable contours of experience, the first gift from a scrupulously compassionate artist.
Nathan Lee, village voice
If you like this, you may also consider
Print Source: Lionsgate
Print Source: Eclipse Pictures / Tartan Films
Producer: Gus Van Sant Screenplay: Gus Van Sant, based on the novel by Walt Curtis
Savage Grace
MARGOT AT THE WEDDiNG
SuNday 17 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 17 / 2.00Pm
director: Noah Baumbach
2007 / uSa / 92 minutes
Principal Cast: Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black, John Turturro, Ciarán Hinds, Zane Pais
Noah Baumbach’s follow-up to 2005’s
The Squid and the Whale retains traces of his breakthrough’s squirmworthy fixations. in fact, the awkward social fumbling of the new movie’s pubescent lad could pass as outtakes from the director’s Brooklynbased film à clef in a pinch. But in terms of complexity, margot at the Wedding is a leap forward. it’s one of the most emotionally mature American movies ever made about emotionally immature people.
Flighty Pauline (Leigh) is getting married to her boorish beau (Black), and after years of mutually cold shoulders, reaches out to her sister Margot (Kidman). A writer with a draconian judgmental streak, Margot brims over with passive-aggressive bile, so any hatchets will be buried in shallow graves. Any progress toward healing is accompanied by several baby steps backward.
Black’s manic manchild persona is used wisely, and Leigh delivers a typically brilliant bruisedpeach performance. Kidman, however, is the one who hits a career high; brittle and needy, her Margot brings out the worst in everybody and the best in a star who’s usually just called on to look glamorous or worried.
david Fear, Time out New york
YOu, THE LiViNG (Du LEVANDE)
SuNday 17 FeBruary
SCreeN 1 / 4.00Pm
director: roy andersson
2007 / Sweden / Germany / France / denmark / Norway / 95 minutes
Principal Cast: Jessica Lundberg, elisabet Helander, Björn englund, Leif Larsson, ollie olson
Over nearly four decades, Swedish master stylist Roy Andersson has directed just four features. While cinephiles were forced to wait almost twenty-five years for his 2000 chefd’æuvre, Songs from the Second Floor, we have been granted the visionary you, the Living after a wait of only seven. A plot synopsis is impossible, unless one could easily summarise a highly subjective and darkly witty series of fifty portraits of the human race at our present moment in history. For his own part, Andersson has described the film as a “mosaic of human destinies” on the theme of “how to behave around others.”
We meet a girl with a desperate crush on a rock guitarist, businessmen, housewives, criminals and, of course, drunks at the bar. They drift in and out of dreams and waking; their attempts at communication are doomed to be emaciated or thwarted. But Anderson’s intense empathy is at the core of it all, no matter how outrageous or sombre the situations, no matter how grey and grubby his distinctive palette. you, the Living is a triumph of tragicomedy from one of the cinema’s most sardonic imaginations.
If you like this, you may also consider Mister Lonely
Joy division superbly details the backgrounds of the influential post-punk group and its members, as well as the cultural context from which they emerged. There are interviews with most of the key figures: the three surviving band members, Tony Wilson, Martin Hannett, their brilliant producer; and Annik Honoré, singer ian Curtis’s Belgian lover.
Joy division grew out of a very specific context: the depressed urban landscape of Manchester, still trying to recover from its halcyon days as a centre of nineteenth-century manufacturing. The group’s lead singer, Curtis, was a bundle of contradictions. By day, he worked in the civil service; by night, he poured his angst into poetic lyrics for a band that essentially wanted to play loud and create havoc. ironically, no one really listened to the pleas for help embedded in his songs – until it was too late. Curtis took his own life in 1980 at the impossibly young age of twenty-three.
Told through the words of those who were there, Joy division follows the early days of the band and their first forays into gigs and recordings. But this is also the story of a city and its struggle to revive itself. Everyone fondly remembers the past, but Curtis’s shadow casts a sobering pall over the Joy division project. Brilliant and mercurial, this urban poet captured a moment and immortalised himself in the process.
Piers Handling, Toronto Film Festival Programme
Print Source: The Works
Producers: Tom Astor, Tom Atencio, Jacqui Edenbrow www.theworkslimited.com
Principal Cast: Stephanie Glaser, annemarie düringer, Heidi maria Glössner, monica Gubser, Hanspeter müller-drossaart
80-year-old Martha manages to overcome her sorrow over her husband’s death when she starts living out a secret dream. She closes down the grocery store and instead opens a shop selling homemade lingerie. Since she is the mother of the town’s priest, this doesn’t look too good, and the local right-wing politician is up in arms. Especially when Martha and her retired friends become successful when they sew local motifs onto the underwear and sell it online. The opponents want to get rid of the shop before the town’s big choir festival, but Martha and her accomplices won’t give up without a fight.
in the style of Calendar Girls, the film is a charming comedy about older people who insist that there should also be some joie de vivre in the lives of pensioners. The outstanding actors have a wonderful twinkle in their eyes, and Bettina Oberli’s warmhearted feel-good film has been 2007’s biggest hit in Switzerland.
Copenhagen Film Festival Programme
H Screening with the short film, Farewell Packets of Ten. See page 35.
CHACuN SON CiNEMA
SuNday 17 FeBruary
IFI 1 / 6.00Pm
directors: various 2007 / France / 119 minutes
Principal Cast: various
A MAN’S JOB (MiEHEN T Yö)
SuNday 17 FeBruary
SCreeN 2 / 6.20Pm
director: aleksi Salmenperä 2007 / Finland / 100 minutes
Principle Cast: Tommi Korpela, maria Heiskanen, Jani volanen
Few films can claim a roster of talent comparable to this one, which boasts contributions by 33 of the most acclaimed directors in world cinema, each responsible for three minutes of celluloid.Gilles Jacob, president of the Cannes Festival, devised the project as a “gift” to commemorate the festival’s 60th birthday, and recruited many Golden Palm winners in the directorial selection process.Simply put, Jacob asked each director to express, cinematically, his or her “state of mind of the moment as inspired by the motion picture theatre.” Featured filmmakers include Joel and Ethan Coen; Olivier Assayas; Atom Egoyan; Walter Salles; Lars von Trier; Nanni Moretti; Roman Polanski; Theo Angelopoulos; Chen Kaige; Andrei Konchalovsky; Ken Loach; Raoul Ruiz; Takeshi Kitano; Jean-Pierre Dardenne; Luc Dardenne; David Lynch; Gus Van Sant; Wim Wenders and more.
Nathan Southern, all movie Guide
The theme that unifies them is, naturally, the love of cinema. The sheer diversity of the films proves that while the enthusiasm for cinema may be universal, each culture’s experience of it – not to mention each spectator’s – is wholly unique.
Noah Cowan, Toronto International Film Festival
Print Source: Cannes Film Festival
Producers: Gilles Jacob, Marie Masmonteil, Denis Carot Screenplay: Various www.festival-cannes.fr
If you like this, you may also consider Man of Cinema: Pierre Rissent
Father of three, Juha is a caring husband to his depressed wife. Every morning before leaving the house he counts her pills to make sure she has taken the correct dose. He’s trying to keep his family together, although unbeknown to them he’s been laid off, and money is getting tight. Juha doesn’t have many career options, and whilst trying his hand as an odd job man, a female client suggests he come to her bedroom, undress and help her relax... Juha is rewarded handsomely for his services.
When he confides in his friend Olli, rather than being shocked Olli offers to find and manage clients for Juha. Although at times explicit and containing some delicate material, including scenes featuring a client with Down’s Syndrome, a man’s Job is far from exploitative.
Writer-director Aleksi Salmenperä treats his characters with dignity and compassion, finding exactly the right tone for each intimate scene. Juha’s clients have many needs beyond the purely physical, and in understanding these Juha makes surprising personal discoveries on how he could be a better husband and father himself.
Sarah Lutton, London Film Festival Programme
www.ses.fi/en/
If you like this, you may also consider Just Like Home
Print Source: Finnish Film Foundation Producers: Petri Jokiranta, Tero Kaukomaa Screenplay: Aleksi Salmenperä
in director Eran Kolirin’s debut feature, a small, uniformed Egyptian police band becomes lost in rural israel on their way to performing at a concert. They unexpectedly encounter not only tensions and friendships with the townspeople who take them in for the night, but valuable lessons as well.
invited to perform at the opening of an israeli cultural centre, the immaculately pressed Alexandria Ceremonial Police Band arrive at the airport only to find that their hosts are nowhere in sight. Their Plan B is to take a bus, but they head in the wrong direction, led by conductor Tewfiq (Sasson Gabai). Stranded in a tiny israeli desert town, they reluctantly decide to stay the night until the next bus arrives in the morning. Through the connections they forge, the band members and the villagers find their cultural assumptions shaken – with one especially memorable scene taking place in a roller disco.
The Band’s visit is good-natured and warm while avoiding sentimentality. While refusing to glorify the past, Kolirin clearly yearns for a less mediated time when simpler pleasures –a shared meal, a good tune, an open door –had the potential to bring people together.
dimitri eipides, Toronto Film Festival Programme
PRiCELESS (HORS DE PRix)
SuNday 17 FeBruary
SCreeN 1 / 6.30Pm
director: Pierre Salvadori 2006 / France / 103 minutes
Principal Cast: audrey Tautou, Gad elmaleh, marie-Christine adam, vernon dobtcheff, Jacques Spiesser
The lovely Audrey Tautou (amélie) brings out all her charm as the frivolous irène, a girl who likes to hunt for sugar daddies on the French Riviera. She loves all things luxurious and has an addiction to Chanel and Lacroix. But the branded products are the only things that are real in her life. Her encounter with a sweet but penniless waiter, played by Gad Elmaleh (The valet), sets off a screwball comedy with strong romantic entanglements.
But the lovestruck waiter has no intention of letting her escape, and pursues her to the French Riviera. Quickly running out of money, he finds himself a loaded widow (MarieChristine Adam) and takes up residence in a magnificent luxury hotel. Will the seducer become the seduced? Can real love be ignored by trying to escape? An experienced and successful French film team is behind this impressively produced and tightly knit comedy about two lost souls in the tempting paradise of the Côte d’Azur.
Copenhagen International Film Festival Programme
CONFESSiONS OF A GAMBLER
SuNday 17 FeBruary movIeS@duNdrum / 8.00Pm
directors: rayda Jacobs, amanda Lane South africa / 2007 / 87 minutes
Principal Cast: rayda Jacobs, Nabeweya Scello, abeeda Scello, Ganlef marais
Rayda Jacobs co-directs and stars in this very funny and poignant story of devotion and addiction, based on her own critically acclaimed novel of the same name. it is a fascinating look at the very distinctive Cape Muslim community in South Africa, whose ancestors arrived in the country as slaves centuries ago. in Cape Town, Abeeda (Rayda Jacobs) is a devout Muslim mother of grown children. She wears traditional garments and prays five times a day, but a chance trip to the casino, and a big win, cause her to stray. When her son dies, she turns to the casino for solace, and her addiction spirals out of control. Soon, this intelligent and independent woman has lost everything, and finds herself with mounting debts and a dangerous involvement with gangsters.
Jacobs gives a wonderful turn as the confident, but damaged, Abeeda, and her deep knowledge of her community shines through in a film that confounds stereotypes with a story of faith and love, lost and regained.
Nashen moodley, dubai International Film Festival Programme
Screenplay: Eran Kolirin www.sonyclassics.com/thebandsvisit
Print Source: Eclipse Pictures / Icon Film Distribution Producer: Philippe Martin Screenplay: Pierre Salvadori, Benoît Graffin www.iconmovies.co.uk/priceless/
If you like this, you may also consider Charlie Barlett
Print Source: Roguestar Films
Producers: Ross Garland, Zaheer Bhyat. Screenplay: Rayda Jacobs
poLish fiLm g ALA KATYN
SuNday 17 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 17 / 8.30Pm
Director: Andrzej Wajda 2007 / Poland / 120 minutes
Principal Cast: Maja Ostaszewska, Artur Zmijewski, Pawel Malasyński, Danuta Stenka
A towering presence in the world of post-World War ii cinema, Andrzej Wajda has spent his career analysing in great detail Poland’s gradual social and political evolution with a considerable amount of sensitivity while maintaining an uncompromising attitude towards his complex subjects. Famous for drawing inspiration from Poland’s history, he has created a magnificent oeuvre of work that devastates even as it informs. Presented with an honourary Oscar in 2000 for his contributions to world cinema, Wajda himself is the son of a Polish cavalry officer who was murdered by the Soviets in what is known as the Katyn massacre –the subject of Katyn his latest and typically unflinching work.
After Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland and following Joseph Stalin’s order, on September 17, 1939, all Polish Officers found themselves in Soviet slavery. Anna, the wife of an uhlan Regiment captain is waiting for her man, and receives with disbelief all obvious evidence of his having been murdered by the Russians. The wife of a general, in April 1943, learns of her husband’s death after the Germans discovered mass graves of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. Silence and lies about the crime break the heart of Agnieszka (Magdalena Cielecka), a sister of a pilot, who shared the lot of the other Polish soldiers. The only survivor is the captain’s friend Jerzy, who entered the ranks of the Polish People’s Army.
What is the life of women, waiting for their beloved in the Polish state after the war going to look like, they being still dependent on Soviet Russia? Will homeland and freedom still retain the same meaning for those who have accepted the new system? This latest offering from one of Europe’s greatest directors is a powerful work, forcing audiences to acknowledge the sheer scale of brutality meted out and the grievous consequences for the families affected.
Colm mcauliffe, Jameson dublin International Film Festival
Print Source: International TVP
Producer: Michał Kwieciński
Screenplay: Andrzej Mularczyk, Andrzej Wajda http://katyn.netino.pl/
H The festival is delighted that actress danuta Stenka will attend the screening and participate in a post screening discussion hosted by Zbyszek Zalinski, Presenter of rTe’s Spectrum.
Principal Cast: Khosro Shakiba’ee, mehrdad Seddiqiyan, elnaz Shakerdoust, mohammad-reza Forutan
Kiumars Pourahmad’s spare, masculine Night Bus, taking place during a single night on a dangerous desert road, has a realism that aids in punching home its anti-war sentiments. During the iran-iraq war of the 1980s, 18-year-old Essa (Mehrdad Seddiqiyan) is charged with transporting 38 POWs back to iran on a rickety bus barely kept functional by a grizzled driver (Khosrow Shakiba’ee).
Traveling across an almost surreal desert landscape (beautifully shot in hard black-andwhite by Mehdi Ja’fari), calamities befall the vehicle. Eventually, a fellow soldier is blinded by a roadside mortar and Essa is on his own with a busload of hostile prisoners.
it becomes clear that the combatants are more alike than not, and that the prisoners are among the least confrontational ever forced to fight. Essa soon forges an alliance with the charismatic Faruq (Pourahmad favorite Mohammad-Reza Forutan) in dealing with one troublesome POW, a potentially hazardous roadblock and completing his mission.
Pourahmad refrains from any serious criticisms of the iranian state or its previous ayatollahs, but his message of the insanity and inanity of war – especially when the combatants are so tightly related historically and culturally –is amply clear.
elizabeth Kerr,
FuNNY GAMES
SuNday 17 FeBruary
SCreeN 1 / 8.40Pm
director: michael Haneke
2007 / uSa / France / Germany / Italy / 111 minutes
Principal Cast: Naomi Watts, Tim roth, michael Pitt, Brady Corbet
A middle-class couple and their son motor along country lanes, with sunlight dappling through the trees. The mood is prosperous, relaxed... a little opera plays on the car stereo... until the heavy metal comes clashing in on the soundtrack. This opening seems familiar to some, i’m sure, this being Michael Haneke’s American remake of his brilliantly conceived 1997 Austrian film of the same title.
This new version sticks rigorously close to the original in both content and style. An affluent family arrive at their lakeside summer house, only to find themselves terrorised and tortured by two politely psychopathic young men. Little is explained, either to the victims or the audience, and the realism of the film is broken several times, confronting the viewers and challenging us to consider our own motives in watching violence.
Haneke handles his disturbing material with meticulous control, aided by strong performances from Naomi Watts and Tim Roth as the terrorised couple, and Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet as the malevolent youngsters.
Sandra Hebron, London Film Festival Programme
moNday 18 FeBruary
SCreeN 1 / 2.00Pm
director: John Pilger 2007 / united Kingdom / australia / 96 minutes
John Pilger, the celebrated veteran film-maker and human-rights campaigner, introduced the press screening of his first documentary made for the cinema as ‘possibly the most optimistic film’ he’s ever made and one which represents ‘the voices of the ordinary people’. Written and co-directed with Christopher Martin, it’s a dynamic and emotionally effective diatribe against global capitalism’s role in undermining popular second or third-world democracies in general and those of Latin America in particular.
Pilger aims his quiver of poisoned arrows directly at the uS and its policy of using secretly funded surrogates, covert actions, secret diplomacy, disinformation and subversive propaganda – not to mention alleged torture and murder – in pursuit of its ‘so-called self-interest’.
The director’s ability to expose hidden agendas and the mechanics of propaganda in others inevitably invites the viewer to cast a sterner eye on his own clever use of editing, montage, soundtrack, context and evidence. The passion and integrity of the polemic is never in doubt; many of the interviews are very moving, and Pilger’s assertions about the true nature of organisations such as the National Endowment for Democracy are urgent and lucid.
Wally Hammond, Time out London
Screenplay: Kiumars Pourahmad, Habib Ahmadzadeh, Hasan Shekari www.cmi.ir
Christian Baute, Chris Coen, Hamish McAlpine, Andro Steinborn
Screenplay: Michael Haneke
www.funnygamesthemovie.co.uk
If you like this, you may also consider In Bruges
Print Source: Lionsgate Producers: Christopher Martin, Wayne Young www.warondemocracy.net
If you like this, you may also consider Under The Bombs
Hollywood reporter
Print Source: Cimi Media International
Producer: Mehdi Homayounfar
AuTuMN BALL (SüGiSBALL)
moNday 18 FeBruary
SCreeN 2 / 2.00Pm
director: veiko Õunpuu
2007 / estonia / 120 minutes
Principal Cast: rain Toll, Taavi eelmaa, Juhan ulfsak, Sulevi Peltola
director: alexel Balabanov 2007 / russia / 90 minutes
Principal Cast: agniya Kuznetsova, alexey Poluyan, Leonid Gromov
autumn Ball is a new Estonian film that talks about six inhabitants of Soviet-era tower blocks whose lives touch together, and who are all united by a feeling of loneliness. The young writer, Mati, lurks outside the window of his ex-wife and unsuccessfully approaches other women. August Kask is a bachelor-barber living a drab life who takes to a little girl, but his approaches are misconstrued as paedophilia. The single mom, Laura, watches soap operas on TV and pushes away men’s advances because she cannot trust them. Maurer, the architect, thinks about the wellbeing of humanity, but has forgotten his own wife, who looks for solace in the coatroom attendant Theo. Women like Theo, but due to his low social status, they don’t take him seriously.
autumn Ball tells a tale of human seclusion and the incapability to reach others. But you also find humour and the absurd, and the properly attuned viewer might even find oneself laughing out loud. if i were to define the film, i would say that autumn Ball is a pitch black comedy about loneliness, despair and hope.
veiko Õunpuu, director
Rohmer meets Bergman in this sophisticated and supremely intelligent drama about three generations of a family coming together –and coming apart – at their vacation home in the lovely uckermark region of Germany. When Anna, Robert and their teenage son Max plan out their summer vacation at their idyllic summer home, they didn’t expect a lengthy visitation from their entire extended family. But that’s exactly what happens as more and more relatives show up and make themselves at home. At first everything goes swimmingly, people are on their best behaviour, but before long fissures begin to appear. Put enough family members in one place at one time, and you have a recipe for combustion, and as secrets are revealed and feelings escalate the fate of one family hangs in the balance.
Thomas Arslan’s film, with its close attention to family dynamics inside an enclosed space examines the tenuous surfaces that hide a world of complexity. Within the seeming quiet of the forest. “it’s a testament to writerdirector Thomas Arslan that Vacation... feels so fresh and absorbing.”
vancouver International Film Festival Programme
Balabanov having put his idiosyncratic stamp on the perverse art-movie (of Freaks and men) and and the populist gangster film (Brother 1 & II) turns to to the horror genre in this provocation, set in a grimy industrial town in Kazakhstan during the period of ‘shortages’, war (in Afghanistan) and so-called perestroika in 1984.
A compromised Professor of Atheism, whose car breaks down, and a partying young couple, a self-seeking would-be entrepreneur and the vulnerable party chief’s daughter he’s picked up, find their paths cross at an isolated illegal drinking hole patrolled by a creepy lookout, a moonlighting local police captain and psychopath.
Balabanov, adopting a tone which blends the explicitness and moral inscrutiblility of John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer with a cynical black humour that exceeds even Kubrick’s at his darkest, contextualises the ensuing terror against a carefully, brilliantly observed background of wholesale degradation, personal, environmental, political, moral and, most significantly, religious. This superbly-acted, finely-directed, vision of hell provides this year’s grizzliest cinematic ghost-ride. As the opening credits calmly inform us, it’s based on a true story.
Wally Hammond, Time out London
Katrin Kissa
Screenplay: Veiko Õunpuu, based on the novel by Mati Unt www.sygisball.ee/
If you like this, you may also consider The Class
Print Source: Pickpocket Film Produktion
Producer: Thomas Arslan
Screenplay: Thomas Arslan
If you like this, you may also consider Ping Pong
Print Source: Estonian Film Foundation
Producer:
Print Source: Intercinema Producer: Sergei Selyanov Screenplay: Aleksei Balabanov www.gruz200.ru
Principal Cast: Lasanne Badiel, yong-Sil Han, anup Jagdale, Penny Tefertiller
FAiRYTALE OF K ATHMANDu
moN 18 FeB / 6.00Pm / IFI 1 THur 21 FeB / 8.15Pm / movIeS@duNdrum
director: Neasa Ní Chianáin
2007 / united Kingdom / Ireland / 60 minutes
moNday 18 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 17 / 6.10Pm
director: Tom Kalin
2007 / uSa / 89 minutes
Principal Cast: Julianne moore, Stephen dillane, eddie redmayne
if you’re reading this, the chances are that you spend more time than is necessarily healthy sitting in dark auditoria revelling in the communal experience of watching movies. You will love this film.
Directed by uli Gaulke, Comrades in dreams is a joyful, poignant and beautifully observed celebration of moviegoing. From a small-town picturehouse in America run by a middle-aged woman who seems constantly on the verge of tears, we’re taken to an open-air cinema in Burkina Faso, leased by three friends who dream of one day owning a cinema with a roof. in rural india, meanwhile, the bashful Anup has customers fighting to get into his tent, which he moves from village to village. Most astonishingly, Gaulke takes us to North Korea, where Hang Yong-sil is hugely proud to show thinly veiled propaganda glorifying the nation and its leaders to the farmers who make up her audience.
A subtle, hugely engaging and quietly moving piece of work that starts off as a film about cinemas, and becomes a film about life, love, loneliness and the pursuit of happiness.
Jenny Leask, edinburgh Film Festival Programme
Print Source: Flying Moon Film Produktion GmbH
Producers: Helge Albers, Roshanak Behesht, Konstantin Kröning, Martin Pieper www.flyingmoon.com/engl/dreams_e_neu.html
If you like this, you may also consider Chacun son Cinema
As a student, director Neasa Ní Chianáin first encountered irish poet, Cathal Ó Searcaigh. Writing in her native irish, the charismatic figure of Ó Searcaigh cast a spell on her: his poetry spoke of the land, the pain of lost love, and loneliness.
Years later, and by then his neighbour in Donegal, the director accompanies Ó Searcaigh to his spiritual home – Nepal – and films him there. For a decade, the poet has made annual trips there, basking in its culture and repaying its hospitality by sponsoring Nepalese youth in their studies. in this impoverished society, he is regarded as a god.
Through the camera lens, the fairytale shines: boy after boy speaks warmly of the poet, of his generosity. He basks in the attention and talks frankly about love, friendship and the innocence of the Nepalese.
But the more Ní Chianáin learns about Ó Searcaigh’s Nepalese life, the more she discovers a different tale, and feels impelled to enter her own film and question his motives, confronting him on camera. The answers she receives are surprising, and surprisingly honest.
Irish Film Board
Tom Kalin’s long-awaited new feature is based on the award-winning book of the same title, and like his earlier (and highly influential) Swoon, draws its material from a real life crime story tinged with sexual undertones.
Beginning in 1946 and spanning almost 30 years, it tells the incredible story of Barbara Daly, an aspiring socialite who marries above her class to Brooks Baekeland, heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune. Theirs is an unsteady match, and friction between the couple is compounded by the birth of their son, Tony, who develops an unnaturally close relationship with his mother.
The family’s pursuit of the good life brings them from New York to Europe, and we see their rise and fall in glamorous locations in Paris, Cadaques, Mallorca and London. Sexually confused, mocked by his father and near suffocated by his mother’s neediness, Tony’s mental health begins to deteriorate, and the family dynamics take a violent turn.
Kalin’s evocation of the purposeless, decadent lifestyles of rich expat Americans is brilliantly polished, as is Julianne Moore’s performance as the woman whose relentless ambition and deep seated insecurities lead to tragedy.
Sandra Hebron, London Film Festival Programme
If you like this, you may also consider Margot at the Wedding
Print Source: Vinegar Hill Productions
Print Source: Revolver Entertainment Producers: Pamela Koffler, Iker Monfort, Katie Roumel, Christine Vachon Screenplay:Howard A. Rodman, based on the novel by Natalie Robins and Steven M. L. Aronson www.revolergroup.com
Principal Cast: João miguel, Fabiula Nascimento, Babu Santana, Carlo Briani, Zeca Cenovicz
Director Marcos Jorge directed one of the most acclaimed short-features from Brazil: purSuit (2002). His works have received more than 50 festival awards. His video installations were exhibited in Europe and Japan and he is also responsible for directing the documentary Luzia’s atelier (2004)
The world is made of those who eat and those who are eaten. Raimundo Nonato finds an alternative way: he cooks. He cooks first in a bar, then in an italian Restaurant and then in prison. He cooks and learns how to get by in a society split between those who eat and those who are eaten. What he learns, are a series of rules he uses to his advantage: in the end, the cook must also get his share of food – and he knows better than most which part tastes best. An adult fable on power, sex and cooking.
rio de Janeiro Film Festival Programme
uNRELATED
moNday 18 FeBruary movIeS@duNdrum / 8.15Pm
director: Joanna Hogg 2007 / united Kingdom / 100 minutes
Principal Cast: Kathryn Worth, Tom Hiddleston, mary roscoe
Anna (Kathryn Worth) is a woman in her mid-40s, who arrives alone at the italian holiday home of an extended bourgeois family. She’s the old school friend of matriarch Verena (Mary Roscoe), but is soon distracted from ‘the olds’ and drawn to the vitality and energetic escapades of the teenagers in the group, and in particular to cocky Oakley (Tom Hiddleston).
it’s gradually and subtly revealed that all is not right in Anna’s world, and that the time spent with the people more than half her age is an attempt to fill a void and claim something missing in her own life.
Joanna Hogg’s impressive debut feature feels refreshing and original. it is a bold and brutally honest portrait of a woman of a certain age, a comment on middle-class sensibilities that is capable of wrong-footing the viewer at every turn, where what might be seen as minor, everyday concerns are presented in such a way that they become epic, achingly touching, often tense and quite scary.
Professional and non-professional actors combine to credible effect, the dialogue is spontaneous and realistic, while Hogg’s static camera frames the action distinctively.
michael Hayden, London Film Festival Programme
The Grammy-winning Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour takes us on a musical journey in the footsteps of slaves.
Guided in his mission by his friend, the blind pianist Moncef Genoud, Youssou N’Dour travels across the uSA from Atlanta to New Orleans, and then from New York on to Bordeaux and Luxembourg, performing his songs, which are transformed, immersed in the culture of jazz and gospel. Transcending cultural divisions and rehearsing with some of the world’s most exceptional musicians, Youssou N’Dour prepares to return to Africa, bringing a jazz repertoire of his own songs to perform a concert in Goree.
Goree is an island off the coastline of Senegal and sits at the crossroads of the centuries-old trade route connecting Europe and West Africa, Christianity and islam, infamous as a former centre of the Atlantic slave trade, from where many Africans were deported to the Americas.
An uplifting and heartwarming documentary, return to Goree is also a spiritual journey back to Africa for the African-American performing artists accompanying Youssou.
Producers: Cláudia da Natividade, Fabrizio Donvito
CHARLiE BARTLETT
moNday 18 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 8 / 8.20Pm
director: Jon Poll
2007 / uSa / 98 minutes
Principal Cast: anton yelchin, robert downey Jr., Hope davis, Kat dennings, Tyler Hilton
This rollicking story of a rich kid whose wildly successful bid for popularity has him playing drug-distributing shrink to an entire high school boasts pitch-perfect faceoffs between upstart Anton Yelchin and alcoholic principal Robert Downey Jr. that could fuel a chemistry lab.
Yelchin’s adolescent Charlie Bartlett is an adorable, sincere, and slick popularity-seeker. who is sent off to public school, sporting a Latin-mottoed blazer and leather attache case. He soon starts dating Susan (Kat Dennings), the daughter of Principal Gardner (Downey), whose move from iconoclastic history teacher to repressive bureaucrat has already driven him deep into the bottle.
And though the filmmakers no doubt believe that carelessly administered prescription drugs can be harmful, the sight of Charlie bouncing off the walls on Ritalin provides a joyous wallow in vintage Sennett-style overcranking.
Charlie Bartlett makes a strong case for a solid writer-director split, since Nash’s sententiousleaning script, passing through the anarchic energy of Poll’s direction, creates precisely balanced anomalies - like Charlie himself, and those lovely, multilayered exchanges between Downey and Yelchin.
H Screening with the short film, The Sound of People. See page 35.
THE ORPHANAGE (EL ORFANATO)
moNday 18 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 17 / 8.30Pm
director: Juan antonio Bayona
2007 / mexico / Spain / 120 minutes
Principal Cast: Belén rueda, Fernando Cayo, Geraldine Chaplin, montserrat Carulla, mabel ribera
This chilling first feature by Juan Antonio Bayona plays with Victorian ideas of fantasy and moral punishment, while stitching in contemporary concerns: child abuse, feminist guilt and the impact of surveillance technology figure prominently. The result is not for the faint of heart. The orphanage is frequently quite scary – a feeling that lingers long after its haunting, luminous final shot.
The story concerns the goings-on at an abandoned orphanage that saw some evildoings during the Franco regime. One of the former residents, the lovely Laura (Belén Rueda), returns to the abandoned estate with her husband and sensitive son. But the youngster quickly begins seeing – and then playing with – a group of malicious children, who may or may not be in his imagination. When he disappears one day, Laura comes to suspect that these children were part of her life too, once upon a time.
intelligent genre filmmaking requires perfect execution from all quarters. The orphanage manages that, with a particular emphasis on performance. Rueda is incredible; her creepy obsessiveness gradually overcomes us. We begin to believe the impossible through her sheer force of will.
diana Sanchez, Toronto Film Festival Programme
BLiND MOuNTAiN (MANG SHAN)
moNday 18 FeBruary
SCreeN 2 / 8.45Pm
director: Li yang
2007 / Germany / Hong Kong / China / 97 min
Principal Cast: Huang Lu, yang youan, Zhang yuling, He yunle, Jia yinggao, Zhang youping
Li Yang’s intense psychological drama was one of the stand-outs at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Portraying the kidnapping of a young female student by a peasant family – who force her to be their only son’s bride – the film grips with extraordinary ferocity, and delivers a trenchant commentary upon relations between rural Chinese and their urbanised neighbours.
Having travelled to a remote part of Northern China for temporary work, Bai xuemei (Huang Lu) is drugged by human traffickers, and wakes up to find that she’s been sold to a local family. Depicting with an appalled eye the details of Bai’s imprisonment, Blind mountain is an adeptly controlled account of the young woman’s protracted escape attempt from the community.
Directed with lean, documentary-style restraint, the film gathers an achingly oppressive sense of tension as it charts Bai’s increasingly desperate efforts to escape. Savage in its irony, unrelenting in its tension, and with a final reel of bleak catharsis, Blind mountain is an edge-of-your-seat thriller of rare distinction.
If you like this, you may also consider The Cottage
Print Source: Film Library
Producer: Li Yang
Screenplay: Li Yang
If you like this, you may also consider Tuya’s Marriage
QuACKSER FORTuNE HAS A COuSiN iN THE BRONx
moNday 18 FeBruary
GravedIGGerS PuB
TIme To Be CoNFIrmed
director: Waris Hussein 1970 / uSa / 88 minutes
Principal Cast: Gene Wilder, margot Kidder, eileen Colgen, Seamus Ford, may ollis, Liz davis
A year before he found world-wide fame as Willy Wonka, Wilder attempts an irish accent to play the beleaguered horse manure collector, Quackser Fortune. Nagged by his family and in danger of losing his livliehood when horse-drawn delivery wagons are banned, the uneducated Quackser falls for Zazel (Margot Kidder) an upper class American studying in Trinity College. Despite their mutual fascination with each other, the mismatched pair quickly realise the romantic limitations caused by their differences. This chalk and cheese theme culminates in a truely cringe worthy scene at the Trinity Boat Club, when Zazel introduces Quackser to her well to do friends, with disasterous results.
in addition to Wilder’s eccentric turn, there is a great performance by Eileen Colgan, as the blowsy Betsey Bourke, who Quackser regularly calls into for a spot of sex and tea. Shot on location in Dublin the film serves as a vivid snapshot of Dublin in late ‘60s, in addition to the wonderfully stylised fashions, there are some great scenes in Trinity College, the ‘Gravediggers’ pub, Kavanagh’s in Prospect Square and at the back gate of Glasnevin cemetery.
Set in contemporary Poland, this is the poignant story of a young married couple who lost the apartment of their dreams after the developer went bankrupt.
Bartek is heavily in debt and is reduced to asking his mother if he and his family can come and stay with them for a short period. After some time, the internal pressures and differing needs of the central characters provokes a series of unpleasant conflicts which in particular affects his wife Beata who becomes demoralised with her lack of privacy and the selfishness of her husband’s family. As their relationship gradually begins to disintegrate, Bartek suddenly flees the situation much to Beata’s chagrin, who resorts to very drastic measures.
The socio-ethical dimension of the film is taken from real life and reveals the injustices that can arise from the fledgling Polish capitalist state. We are witness to the ordinary ambitions, attitudes and destinies of an average Polish family grappling with the vagaries of the property market but also we are faced with the consequences of devious and irresponsible behaviour minus the inclination or will to show love and compassion. Despite having the utmost intentions, all the characters are unaware of each other’s needs. The only solution is to forgive.
Principal Cast: Jürgen vogel, Sabine Timoteo, manfred Zapatka, andré Hennicke
Theo, a rapist, is released after nine years in a psychiatric hospital’s prison ward. His fear of women and the unfulfilled desire this generates turns normal life into a kind of martyrdom.
At the age of 27, Nettie finally manages to cut herself free from her father and a lifetime of mental abuse at his hands.
Theo and Nettie meet. The moment they start loving each other marks the beginning of their journey to the limits of free will.
According to the director Matthias Glasner: “This film is about things we think of as monstrous or abnormal. We shot it in chronological order and, when i looked through the camera and saw what Theo does to this woman in the opening sequence, i had my doubts as to whether i would stay the course. But i wanted to make a tender film about the terror of loneliness. And so i filmed everything with the same amount of interest – regardless of what happened.
Free Will is not a film about an issue such as, in this case, say, physical and mental violation. it’s not a film that grapples with a difficult topic but rather a kind of ‘trip’, during which we accompany two people resolutely to the end. For better or for worse.”
Berlin Film Festival Programme
Print Source: VCI Entertainment
Producers: John H. Cushniham, Mel Howard Screenplay: Gabriel Walsh www.vcientertainment.com
If you like this, you may also consider Empties/Tres
Print Source: Bavaria Film International
Producers: Frank Doehmann, Matthias Glasner, Christian Granderath, Jürgen Vogel
Screenplay: Matthias Glasner, Judith Angerbauer, Jürgen Vogel www.derfreiewille.de
If you like this, you may also consider Funny Games
Print Source: International TVP
Producers Juliusz Machulski, Wojciech Danowski Screenplay Joanna Kos
Principal Cast: valeria Solarino, maurizio micheli, marina rocco, Graziano Piazza
HONEYDRiPPER
TueSday 19 FeBruary CINeWorLd 8 / 6.00Pm
director: John Sayles 2007 / uSa / 118 minutes
Principal Cast: danny Glover, Lisa Gay Hamilton, yaya daCosta, Gary Clark Jr.
Winner of the Audience Award at last year’s JDiFF, John Carney’s charming musical has gone on to break box-office records around the world. Even the great Stephen Spielberg has been reported as declaring that the film gave him enough inspiration to last the rest of the year. The story of a Dublin busker, who ekes out a living repairing vacuum cleaners who meets a young, Czech immigrant who sells roses on the same street and the course of their love affair over a week, vis infused with an emotional honesty that bewitches its audience, filled with heartbreaking songs performed by lead actors Glen Hansard of much loved The Frames and Marketa irglova, a Czech singer/ songwriter.
The festival has chosen to present Once as tribute to the cinematographer Tim Fleming who is recognised this year as part of our irish talent Spotlight, whose graceful photography brings a special glow to the slow burning romance, while also capturing a contemporary Dublin in all of its melancholy glory. it is also a been screened as part of our Music on Film season, the Once soundtrack which Hansard co-wrote with irglová has gone double platinum in Australia and Korea, he is up for two Grammy nominations and rumour has it two songs from the film are in contention for the Best Song Oscar.
Gráinne Humphreys
Salvatore Maira’s valzer is an innovative, topical and ultra-contemporary satirical drama about multifaceted events taking place within a hotel during one day.
Different stories all link back to the emotional experience of a maid who is confronted by an ex-convict she has been writing to for years, posing as his daughter. As this drama is played out, there are shenanigans going on in the conference suite, where (drawing on real life events in italian football) a group of football team supporters are preparing to rig the results of the championship. Meanwhile, television and technology experts discuss how they can brainwash and manipulate viewers using football coverage.
This wickedly arresting mixture of dramatic action, barbed political comment and comic irony is made more fascinating by the director’s ambitious decision to shoot the film in a continuous take, using cameras that literally follow the characters in and out of rooms and from door to door (a modern equivalent of Alfred Hitchcock’s rope), accompanied by the music of a waltz being played by a small band in the hotel.
adrian Wootton, London Film Festival Programme
Screenwriter: John Carney. www.thefilmfactoryireland.com
Print Source: Home Production SRL
Producer: Stefano Sciarra
Screenplay: Salvatore Maira
If you like this, you may also consider The Unknown
it is Alabama, 1950, and the season of the cotton harvest. Tyrone ‘Pine Top’ Purvis (Danny Glover) runs and plays piano at the Honeydripper Lounge, a shack bar in the little crossroads town of Harmony that has seen better days. The time of the Blues is passing, and singer Bertha Mae (Dr. Mable John) is no longer a draw for the young cotton pickers and local Army base recruits who are filling Touissant’s, the rival juke joint across the way. Pine Top hires the popular electric guitar player, Guitar Sam, hoping for a big payday that will ensure the bar has a future. However, things don’t go to plan, and Pine Top is forced into drastic action, making a desperate deal with redneck Sheriff Pugh (Stacey Keach).
With wonderful, warm performances and a terrific script, Honeydripper is a deceptively simple, delightful drama with depth, where the politics of race and class (and of the past and present) are always bubbling away beneath its stylish surface. The period detail is brilliantly done and evocative, while the music throughout is irresistible, and positively euphoric at the film’s climax.
michael Hayden, London Film Festival Programme
H Director John Sayles and producer Maggie Renzi will participate in a post screening discussion with screenwriter Mark O’Halloran.
Print Source: Axiom Films Producer: Maggie Renzi Screenplay: John Sayles www.honeydripper-movie.com
Print Source: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, (Ireland)
Producer: Martina Niland, David Collins.
THE MOuRNiNG FOREST (MOGARi NO
MORi)
TueSday 19 FeBruary
SCreeN 1 / 6.10Pm
director: Naomi Kawase 2007 / Japan / France / 97 minutes
The mourning Forest mixes a modern sensibility with animistic beliefs to create a whispered elegy to love and its ability to persist long after death.
Old Shigeki (Shigeki uda), suffering from senile dementia, lives in a small retirement home filled with light and tranquility that sits on the edge of a mighty forest. He holds on to a special relationship with his dead wife, Mako (Kanako Masuda), his long letters to her the silent testimony of his undying love. But now the thirty-third anniversary of Mako’s death is approaching and, according to Japanese Buddhist beliefs, this means the departed must travel to the land of Buddha. The time has come for the couple to part forever.
Kawase’s naturalistic touch creates an inner geography of emotion, gracefully linking it to the region’s awe inspiring topography in a way that recalls Japan’s long tradition of landscape painting. The mourning Forest spotlights Kawase’s harmonious style of filmmaking, giving us a modern reflection on aging that also lyrically exalts nature’s primeval majesty. Giovanni Fulvi, Toronto Film Festival Programme
H Winner of Grand Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2007
TueSday 19 FeBruary movIeS@duNdrum / 8.15Pm
director: Brian de Palma 2007 / uSa / Canada / 90 minutes
Principal Cast: Izzy diaz, daniel Stewart Sherman, Patrick Carroll, mike Figueroa, Ty Jones
Leave it to the rabble-rousing instincts of Brian De Palma to drop a homemade bomb into the middle of the iraq debate. Redacted has the feel and tone of a piece of guerrilla filmmaking. Taking a small crew to the Middle East, shooting on digital video, De Palma intends to provoke – he is angry and it shows.
Focusing on a squad of American soldiers in Samarra, the film employs a number of conflicting styles and alternative points of view, juxtaposing the experiences of the soldiers running a checkpoint with those of the media sent to cover events, and the local iraqis who find themselves caught in the middle of a civil war.
De Palma has set himself an ambitious goal. He wants us to radically reconsider the imagery through which we encounter events in our world, and how the presentation and composition of these various visual registers influences our ideas and beliefs. This is a brave film, as full of contradiction and conflict as the war itself. Never one to shy away from controversy, De Palma has crafted yet another film that is certain to stir considerable debate.
Piers Handling, Toronto International Film Festival Programme
Principal Cast: marianne Faithfull, miki manojlovic, Kevin Bishop
Maggie needs money urgently. Her grandson is seriously ill in hospital, and the medication that could save his life is way beyond what his parents can afford. She will have to come up with an idea soon if she is to give her son and daughter-in-law fresh hope.
Desperate, Maggie, a middle-class Londoner in her mid-fifties, finds herself responding to a temptingly lucrative job offer at a sex club. At “Sexy World”, the shy but sprightly widow meets the club’s charming manager, Miki, who gently introduces her to her tasks as a “hostess”. Her new colleague, Luisa, acquaints her with the rules of the game and, before long, the conscientious Maggie becomes the much sought after and well-paid “irina Palm”. Along with the cash, Maggie gains renewed self-confidence, realising that she’s not as old, unattractive and useless as she had believed herself to be.
But then it transpires that her clandestine existence begins to raise the suspicions of both her son and her inquisitive neighbours alike. Yet even when everything comes to light, Maggie refuses to let this get her down… Berlin Film Festival Programme
H Screening with the short film, The Wednesday. See page xx
Print Source: Celluloid Dreams
Producer: Naomi Kawase
Screenplay: Naomi Kawase www.celluloid-dreams.com
If you like this, you may also consider Silent NIght
Print Source: Optimum Releasing
Producers: Jennifer Weiss, Simone Urdl, Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente
Screenplay: Brian De Palma www.optimumreleasing.com
If you like this, you may also consider Battle for Haditha
If you like this, you may also consider Caramel
Print Source: Soda Pictures
Producers: Sébastien Delloye, Diana Elbaum, Georges van Brueghel Screenplay: Philippe Blasband, Sam Garbarski, Martin Herron www.irinapalm-themovie.com
MY BROTHER iS AN ONLY CHiLD (MiO FRATELiO é FiGLiO uNiCO)
Principal Cast: elio Germano, Luca Zingaretti, anna Bonaiuto, massimo Popolizio
The contrasting lives of Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) and his younger brother, Accio (Elio Germano), provide the narrative fuel for Daniele Luchetti’s finely honed portrait of italian society in the turbulent sixties and seventies. Luchetti sketches a beautifully modulated tale of rivalry, love and political differences.
The film begins in the early sixties, when the rebellious young Accio decides that seminary life is not for him. A leader of the local Fascist movement who is an admirer of Mussolini and stridently anti-American fills the boy’s head with talk of restoring italy’s lost glories. However, Manrico sits on the other side of the political fence. He quickly gravitates toward the Communist party and begins organizing local factory workers. The two brothers manage to remain friends despite their divergent beliefs, but their relationship undergoes a different kind of challenge when Accio’s attraction to Manrico’s girlfriend, also a committed left-wing organizer, becomes apparent.
While politics may well be divisive, they are also transient and, as people grow older, different realities and feelings come into being. my Brother Is an only Child captures the full spectrum of what this means to a family living through uncertain times.
Piers Handling, Toronto Film Festival Programme
H Screening with the short film, Blind eye. See page 25. The festival hopes actor Ardal O’Hanlon will attend the screening.
TuYA’S MARRiAGE
( TuYA DE HuN SHi)
TueS 19 FeBruary
SCreeN 1 / 8.30Pm
THurS 21 FeBruary
SCreeN 2 / 2.00m
director: Wang quan’an China / 2007 / 96 minutes
Principal Cast: yu Nan, Ba Te er, Sen Ge
Living conditions are deteriorating for those who lead a rural existence in north-western Mongolia. China’s industry is expanding –even into this inhospitable region – and the government is pressurising Monoglian shepherds to give up their nomadic way of life, move to the nearby towns and settle down as farmers.
Beautiful and self-confident Tuya refuses to leave her pastureland. She’d rather stay here with her disabled husband, two children and one hundred sheep, and continue to pursue a life of privation in the endless expanse of the steppe. But all the hard work begins to take its toll on Tuya.
One day, she falls ill and for the first time begins to consider a divorce, because this would enable her to find someone to help her to look after Bater, the two children and their one hundred sheep. However, none of her suitors are prepared to take on Bater – until Tuya’s old classmate Baolier arrives on the scene.
But, far away from the steppe and separated from his family, Bater finds it impossible to get used to life at the home. in desperation he slashes his wrists. When the news reaches Tuya, she realises that the time has come for her to act…
Berlin International Film Festival Programme
H Winner Golden Bear Award, Berlin international Film Festival 2007
TueSday 19 FeBruary
CHq, doCKL aNdS TIme To Be CoNFIrmed
The irish Film Archive presents a montage of images of Dublin docklands on film. This fascinating compilation includes both amateur and professional footage dating from the 1930s to the 1970s. Watch international pilgrims arrive in Dublin Port for the Eucharistic Congress (1932); marvel at aerial panoramas of Dublin bay from “Dublin of the Welcomes” (1936); enjoy a portrait of the docks in “Calafort Atha Cliath” (1956) and stories from Gael Linn’s seminal cinema newsreel “Amharc Eireann” which ran from 1956 to 1964: launches of luxury liners and tankers and B+i Ferries from the 1960s; the dockers strike in 1963; loading and unloading of Guinness barrels, Hollywood stars, and other livestock.
The compilation, which primarily features newsreels and documentary material, but also some feature film extracts, provides a glimpse into the broad range of material preserved in the irish Film Archive of the irish Film institute .
Sunniva o’Flynn, Curator, Irish Film archive
Print Source: Irish Film Archive www.ifi.ie/archive
Screenplay:
Print Source: Revolver Entertainment
Producers: Marco Chimenz, Giovanni Stabilini, Riccardo Tozzi
Daniele Luchetti, Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli, based on the novel by Antonio Pennacchi www.revolvergroup.com
TOPSY-TuRVY
WedNeSday 20 FeBruary
SCreeN 1 / 1.30Pm
director: mike Leigh 1999 / united Kingdom / 100 minutes
Principal Cast: Jim Broadbent, allan Corduner, Lesley manville, Timothy Spall, alison Steadman, dexter Fletcher
Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turv y is the work of a man helplessly in love with the theatre. in a gloriously entertaining period piece, he tells the story of the genesis, preparation and presentation of a comic opera – Gilbert and Sullivan’s The mikado – celebrating all the dreaming and hard work, personality conflict and team spirit, inspiration and mundane detail, of every theatrical presentation, however inspired or inept. Every production is completely different, and they are all exactly like this.
This is not merely a film that goes backstage, but also one that goes into accounting ledgers, hiring practices, costume design, personnel problems, casting decisions, sex lives and the endless detail work of rehearsal: Hours of work are needed to manufacture and perfect even a silly throwaway moment, so that it is thrown away with style and wit, instead of merely being misplaced.
Broadbent makes a precise Gilbert, bluff and incisive, and Corduner’s Sullivan is a study in the partner who cannot admit that his greatness lies always in collaboration. Romantic love ages and matures. Love of the theatre, it reminds us, is somehow always adolescent, heedless, passionate, guilty. it is one of best films of 1999.
roger ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
H Mike Leigh will be in attendance at this screening
Print Source: Páthe Entertainment
Producer: Simon Channing-Williams
Screenplay: Mike Leigh www.pathe.co.uk
MuTuM
WedNeSday 20 FeBruary
SCreeN 2 / 2.10Pm
director: Sandra Kogut 2007 / Brazil / 95 minutes
Principal Cast: Thiago da Silva mariz, Wallison Felipe Leal Barroso, João miguel, Izadora Cristiani Fernandes Silveira, Luis Carlos vasconcelos, Flavio Bauraqui
Sandra Kogut’s first feature, mutum, explores the spaces and stories that children invent to try to understand the actions and words of the adults in their lives. Based on a popular Brazilian novel by João Guimarães Rosa, mutum shows us the tiny world of a ten-yearold through the eyes of Thiago (Thiago da Silva Mariz). The eldest of five children, Thiago is extremely sensitive, a quality that his brutish father (João Miguel) finds unnerving
Thoughtful and introspective, mutum gives us pause for thought as we join Thiago in his fascination for small details: a spider spinning its web or an insect ambling over a log are filmed with a sense of wonder. Kogut elicits splendid performances from her young actors, who simultaneously convey innocent discovery and the bittersweetness that comes with growing up. in several ways, the veil of childhood is lifted from Thiago’s eyes; when it is, he finally sees his childhood home in a new way, reminding us all of those moments when we see the world anew: sad, daunting but beautiful.
diana Sanchez, Toronto Film Festival Programme
THE CLASS
WedNeSday 20 FeBruary
SCreeN 2 / 4.20Pm
director: Ilmar raag 2007 / estonia / 97 minutes
Principal Cast: vallo Kirs, Pärt uusberg, Paula Solvak, margus Prangel, Tiina rebane, marje metsur, merle Jääger, Leila Säälik, Lauri Pedaja
introvert Joosep is the butt of crude jokes from his classmates who are irritated by his taciturn nature. The only support he has comes from Kaspar, whom he sits next to in class. Anders, the leader of a gang, steps up his behaviour towards both boys, taking things beyond the limits of human dignity. After a particularly repulsive incident, Joosep and Kaspar decide it’s time to take action. Things will never be the same again…
The film is divided into seven chapters and takes place in an anonymous Estonian secondary school. This isn’t a sociological probe into the theme of adolescent bullying which might turn violently against the perpetrators, but more a universal reflection on the darker sides of the human soul, often hidden beneath an attractive exterior, ready to provoke an unexpected reaction under excess pressure. The acting performances of the leads, in particular, give the story – a linear progression where silly pranks develop into a tragic outcome – a highly credible dimension.
Karlovy vary Film Festival Programme
Print Source: Arte France
Producers: Flávio Ramos Tambellini, Isabelle Pragier Screenplay: Ana Luiza Martins Costa, Sandra Kogut based on the novel by João Guimarães Rosa www.mutumofilme.com.br/
Print Source: Estonian Film Foundation
Producer: Riina Sildos Screenplay: Ilmar Raag www.klassfilm.com
If you like this, you
i SERVED THE KiNG OF ENGLAND
WedNeSday 20 FeBruary
IFI 1 / 6.00Pm
director: Jirí menzel
2006 / Czech republic / Slovakia / 118 minutes
Principal Cast: Ivan Barnev, oldrich Kaiser, Julia Jentsch, milan Lasica, Zuzana Fialová
Jan Díte has one ambition: to be a millionaire. And he has only one notion of how to achieve this: to be the best maitre d’ at the flashiest hotel. Or at least at the best brothel. Or, for that matter, in Nazi human breeding camps…
Following a long prison sentence, Jan Díte looks back over an eventful life, which has seen him elevate himself from humble waiter to Nazi bridegroom to millionaire criminal. One of the most ambitious and expensive Czech films of all time, this historical epic is the long-awaited result of a protracted struggle for the screen rights to Bohumil Hrabal’s famed novel.
Jirí Menzel’s adaptation is his fourth to be drawn from Hrabal’s work (including the superb Closely observed Trains). Combining sheer visual excess with sardonic commentary upon European mores in the first half of the 20th century, I Served the King of england proves worth the wait. it’s a beautifully performed and designed film, shaded with irony and festooned with moments of delightful physical comedy.
Principal Cast: Tadanobu asano, Honglei Sun, Khulan Chuluun, odnyam odsuren
Sergei Bodrov has fulfilled a long-time dream in bringing the heart-wrenching story of one of the great rulers of the Mongol Dynasty to the screen. The tale of how a young boy ascended to become Khan centres Bodrov’s epic tale of love and betrayal. mongol reaches Shakespearean heights in its narrative account of a family that is torn apart, cast aside, and eventually restored to power..
Nine-year-old Temudgin sets off with his father, a khan, to search for a bride. But his life instantly changes when a group of Tartars poison his father. Even though he is next in line to rule, the rest of the tribe refuses to accept leadership from a young boy. An epic of courage and resourcefulness follows, as the boy becomes a man and his picaresque journey sees him descend to the depths of slavery before exacting his revenge and reascending to the heights of power he knew as a young boy. This saga plays out against the stunning landscapes of Central Asia, where tribal loyalties rule and violent warfare trumps other means of resolving differences.
Piers Handling, Toronro Film Festival Programme
Producer: Rudolf Biermann
Screenplay: Jirí Menzel, based on the novel by Bohumil Hrabal www.anglickykral.cz/ojakeng.html
If you like this, you may also consider You, The Living
Bodrov www.mongolmovie.com
If you like this, you may also consider Tuya’s Marriage
Wed 20 FeB / SCreeN 1 / 6.10Pm & SaT 23 FeB / 8.15Pm movIeS@duNdrum
director: emmanuelle Cuau 2007 / France / 102 minutes
Principal Cast: Gilbert melki, Sandrine Kiberlain, olivier Cruveiller, Christophe odent, rené remblier
Smoking proves hazardous to a man’s health, but not for the customary reasons, in the rewardingly Kafkaesque Tres Bién, merci. Compact and pleasingly perverse, this cautionary tale about stepping out of line is a slyly entertaining look at the compound indignities of modern life.
Devoted husband and conscientious employee Alex (Melki) has a solid, loving relationship with his wife of 10 years, Beatrice (Sandrine Kiberlain), a Paris cab driver.
On his way home at night, Alex runs into several cops doing an iD check on a young couple. Fascinated, he decides to stand and watch, even though he’s repeatedly told to move along. When Alex refuses, he’s thrown in jail for the night. Released early the next morning, he demands an explanation – and ends up in a psychiatric clinic.
Matters go downhill from there, although Alex’s demeanour is consistently rational in response to authoritarian lunacy. Beatrice stands by him, but Alex’s unexplained absence from work creates problems.
in its attention to pragmatic detail anchored in social realities, the picture could be read as a comic update of Hitchcock’s The Wrong man. Sophomore co-scripter/helmer Emmanuelle Cuau (1995’s Circuit Carole) deftly conveys the stigma of being considered guilty until proven innocent. What might qualify as “proof” is always marginally out of reach.
Lisa Nesselson, variety
Print Source: Gemini Films Producer: Paulo Branco Screenplay: Agnès Caffin, Emmanuelle Cuau www.gemini-films.com If you like this, you may also consider Empties
Print Source: Arrow Films
L A ANTENA
WedNeSday 20 FeBruary
SCreeN 2 / 6.30Pm
director: esteban Sapir 2005 / argentina / 90 minutes
Principal Cast: valeria Bertuccelli, alejandro urdapilleta, Julieta Cardinali, rafael Ferro
An impressive example of the vitality and the formal potential of silent cinema, the long-awaited second feature by Esteban Sapir is also welcome proof of the continuing attraction it has for contemporary film makers. inspired by the cinema of Murnau and Lang, of Eisenstein and Vertov, La antena is nevertheless a very modern film. The form, the editing and the techniques used reveal that La antena is a film of our own time. The fairytale allegory continues to surprise from scene to scene with extensive, cleverly-made sets and beautiful use of words on screen.
in a wintry metropolis in the year xxx, the mercilessly bad Mr TV rules. People watch TV and eat the TV meals produced by Mr TV. Mr TV is working on a sinister plan with a dangerous hypnotic machine that operates through the TV to ensure that all life will be subjected to him forever. To achieve this, he kidnaps the only one who still has The Voice –a stunningly beautiful singer. An inventor witnesses the kidnapping and flees with his family to an old broadcasting mast in an attempt to thwart approaching doom. rotterdam Film Festival Programme
C ALLAS ASSOLuTA
Wed 20 FeB / 8.15Pm
movIeS@duNdrum
THurS 21 FeB / 6.00Pm IFI 1
director: Philippe Kohly 2007 / France / 97 minutes
Say the name Maria Callas and a multitude of associations come to mind: diva extraordinaire; one of the greatest opera stars the world has ever known; lover of Aristotle Onassis; fashion icon. Callas was a larger-than-life personality, still remembered fondly by legions of fans around the world. And for the public of post-war Europe, she was an outsized celebrity whose image graced fashion magazines and whose antics were written up in gossip columns.
Philippe Kohly’s mesmerizing documentary is a survey of Callas’s entire life, dealing with the musician as well as the woman. While her career led to fame and fortune, it was also marred by a series of high-profile incidents that captured headlines around the world. And then there was the private Callas, the woman who weighed one hundred kilos in her twenties, married young, conducted a highly publicised affair with Onassis and became a star who hung around with the glitterati of society. A film for devotees and novices alike, Callas assoluta shows us what superstars – and the elegant Europe of the sixties and seventies – used to look like.
Principal Cast: Zdenek Sverák, Tatiana vilhelmová, daniela Kolárová
Like his Oscar-winning Kolya, Jan Sverák’s new film stars and is scripted by his father, Zdenek Sverák. Past retirement age, schoolteacher Josef Tkaloun finds he no longer understands his pupils and decides to resign.
However, unaccustomed to a life of inactivity, he defers the books he has saved for retirement and opts for a succession of parttime jobs, including that of cycle messenger and supervisor of the bottle returns in a supermarket. He finds an interesting new world (supplemented by continuing erotic fantasies), from which his wife is excluded. Based on Zdenek Sverák’s musings on what his life might be like if he had such a job, it is not without autobiographical inspiration.
Arguably the Sverák’s best film, this sophisticated and perceptive comedy is full of the low-key observation characteristic of the best of Czech cinema – unpretentious, involving, and apparently effortless. The biggest box office success in the Czech Republic since the fall of Communism, empties crosses the generation divide with its traditional narrative virtues and a characteristically taciturn performance from Sverák senior.
Directors: Catherine Owens, Mark Pellington 2007 / USA / 84 minutes
The Jameson Dublin international Film Festival is delighted to present the European Premiere of u2 3d.
For over a quarter-century, u2 has been recognised not only for their musical invention, but for their incomparable gift for reaching millions of fans through new technologies. Their live shows immerse concert-goers in multi sensory experiences: whether through their ground breaking use of video screens or, more recently, the use of dimensional, lighted-bead video curtains. u2 3d – the first digital 3D, multi-camera, real-time production –reflects the band’s long-standing embrace of technology, its recognition that digital 3D isn’t a developing platform – it’s fully here – and its belief that u2 3d has the potential to be as revolutionary for digital 3D as The Jazz Singer was for talkies. Marrying advanced digital 3D imagery and 5.1 Surround Sound with the unique excitement of a live u2 concert, u2 3d takes viewers on an extraordinary cinematic journey, a quantum leap beyond traditional concert films.
Filmed during the South American leg of the band’s “Vertigo” tour, u2 3d captures the exceptional performances on-stage during the band’s concert in Buenos Aires. The film portrays the passionate reactions of 80,000 fans from nine digital 3D camera systems as well as the exuberant on-stage dynamic between u2’s Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jnr, as they incite and inspire their massive audience.
A 3ality Digital production, directed by Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington, u2 3d takes a performance by the band u2, winner of 22 Grammy Awards and 8 Brits, into a totally new film dimension.
H Director Catherine Owens will attend the screening
Print Source: Revolver Entertainment Producers: Jon Shapiro, Peter Shapiro, John Modell, Catherine Owens www.u23dmovie.com
JELLYFiSH (MEDuZOT )
WedNeSday 20 FeBruary
SCreeN 2 / 8.50Pm
directors: etgar Keret / Shira Geffen 2006 / Israel / France / 78 minutes
Principal Cast: Sarah adler, Nikol Leidman, Gera Sandler, Noa Knoller
THE FiRST GREAT TRAiN ROBBERY
WedNeSday 20 FeBruary
HeuSToN TraIN STaTIoN
TIme To Be CoNFIrmed
director: michael Crichton
uSa / 1979 / 110 minutes
Principal Cast: Sean Connery, donald Sutherland, Lesley-anne down, alan Webb, malcolm Terris
THE GiRL BY THE L AKE (L A R AGAZZA DEL LAGO)
THurSday 21 FeBruary
SCreeN 1 / 1.30Pm
2007 / Italy / 95 minutes
Principal Cast: Toni Servillo, anna Bonaiuto, omero antonutti, Fabrizio Gifuni, valeria Golino, Nello mascia
Husband and wife team Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen may just be the golden couple of israeli cinema right now following the success of Jellyfish. The film, which was awarded the prestigious Camera d’Or at Cannes for best debut, is a multi-strand take on life in modern-day Tel Aviv. Keret and Geffen weave a hypnotically cinematic meditation on life and all its absurdities.
using short, perfectly framed vignettes to forward the story, Keret and Geffen’s look at family dysfunction and failed personal lives should, at first glance, be depressing. A newlywed couple find their honeymoon interrupted when the bride breaks her leg climbing out of a locked toilet. A young girl emerges from the sea one day into the arms of a heartbroken stranger, recently split up from her boyfriend while in another strand a Filipina maid has to wordlessly connect with her charge, an elderly woman who has been neglected by her aspiring actress of a daughter. instead what emerges is an endlessly surprising, poignant work imbued with the calming sorrow, and wonder, of the sea’s deep blue which provides so much of the film’s tone and hue.
ali Jaafar, London Film Festival Programme
The First Great Train robbery, adapted by Michael Crichton from his own best-selling novel and directed by him with great humour, is based on the true story of what is alleged to have been the first train robbery in history. in 1855, a small band of extremely ingenious crooks made off with £25,000 in gold bars from the train carrying them from London to Folkestone where, the authorities hoped, it would successfully be trans-shipped to the Crimea, there to pay the troops then fighting the Czar.
With Sean Connery as the gang’s elegant leader, Lesley-Anne Down as his magnificent moll, and Donald Sutherland as his locksmith, The First Great Train robbery is classy entertainment of the sort i associate exclusively with movies.
The highly impressive cinematography gives us a panoramic view of early Victorian life, from its drawing rooms and luxurious private clubs to its gambling dens, its slums and its prisons.
Although set in London and Kent, most of the filming took place in ireland. in particular, the final scenes were filmed in Parliament Square of Trinity College, Dublin and Heuston Station. its streets are alive with the kind of movement that only movies can afford.
vincent Canby,
Kit
Screenplay: Shira Geffen www.jellyfish-film.de
If you like this, you may also consider Sweet Mud/The Milky Way
Producer: John Foreman Screenplay: Michael Crichton, based on his own novel www.parkcircus.com
An idyllic town surrounded by mountains is shocked by the murder of young and beautiful Anna (Alessia Piovan), found nude on the side of a lake but with no signs of sexual assault or a struggle. inspector Giovanni Sanzio (Servillo) is called in from the provincial capital, but the victim proves as mysterious as the crime itself. Suspicion falls on village simpleton Mario (Franco Ravera), then transfers to Anna’s layabout boyfriend, Roberto (Denis Fasolo), and even her father, Davide (Marco Baliani), whose homemovies of his curvaceous daughter pay more attention to her form than would seem appropriate. Or could it be recently divorced neighbor Corrado Canali (Fabrizio Gifuni), whose autistic child died in a freak accident not too long ago?
As expected, Servillo gets completely under the skin of the inspector, radiating depth while maintaining a hardened exterior. He’s joined by the cream of italo thespians, including Valeria Golino in a brief part as Canali’s estranged wife. Argentinian lenser Ramiro Civita (“Whisky romeo Zulu”) gives the picture a properly cold light, suggesting the almost quivering anxieties behind the tranquil mountain exterior.
Jay Weissberg, variety
If you like this, you may also consider Ping Pong
Print Source: Pyramide International
Producers: Yael Fogiel, Laeitia Gonzalez, Amir Harel, Ayelet
Print Source: Indigo Films
Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima
SWEET MuD
(ADAMA MESHuGA’ AT )
THurS 21 FeB / SCreeN 1
3.30Pm & SuN 24 FeB / CINeWorLd 8 / 1.00Pm
director: dror Shaul
2006 / Israel / Germany / Japan / 97 minutes
Principal Cast: Tomer Steinhof, ronit yudkevitch, Henri Garcin, Shai avivi
Amidst lush fields and the idyllic landscape of a kibbutz in 1974, 12-year-old Dvir is entering his bar mitzvah year – a time for many initiations and trials. Dvir’s father is dead, his brother is away in the army, and his mother, Miri, suffers from emotional instability. While the collective handles the practical needs of every family, the intangible moral support one expects from a close-knit cooperative is scarce, and Dvir is left to care for beautiful, fragile Miri. When Miri’s kindly boyfriend, Stephan, arrives from Switzerland, it seems that Miri, blissfully in love, may actually recover. But the “kibbutzniks,” already resentful of a “noncontributing” guest, cast Stephan out after he tussles with another resident to defend Dvir. The loss shatters Miri – and Dvir must pick up the pieces.
Vividly capturing the vagaries of ‘70s kibbutz life with gorgeous, glowing camerawork, Sweet mud is the painful coming of age of a child who marshals all his resources to nurture his own parent. The story also becomes a wrenching allegory for the casualties of any society that fails to tend to its members’ vulnerabilities.
Caroline Libresco, Sundance Film Festival Programme
CHiLDREN OF GLORY (SZABADSáG, SZERELEM)
THurSday 21 FeBruary
SCreeN 2 / 4.10Pm
director: Kirsztina Goda 2006 / Hungary / uK / 123 minutes
Principal Cast: Iván Fenyö, Kata dobó, Sándor Csányi, viktória Szávai, Zsolt Huszár
Karcsi Szabó is a member of the Hungarian water polo team, one of Europe’s leading teams. Last year, the team’s only defeat was in Moscow, where they only lost because the referee refused to let them win. Now the team are training intensively for the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, which could provide them with the opportunity to take its revenge on their ostensible superiors.
But when the students of the Technical university take to the streets of Budapest in October in order to demonstrate their solidarity with the workers’ uprising in Poland, Karcsi and his friend Tibi find themselves caught up in the tide of political unrest. At first the pair sees it all as an adventure but when Karcsi meets a temperamental student named Viki, he finds himself drawn increasingly into her political activities.
When the uprising is crushed by Soviet troops, Karcsi falls into a depression. Now, more than, ever, he needs to serve the national team. And on 6 December 1956, the Hungarians find themselves up against the Soviet union’s team once again - this time at the Olympic semi-finals.
Berlin Film Festival Programme
LOVE
iN
THE TiME OF CHOLERA
THurSday 21 FeBruary CINeWorLd 17 / 6.00Pm
director: mike Newell 2007 / uSa / 138 minutes
Principal Cast: Benjamin Bratt, Gina Bernard Forbes, Giovanna mezzogiorno, Javier Bardem
For its legions of fans, the novel Love in the Time of Cholera by the Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez, is akin to a Rosetta stone, the premier text of love, transcendence and spectacular writing. So screenwriter Ronald Harwood (The Pianist, and recent the upcoming film The diving Bell and the Butterfly) and director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) had an almost insurmountable degree of difficulty, not only in adapting Márquez’s dense, magical realist prose, but in winning over the novel’s fiercest devotees.
Newell has enlisted a stunning cast to bring the multi-generational tale to life, most notably with Javier Bardem in the role of Florentino Ariza, who, as a young messenger boy, falls in love with the aristocratic Fermina Daza, only to pine for her for more than 50 years as their native Colombia is wracked by cholera and revolution, and she is married to the prosperous Dr. Juvenal urbino.
The standout is the luminous italian actress Giovanna Mezzogiorno, who as Fermina swoons and moons with just the right seductive sadness.
Newell’s adaption is nothing short of lush, extravagant, sad and touching throughout.
ann Hornaday, Washington Post
Kowarsky, Edgard Tenembaum, Dror Shaul
Screenplay: Dror Shaul www.sweetmud.com
Print Source: Lionsgate
Producers: Andrew G. Vajna, Tamás Zákonyi S. Screenplay: Joe Eszterhas, Éva Gárdos, Géza Bereményi, Réka Divinyi www.lionsgatefilms.co.uk/films
If you like this, you may also consider Katyn
Print Source: Momentum Pictures
Producers: Scott Steindorf
Screenplay: Ronald Harwood, based on the novel by Gabriel García Márquez www.loveinthetime.com
If you like this, you may also consider Angel
Print Source: Bavaria Film International
Producers: Sharon Shamir, Johannes Rexin, Bettina Broekemper, Philippa
MiSTER LONELY
THurSday 21 FeBruary
SCreeN 1 / 6.10Pm
director: Harmony Korine 2007 / united Kingdom / France / Ireland / uSa / 112 minutes
Principal Cast: diego Luna, Samantha morton, denis Lavant, James Fox, melita morgan
Michael Jackson (Diego Luna) moonwalks, high kicks and yelps ‘yoo-hoos’ in the streets of Paris. While he is entertaining pensioners at a nursing home, Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton) teeters by, and tells Michael of a haven for look-alikes in the Highlands of Scotland, a commune where Charlie Chaplin, Shirley Temple, the Pope, Queen Elizabeth ii and others work together and entertain each other in glorious seclusion, away from the misunderstandings they face in the outside world. Michael can’t resist seeing the place for himself, and follows Marilyn there.
Meanwhile, in the jungle, a drunken missionary (Werner Herzog) leads some nuns on a highflying adventure. Harmony Korine’s first feature since 1999 finds him in a playful, enjoyably mischievous mood, capturing a tone as reminiscent of his so-called ‘novel’, A Crackup at the Race Riots, as it is of his previous films. That’s not to say all is sweetness and light in Korine’s world, and mister Lonely does have some darker twists. it is still a film that’s a delight to watch from the astonishing opening sequence on, one that’s beautifully filmed, audacious, hilariously funny and ultimately very touching.
Principal Cast: Lars Kaalund, Bodil Jørgensen, ann eleonora Jørgensen, Peter Gantzler, Peter Hesse overgaard
Set in a small town where everyone knows everyone else, and everybody has strongly held opinions about how others should conduct their affairs (but wouldn’t dare voice those opinions publicly), Just Like Home recounts what happens when those layers of repression and politesse are discarded. it all starts when a pompous pseudo-bohemian named Lindy Steen (Peter Hesse Overgaard) delivers a talk at the town hall and lets slip that he saw a man running naked through the streets. Suddenly, everyone is convinced that the town – indeed, all of Danish society – is collapsing around them.
in a wrong-headed attempt to ameliorate the situation, the much-beloved local pharmacist (Lars Kaalund) launches a telephone hotline, “The Silent Ear,” staffed by a small group of like-minded townspeople – and pretty soon the situation gets much, much worse.
Just Like Home is beautifully paced and structured, boasting a slew of disarming performances. Scherfig’s genuine affection for her characters drives the film. That said, though Scherfig is gentle with each specific character’s eccentric behaviour, the film is harsher in its overall depiction of an insular society’s collective neuroses. in some ways, the film plays like a recasting of Gabriel García Márquez’s novella in Evil Hour – a bracingly comic one.
Steve Gravestock, Toronto International Film Festival
THurSday 21 FeBruary
SCreeN 2 / 8.00Pm
director: Lucía Puenzo
2007 / argentina / Spain / France / 91 minutes
Principal Cast: ricardo darín, valeria Bertucceli, Germán Palacios, Carolina Peleritti, martín Piroyansky, Inés efron
XX y, Lucía Puenzo’s accomplished debut, explores the painful search for gender identity of Alex (an outstanding performance by inés Efron), a hermaphrodite, as she enters adolescence and is pressured by her parents to “choose.” Alex’s ambiguity is painfully apparent. She is forced to think about having her penis removed when her parents invite a surgeon to their home in an isolated area of the uruguayan coast. He comes to visit with his wife and son, álvaro (Martín Piroyansky).
Alex and álvaro strike up a friendship, and it soon emerges that they are equally confused and curious about sex, sexuality and gender. At the same time, they are obviously much less confused and fearful than their parents, whose prejudices often unknowingly hurt their children. Alex’s father, Kraken (Ricardo Darín), is the only adult who grasps the true nature of Alex’s relationship with álvaro.
Gracefully shot, the film’s most astonishing trait is its openness and lack of judgement as it tackles this difficult, emotional topic. Moving and forceful, XX y virtually demands that people be given freedom of choice in a tolerant and understanding atmosphere.
diana Sanchez, Toronto Film Festival Programme
Producer: Nadja Romain
Screenplay: Harmony Korine, Avi Korine www.misterlonely.co.uk
Print Source: Danish Film Institute
Producer: Sisse Graum Olsen
Screenplay: Niels Hausgaard, Lone Scherfig
If you like this, you may also consider You, The Living
If you like this, you may also consider Mala Noche
Print Source: Eclipse Pictures / Tartan Films
Print Source: Peccadillo Pictures Producers: Luis Puenzo, Jose María Morales Screenplay: Lucía Puenzo, based on the short story by Sergio Bizzio www.xxylapelicula.puenzo.com
THE LOOKOuT
THurSday 21 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 5 / 8.00Pm
director: Scott Frank 2007 / uSa / 99 minutes
Principal Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff daniels, matthew Goode, Isla Fisher, Carla Gugino
The Lookout marks Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Scott Frank’s (out of Sight), directorial debut. This intelligent crime drama is centered around Chris Pratt, once a Golden Boy athletic hero in his small Midwestern town. Chris had it all – a beautiful girlfriend, a wellheeled family and a shining future. But after a serious accident, Chris has found himself in a strange new world where his memory is unreliable and nothing quite makes sense. unable to make it on his own, he lives with his mentor in navigating this surreal life –the wisecracking, fiercely independent blind man, Lewis.
Things suddenly shift when he meets Gary Spargo, an old school acquaintance and street philosopher who begins to revive Chris’ shattered confidence, even helping him find a stripper – albeit a stripper named Luvlee Lemons. But Gary has bigger plans, and when he recruits Chris into his grand plan to rob the bank where he works. As the bank heist unravels into chaos, both Chris’ uncertain future and even more importantly Lewis’ survival are on the line. Now, it’s up to this young outcast who can’t always think straight to figure out how to outwit and take down his manipulators his own way.
variety
THE uNKNOWN (LA SCONOSCiuTA)
THurSday 21 FeBruary
SCreeN 1 / 8.40Pm
director: Giuseppe Tornatore
2007 / Italy / 118 minutes
Principal Cast: Kseniya rappoport, michele Placido, Claudia Gerini, margherita Buy
Giuseppe Tornatore’s best films, ever since early features The Professor and Cinema Paradiso have been marked by a strong emotional focus; his current picture brings peaks of violence and suspense to the vivid story of a young East European prostituteturned-cleaning lady intent on carrying out a mysterious mission in italy.
The startling opener takes place on a kind of private stage where trios of masked young women clad only in underwear and high heels are evaluated by an unseen man, like a director doing casting. Only much later is it clear this sinister rehearsal, shot in a Kubrick-like brew of surreal neon colors, involves a client selecting a hooker for a very special purpose.
Well-cast in supporting roles are the cream of italian cinema, from Gerini and Favino as the parents to Alessandro Haber as a sleazy doorman. Thanks to his bizarre blending of genres, a well-fitting and inspired soundtrack, and its over the edge breakout of passions, La Sconosciuta is a repeatedly stunning work from Tornatore, known to international audiences mainly for Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, best foreign language movie at the 1988 Academy Awards.
deborah young, variety
THurSday 21 FeBruary
TrINIT y CoLLeGe
TIme To Be CoNFIrmed
director: Lewis Gilbert
1983 / united Kingdom / 110 minutes
Principal Cast: michael Caine, Julie Walters, maureen Lipman, michael Williams
Producer-director Lewis Gilbert has done a marvelous job of bringing the charming British play, educating rita, to the big screen. Aided greatly by an expert film adaptation by its playwright, Willy Russell, Gilbert has come up with an irresistible story about a lively, lower-class British woman hungering for an education and the rather, staid, degenerating English professor who reluctantly provides her with one. Although the setting of the film is Liverpool, the film was shot entirely in ireland and primarily in Trinity College and university College Dublin.
Witty, down-to-earth, kind and loaded with common sense, Rita is the antithesis of the humorless, stuffy and stagnated academic world she so longs to infiltrate. Julie Walters injects her with just the right mix of comedy and pathos. Michael Caine is the sadly smart, alcoholic teacher who knows the fundamentals of English literature, but long ago lost the ability to enjoy life the way his uneducated pupil does.
The contradictions of the two characters are at the core of the picture, as Walters goes from dependent housewife to intelligent student and Caine begins to learn what it’s like to feel again.
variety
If you like this, you may also consider
Print Source: Transmedia International Releasing
Producer: Laura Fattori
Screenplay: Giuseppe Tornatore, Massimo De Rita www.transmediareleasing.com/films_lasconosciuta.htm
If you like this, you may also consider Valzer
Print Source: Park Circus
Producer: Lewis Gilbert
Screenplay: Willy Russell, based on his own play
Print Source: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Ireland
Producers: Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum, Laurence Mark Screenplay: Scott Frank
The Girl by the Lake/Valzer
midweek gALA HAPPY-GO-LuCKY
THurSday 21 FeBruary CINeWorLd 17 / 9.00Pm
Director: Mike Leigh 2008 / United Kingdom / 118 minutes
Principal Cast: Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman, Samuel Roukin, Sarah Niles
“my films aspire to the condition of documentary. If you’re a newsreel cameraman and you go and shoot a real event, you know that a world exists whether you film it or not. What I want to do is create a world with that kind of solidity to it, something so three-dimensional and solid you could cut it with a knife.” — Mike Leigh.
One of Britain’s most acclaimed and revered directors, Mike Leigh has made his mark with his depictions of the real-life dramas inherent in the day-to-day lives of regular people. Leigh is renowned for making films which shy away from Hollywood-style mawkish sentimentality and instead offer a more level-headed approach.
A Mike Leigh comedy, Happy-Go-Lucky is set in contemporary London and follows the adventures of Poppy (Sally Hawkins) a primary school teacher. A free spirit, she is open and generous –as funny and anarchic as she is focused and responsible.
Print Source: Momentum Pictures
Producer: Simon Channing-Williams Screenplay: Mike Leigh www.momentumpictures.co.uk
H We are delighted mike Leigh and lead actor Sally Hawkins will attend the screening and will participate in a post screening discussion hosted by filmmaker Lenny abrahamson.
THE iNHERiTANCE
FrIday 22 FeBruary
IFI 1 / 6.00Pm
director: Charles Henri Belleville 2007 / united Kingdom / 62 minutes
Principal Cast: Fraser Sivewright, Imogen Toner, Tom Hardy, Tim Barrow
in the nether fields of no budget filmmaking the script is king, which is why The Inheritance kicks off with such an advantage. Tim Barrow’s screenplay – let’s call it a diatribe – is starkly honest. There are no polite references to Scotland’s heritage, midges-to-go scenery, or family bonds that heal the wounds of separation. This is the story of two brothers who hate each other on a journey of selfdiscovery. What they’re looking for are pots of gold. What they find is themselves.
David (Barrow) is a skinny rat of a man, who has misspent the last five years in London. Fraser (Fraser Sivewright) stayed in Edinburgh, was mummy’s boy until mummy died and knew that dad preferred the prodigal exile to him. Now the old man is dead and David has taken the train up north in the hope of cashing in on the spoils. Naturally, he’s late for the funeral, but on hand when Fraser opens the safe in dad’s workshop. inside they find a key and a note, saying that they must go to Skye where they will find what they are looking for.
Essentially a two-hander, this is a film of astonishing conviction. Charles Henri Belleville directs with the vigour and confidence of a man who knows where he’s going, unlike his protagonists, and Chris Beck’s cinematography is exceptional by any standards.
H Screening with the short film, Le Foret. See page 35.
FrIday 22 FeBruary CINeWorLd 17 / 6.00Pm
director: Craig Gillespie 2007 / uSa / 106 minutes
Principal Cast: ryan Gosling, emily mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner, Patricia Clarkson
Ryan Gosling gives another dazzling performance in Lars and the real Girl, a gently naughty comic melodrama of love found and lost. Lars Lindstrom (Gosling), an awkward young man, lives in the garage beside his deceased father’s house. The main house is occupied by his recently returned brother, Gus (Paul Schneider), and pregnant sister-in-law, Karin (Emily Mortimer), who is delightfully overprotective of her oddball kid brother-in-law.
The town has a genuine affection for Lars; everyone would like to see him with a good wife, raising a family. So they joyfully greet the news that Lars has found a special friend. People are concerned when they learn that Lars and Bianca met online but this turns to panic, however, when his girlfriend arrives. Although lovely in her own way, the fact that Bianca is a “realistic” full-sized doll with an elaborate back story presents a problem for the town.
So far so cute. But the film takes an unusually dark and riveting turn in its second half that asks real questions about how we confront death, loneliness and even abuse. its sad and powerful ending is a marvel i will not spoil. Noah Cowan, Toronto Film Festival Programme
H Winner of Audience Award, Torino Film Festival
H Winner of Crystal Heart Award, Heartland Festival
If you like this, you may also consider Unrelated
Cameron, Sarah Aubrey Screenplay: Nancy Oliver www.vervepics.com/larsandtherealgirl
If you like this, you may also consider Charlie Barlett
FrIday 22 FeBruary CINeWorLd 8 / 6.20Pm
director: marian quinn 2007 / Ireland / 89 minutes
Principal Cast: ailish mcCarthy, Sophie Jo Wasson, orla Long, riona Smith, aidan quinn, orla Brady
How does life measure up for a 13-year old girl? in 1970s Dublin, the summer holidays beckon for Maeve and her circle of friends. This story is set in the “in-between” time of a girl’s life, when she is no longer a child and not yet a woman.
We open with our heroine putting on her new snow white bra and stepping out into the world as a young woman. She has an obsession with breasts and bras and can’t help but stare at other girls and women; even the head nun doesn’t escape her gaze.
Otherwise, her world revolves around her three friends, Ruth, Claire and Orla, who are more experienced in the ways of the world. They wear bras already (except Claire the feminist) and they’ve all had boyfriends. The new bra is a start but they really hope Maeve can find a boyfriend, even offering kissing lessons to prepare her.
What no one expects, least of all Maeve, is that she should snare the local sixteen-year old heartthrob, Brian Power. Ruth needs her support when her estranged father wants to meet her, but Maeve is torn when Brian asks her to the Grove, the local club. is Maeve woman enough to make the right choice?
H Winner Best First Film Award, Galway Film Fleadh 2007
H Director Marian Quinn and lead actors Ailish McCarthy, Sophie Jo Wasson, Orla Long, Riona Smith will attend the screening
Print Source: Janey Productions
Producers: James Flynn, Roshanak Behesht Nedjad, Tommy Weir
Screenplay: Marian Quinn www.janeypictures.com/index.html
If you like this, you may also consider Tricks
Print Source: Lyre Productions
Producer: Tim Barrow
Screenplay: Tim Barrow www.theinheritancethemovie.com
BLADE RuNNER
FrIday 22 FeBruary movIeS@duNdrum / 8.15Pm
director: ridley Scott
1982 / uSa / 117 minutes
Principal Cast: Harrison Ford, rutger Hauer, Sean young, edward James olmos, m. emmet Walsh
it’s been 25 years since the release of ‘Blade runner,’ Ridley Scott’s science fiction cult film turned classic, but only now has his original vision reached the screen.
An earlier director’s cut played in theaters 15 years ago to great fanfare and is still available on DVD. But the new one is something different: darker, bleaker, more beautifully immersive.
The film, based on Philip K. Dick’s novel ‘do androids dream of electric Sheep?,’ takes place in Los Angeles in 2019. it follows a cop named Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) who hunts down androids — or, in the film’s jargon, replicants— that have escaped from their slave cells on outer-space colonies and are trying to blend in back on Earth.
For the new director’s cut, the special-effects footage was digitally scanned at 8,000 lines per frame, four times the resolution of most restorations, and then meticulously retouched. The results look almost 3-D.
Fred Kaplan, The New york Times
The spectacle is still there; the most richly detailed future ever seen on screen is visible for all to enjoy. ‘Blade Runner’ fully and richly deserves its reputation. it is simply one of the most extraordinary films ever made.
Nick Cramp, BBC Film
WAVERiDERS
FrIday 22 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 17 / 8.30Pm
director: Joel Conroy 2008 / Ireland / 75minutes
THE COTTAGE
FrIday 22 FeBruary
IFI 1 / 11.00Pm
director: Paul andrew Williams united Kingdom / 2007 / 93 minutes
Principal Cast: andy Serkis, reece Shearsmith, Jennifer ellison
Following the success of his previous 2003 film eye of the Storm, irish director Joel Conroy has returns once again to the world of international surfing. His new film Wave riders provides both a well researched insight into the foundation of the sport and an exhilarating rollercoaster ride with some of the sports greatest exponents. The meticulous charting of the origins of the sport starts with an unexpected revelation that it was the son of an ulsterman, George Freeth who re-introduced the ancient Polynesian art of wave riding in Hawaii at the start of the 20th century after it had been stamped out by missionaries. The film traces how Freeth went on to transform and popularise the sport in California where he became the world’s first lifeguard.
At the core of the film is the journey of a cast of top irish and irish American surfers as they trace an unexpected irish connection to surfing and strive to meet the latest challenge of big wave tow surfing in ireland. The story brings us back to ireland where top surfer Richard Fitzgerald from Bundoran and uK surf champion, Gabe Davies, extol the virtues of relatively unexplored irish surf destinations. They link up with world champion Kelly Slater and irish American superstar surfers such as pioneering soul surfer Kevin Naughton and the renowned Malloy brothers to ride some of the most exciting surf ireland has to offer north and south of the irish border. The story climaxes with their attempt to ride a big wave off the west coast of ireland using the newly introduced technique of tow surfing.
H Director Joel Conroy and producer Margo Harkin will attend the screening.
Print Source: Inis Films
Producer: Besom Productions www.inisfilms.com
Following on from the success of his debut feature London To Brighton, Paul Andrew Williams’ sophomore effort is a relentless dark comedy with an extreme twist. Brothers David (Andy Serkis) and Peter (Reece Shearsmith) have set aside their differences for a quick moneymaking scheme – the kidnapping of mob boss Arnie’s daughter who they plan to hold to ransom. Tracey (Jennifer Ellison), bound, gagged and unconscious, is locked in the trunk of the car.
Aiding them in their ploy is Tracey’s stepbrother Andrew. Screaming threats and violent insults, Tracey fights liks a wildcat and the hapless trio begin to panic and argue amongst themselves – totally unaware that Andrew was followed.
With Arnie on his way and the game almost up, Tracey turns the tables on her captors and, with Peter as her hostage, escapes though the nearby woods seeking refuge in a remote farmhouse in the hope of finding a telephone to alert his or her father. As David and Andrew close in on her trail, they soon discover something far more terrifying is lurking in the darkness and the stage is set for a grotesquely comic battle for survival.
If you like this, you may also consider The Orphanage
Print Source: Warner Brothers
Producers: Brian Kelly, Hampton Fancher, Michael Deeley Screenplay: Mike Hopkins, Hampton Fancher, David Peoples, based on the novel by Philip K. Dick
Print Source: Pathé Entertainment Producer: Ken Marshall Screenplay: Paul Andrew Williams www.pathe.co.uk
WE ARE TOGETHER
SaTurday 23 FeBruary
movIeS@duNdrum / 11.00am
director: Paul Taylor 2006 / united Kingdom / 86 minutes
DON GiOVANNi
SaTurday 23 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 17 / 1.30Pm
director: Joseph Losey 1979 / France / Italy / united Kingdom / Germany / 184 minutes
Principal Cast: ruggero raimondi, John macurdy, edda moser, Kiri Te Kanawa, Kenneth riegel, José van dam
12,000 YEARS OF BLiNDNESS
SaTurday 23 FeBruary
IFI 2 / 2.00Pm
director: rod Stoneman
12,000 years of Blindness: 2007 / Ireland / 65 minutes
a Tourist excursion to the Burren: First 2007 / Ireland / 30 minutes
Life has not been easy for twelve year old Slindile, her siblings and her friends at the Agape Orphanage in South Africa, where most of the children have lost their parents to AiDS. But they are still kids and teenagers, bashful around boys, squabbling with each other. And when they lift their voices in song, something extraordinary happens.
Filmed over three years and spanning two continents, this is the remarkable and moving story of a group of children who use music to overcome hardship and loss. it is the story of an orphanage, unlike one you’ve ever seen before, and of the drive of these remarkable young singers and their teachers to make it to London for a series of concerts.
As the kids at Agape orphanage continue to train for what they hope will be their big break, Slindile and her siblings are hit with more hard news - their oldest brother Sifiso, who has been sick for months, has AiDS.
With unforgettable kids, soaring music and a plot full of surprises, We are Together is an altogether stirring and uplifting theatrical documentary.
Cork Film Festival Programme
H Winner Audience Award, Edinburgh international Film Festival 2007
Print Source: Shooting People Films
Producers: Teddy Leifer, Paul Taylor www.wearetogether.org
Losey’s don Giovanni is a social study out of Brecht, who once argued: ‘We find the glamour of this parasite less interesting than the parasitic aspects of his glamour’. As the orchestra strikes up the Overture, the Don is touring his glass factory, suspended on a single plank above the fires which will finally consume him. Here labour vies with leisure, license with liberty, in a production mindful of Mozart ’s (and Sade’s) era: the opera antedated the French Revolution by a mere two years.
Filmed largely in formal long shot against Palladian Vicenza, Losey’s cinematic version is a conscious attempt to ‘make the unreal tangible’. Appropriately histrionic performances from an excellent opera cast (notably Raimondi’s vampiric Don and Kiri Te Kanawa’s hysterical harlequin Elvira) and a very vocal mix which displeases record reviewers, but clarifies the libretto, combine with autumnal colours out of Masaccio and Giorgione to map the declining empire of the ancien regime.
Time out movie Guide
There are 50 million blind people in the world; 90% of these people live in developing countries.
‘What use is an exterior view of the factory if I cannot see what is going on inside the building in terms of relationships, wage labour, capital, international investments –a photograph says nothing about the factory itself’ Bertolt Brecht.
Filmed images reproduce the appearance of things and therefore to some extent reaffirm the existence of them; representations that show things as they are – not as they could be. 80% of all blindness is avoidable.
H Screening with the short film, a Tourist excursion to the Burren.
“Of all noxious animals, too, the most noxious is a tourist...”
Francis Kilvert, diary, 5th april 1870.
in December 2005 Rod Stoneman was commissioned by the Burren Spring Conference and encountered the Burren with an ordinary group of tourists on a short tour, exploring the landscape and its historical and cultural environment through fresh eyes. What perspective and expectation do tourists bring to Burren? Does it offer a meaningful experience? How do the interpretations offered by guides frame it for the newcomer?
Print Source: Rod Stoneman
Producers: Rod Stoneman, Eamon O’Donoghue
Rossellini, Frantz Salieri
If you like this, you may also consider Pandora’s Box
Print Source: Galiront
Producer: Renzo Rossellini
Screenplay: Lorenzo da Ponte, Rolf Liebermann, Joseph Losey, Patricia Losey, Renzo
speciAL presentAtion BATTLE FOR HADiTHA
SaTurday 23 FeBruary
Savoy 1 / 11.00am
Director: Nick Broomfield 2007 / United Kingdom / 93 minutes
Principal Cast: Elliot Ruiz, Yasmine Hanani, Andrew McLaren, Matthew Knoll
iraq is front and centre in many films in recent years, none more so than this harrowing new work by documentarian Nick Broomfield. The film is a highly realistic, vérité-like fictional rendering of an incident that took place in the village of Haditha, a hotbed in the middle of the Sunni Triangle where much of the insurgency has taken place. in November 2005, a roadside iED (improvised Explosive Device) killed one uS Marine and wounded two others. Enraged fellow Marines exacted revenge by killing twenty-four iraqis: men, women and children. Four Marines were subsequently charged with murder. in Battle for Haditha, Broomfield sets out to recreate the incident, imagining the circumstances that provoked the violence and led to the massacre. Two realities, two cultures, two groups of men slowly intersect. The film starts innocuously enough, when we are introduced to American soldiers, streaking across the desert in their armoured Humvees. They drop into a local store to check out DVDs (!) and find themselves talking to a young male clerk whose fate is soon to be entwined with their own. Broomfield then switches his focus to the iraqi reality, as two men pile into the back of a pickup truck for a quick lesson in the primitive mechanics of the iED. He meticulously details the daily routines of the two sides, foreign and local, juxtaposing the monotony of patrols with the waiting game played by the bombers. What we see is not a simple black-and-white reality. Ordinary people in extraordinary situations do violent and unexpected things.
Broomfield walks a tightrope, somehow managing to step back from the emotions of the event to find compassion and humanity – and their opposites – on both sides. At the same time, he shows the mind-numbing, brutal results of the violence that is unleashed. The film grimly renders the harsh realities of this quagmire where innocent civilians, simply trying to get by, are caught in the crossfire, victims of Americans who kick down their doors, and iraqis who do the same thing. Broomfield forces us to follow him down this road through the sheer power of his imagery. We are spellbound: this is what it must be like to be there.
Piers Handling, Toronto Film Festival Programme
Print Source: Contender Films Producer: Nick Bromfield Screenplay: Nick Broomfield, Marc Hoeferlin, Anna Telford www.nickbroomfield.com/haditha.html
CRAZY LOVE
SaTurday 23 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 8 / 2.00Pm
director: daniel Klores 2006 / uSa / 92 minutes
Principal Cast: Jimmy Breslin, Burt Pugach, Linda Pugach,
SaTurday 23 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 17 / 5.30Pm
director: alex Holdridge
2007 / uSa / 90 minutes
Principal Cast: Scoot mcNair y, Sara Simmonds, Brian mcGuire, Kathleen Luong
iN PRiSON MY WHOLE LiFE
SaTurday 23 FeBruary IFI 1 / 6.00Pm
director: marc evans 2007 / united Kingdom / 95 minutes
Principal Cast: mumia abu-Jamal, William Francome
in 1959, about the same time that Doris Day defended her honor from Rock Hudson’s assault in “Pillow Talk,” an extraordinarily pretty Bronx girl named Linda Riss fought off a married lawyer. Burt Pugach was thirty-two, Linda ten years younger. He wasn’t much to look at, and his honesty, both personal and professional, was intermittent at best, but he had some money. When she fell in love with a handsome young man, Burt hired three thugs to throw acid in her face so that the suitor would no longer want her.
This barbaric act, which left Linda nearly sightless, wound up binding Burt and Linda together for life. Dan Klores’s documentary is a real-world story, as redolent of time and place as a song by Dion and the Belmonts, in which possessiveness, stupidity, loyalty, and need are joined together in bewildering combinations. it’s as if some disreputable and unending liaison out of the Greek myths arose on the streets of the East Bronx to be celebrated not with epic poetry but with front-page headlines in the tabloids.
Klores takes the media-archeological approach—lots of still photographs, home movies, stock footage, and current-day interviews. One may be horrified or amused by this couple, but one is also mightily impressed by their talent for survival.
david denby, New yorker magazine
A rollicking comic ride and tender journey though love, sex, and modern romance in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve. Wilson (Scoot McNairy), a twenty-nine-year old would-be screenwriter who has just had the worst year of his life, is new to Los Angeles, has no date, no concrete plans and every intention of locking the doors and forgetting the last year ever happened.
That is until his best friend, Jacob (Brian McGuire), browbeats him into posting a personal ad on Craig’s List. When Vivian (Sara Simmonds), a strong-willed woman hell bent on being with the right guy at the stroke of midnight responds, a chaotic, sometimes hilarious, sometimes touching journey through the streets of L.A. begins. in the waning hours of the year, emotional vulnerability and bitterly honest humor seem to be waiting around every corner. Holdridge, delivers his most mature film to date.
austin Film Festival Programme
H Screening with the short film, Scoring. See page 35. Print Source: Vertigo Films
Producers: Seth Caplan, Scoot McNairy Screenplay: Alex Holdridge www.midnightkissmovie.com
If you like this, you may also consider Shotgun Stories
William Francome, a nicely brought up middle-class white man, was born in England on 9 December 1981. That same night, Mumia Abu-Jamal was arrested for the murder of a police officer in Philadelphia. He protested his innocence, but was found guilty and sentenced to death, and has been awaiting execution ever since.
Over the years he has attracted massive international support from figureheads such as Nelson Mandela, and has become one the most famous inmates of Death Row.
William grew up knowing about Mumia’s situation, but shortly before his 25th birthday he decided to take a more direct involvement in the case. His journey took him into the heart of the uS judicial system, and brought him face-to-face with some of the cultural and political icons of a generation.
Director Marc Evans is respectful of the literally life or death nature of the subject matter, but presents it with energy and originality. With passionate and moving contributions from Alice Walker, Noam Chomsky and Mos Def, and an interview with Mumia himself, this timely film delivers new evidence to further strengthen the case in Mumia’s defence.
Sandra Hebron, London Film Festival Programme
Print Source: Swipe Films
Producers: Liva Giuggioli, Nick Goodwin Self www.myspace.com/inprisonmywholelife
If you like this, you may also consider We Are Together
Print Source: Eclipse Pictures
Dan Klores, Fisher Stevens www.crazylovefilm.com
C ARAMEL
SaTurday 23 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 8 / 6.00Pm
director: Nadine Labaki
2007 / Lebanon / France / 95 minutes
Principal Cast: Nadine Labaki, yasmine al masri, Joanna moukarzel, Gisèle aouad, adel Karam, Sihame Haddad
in her gorgeous and love-affirming feature debut – which was the sleeper hit of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival – Nadine Labaki finds gold in the hot goo used to strip body hair. Set in and around a Beirut beauty salon, Caramel stirs together the smooth and the crunchy of five women’s lives. Nisrine (Yasmine Al Masri) is a spirited bombshell on the verge of marrying a conservative Muslim – but she is no longer a virgin. Jamale (Gisèle Aouad), an aging actress, goes to absurd lengths to hold back time. Rima (Joanna Moukarzel) suppresses her attraction to other women, until her own dream girl walks through the door. Seamstress Rose (Sihame Haddad) deflects the attentions of a gentleman suitor to care for her older sister. And Layale, the owner and lifeblood of the salon, carries on a hopeless – but very satisfying – affair with a married man. When her lover beeps his car horn outside the shop, the other women roll their eyes, but they let her go.
Labaki herself plays Layale, leading an ensemble cast that generates enormous warmth and wit onscreen. As director, Labaki gives the film a rich visual field, shooting the salon with a touch of Wong Kar-wai in her layered, burnished compositions. Toronto Film Festival Programme
THE OTHER BOLEYN GiRL
SaTurday 23 FeBruary CINeWorLd 17 / 8.00Pm
director: Justin Chadwick 2008 / united Kingdom
Principal Cast: Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, eric Bana, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jim Sturgess
THE SPY WHO C AME iN FROM THE COLD
SaTurday 23 FeBruary
SmITHFIeLd marKeT
TIme To Be CoNFIrmed
director: martin ritt
1965 / united Kingdom / 112 minutes
Principal Cast: richard Burton, Claire Bloom, oskar Werner, Cyril Cusack, rupert davies
Print Source: Momentum Pictures
Producer: Anne-Dominique Toussaint
Screenplay: Nadine Labaki, Jihad Hojeily, Rodney Al Haddad http://www.caramel-lefilm.com
If you like this, you may also consider Irina Palm
Based on the best selling novel by Philippa Gregory, The other Boleyn Girl, is an engrossing and sensual tale of intrigue, romance, and betrayal set against the backdrop of a defining moment in history. Two sisters, Anne (Natalie Portman) and Mary (Scarlett Johansson) Boleyn, are driver by their ambitious father and uncle to advance the family’s power and status by courting the affections of the King of England (Eric Bana). Leaving behind the simplicity of country life, the girls are thrust into the dangerous and thrilling world of court life – and what began as a bid to help their family develops into a ruthless rivalry between Anne and Mary for the love of the King. initially, Mary wins King Henry’s favour and becomes his mistress, bearing him an illegitimate child. But Anne edges aside both her sister and Henry’s wife, Queen Katherine of Aragon, in her relentless pursuit of the King. Despite Mary’s genuine feelings for Henry, her sister Anne has her sights set on the ultimate prize; Anne will not stop until she is Queen of England. Print Source: Universal Pictures International Ireland
Producers: Alison Owen, Scott Rudin
Screenplay: Peter Morgan, from a novel by Philippa Gregory www.universalpictures.ie
After all the spy and mystery movies of a romantic and implausible nature that we have seen, it is great to see one as realistic, and believable, too, as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Thank Martin Ritt for delivering the popular novel of John Le Carré in a tight and engrossing motion picture that not only is true to the book but also is so sharply staged and directed that it looks like a documentary film. it looks as though Mr. Ritt has slipped in with a hand-held camera and started recording the movements of a British secret agent at the Berlin wall, and then followed him all the way on a long adventure of extraordinary complexity and peril, shooting all the while from hiding places, until he follows his man back to the wall for the final scene. indeed, those scenes at the Berlin wall were filmed at Smithfield Market, Dublin.
Whether its tale of subtle intrigue, double and triple-cross, among international espionage agents and Communist secret police is one that actually happened is of minor consequence. The film makes you believe it could have happened. And that’s the remarkable thing.
Bosley Crowther, The New york Times
Producer: Martin Ritt
Screenplay: Paul Dehn, Guy Trosper
If you like this, you may also consider Dublin on Screen
Print Source: Paramount Pictures
SHOTGuN STORiES
SuNday 24 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 5 / 1.00Pm
director: Jeff Nichols
2007 / uSa / 92 minutes
Principal Cast: michael Shannon, douglas Ligon, Barlow Jacobs, Natalie Canderday
MY KiD COuLD PAiNT THAT
SuNday 24 FeBruary movIeS@duNdrum / 2.00Pm
director: amir Bar-Lev 2007 / uSa / 82 minutes
Principal Cast: marla olmstead, mark olmstead, Laura olmstead, anthony Brunelli
Three adult brothers have had no contact with their father since he abandoned them in their childhood. The father has other sons by a second marriage. When he dies, bottled up conflicts break out between the half brothers, creating a spiral of deadly violence.
Shotgun Stories is a family drama and a parable at the same time. With enormous precision, director Nichols stages an archaic story of revenge of biblical proportions, shifted into the present-day American South. But the story somehow seems distant, both in time and place. Although the family feud sets off a series of murders, the film sets aside all lawful order and locates right and justice entirely within the private sphere. The action is impressively dramatised over the open spaces of the landscape. The extreme concentration on the characters on the other hand conveys an oppressive constriction, increasing the tension almost unbearably up to the surprise ending. Nichols’s debut film tells a modern version of “Crime and Punishment”, simultaneously gentle and violent. Shotgun Stories is certainly one of the most impressive independent American productions of the year.
ansgar vogt, Berlin International Film Festival Programme
At the age of four, Marla Olmstead became an art-world sensation when in 2004 a gallery in her hometown of Binghamton, New York, devoted a solo show to her abstract paintings. Soon collectors were lauding her talent and paying up to $15,000 a canvas. Was this “pintsized Pollock” a genuine prodigy or just a pawn of a manipulative market?
my Kid Could Paint That uses a simple story to explore complex questions about art, media and family. We witness journalists going on a feeding frenzy with Marla – from the fluffy touch of The Today Show to the suspicious investigation of 60 minutes.
The film skilfully interweaves the perspectives of others drawn into the tale. Gallery owner Anthony Brunelli, a photorealist painter, has misgivings about abstract art, even though Marla is his greatest success. Local journalist Elizabeth Cohen, wonders if the subsequent coverage did more harm than good. As the mysteries and tensions grow, the film forces us to ask: What defines the value of a painting? The value of news? The value of friendship? These questions are bound to spur vigorous debate, just as art should.
Thom Powers, Toronto Film Festival Programme
Producers:
Screenplay: Jeff Nichols www.shotgunstories.com
If you like this, you may also consider In Search of a Midnight Kiss i’M A CYBORG
Print Source: Sony Pictures Releasing
Producers: Amir Bar-Lev, Stephen Dunn www.sonyclassics.com/mykidcouldpaintthat
SuNday 24 FeBruary
CINeWorLd 8 / 3.30Pm
director: Park Chan-wook 2006 / South Korea / 105 minutes
Principal Cast: Lim Soo-Jung, Jung Ji-Hoon, Choi Hee-Jin, Lee young-Nyeo, Sohn young-Soon,
Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance trilogy –Sympathy for mr vengeance, old Boy, and Lady vengeance – transformed him from South Korean cinema’s most promising visionary into an internationally revered auteur. The series also cemented his reputation as a master at exploring death, revenge and violence on screen. A Park rom-com was always going to be a slightly different proposition. However, this is no mere dalliance; I’m a Cyborg... is no less engaging or careful in its composition.
Young-goon (Lim Soo-jung) is a cyborg, and needs an electrical current to survive. it makes perfect sense to her, therefore, to cut open her wrist and plug herself into the mains; to eschew food in favour of licking batteries; and to only befriend other machines. The world at large seems to find her behaviour odd, however, and duly confines her to a mental hospital... There, she strikes up a touching bond with il-sun (Jung Ji-hoon), who has an uncontrollable tendency to steal other people’s souls. A musical romance unlike any other, with extraordinary visual ideas (hold on for the airborne Alpine yodelling sequence) and lovely performances from two of South Korea’s most revered pop culture icons.
aida LiPera, edinburgh Film Festival Programme
Print Source: Eclipse Pictures / Tartan Films
Producers: Lee Chun-Yeong
Screenplay: Jeong Seo-Gyeong, Park Chan-wook www.tartanfilms.com
Print Source: Vertigo Films
David Gordon Green, Lisa Muskat, Jeff Nichols
speciAL presentAtion PANDORA’S BOx
SuNday 24 FeBruary
Savoy 1 / 2.30Pm
Director: G.W. Pabst 1929 / Germany / 133 minutes
Principal Cast: Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Franz Lederer, Carl Goetz, Krafft-Raschig
it’s hard to say quite how much one of the great, late masterpieces of the silent era, G.W. Pabst’s extraordinary, erotic and tragic adaptation/conflation of two Wedekind plays, Pandora’s Box, owes to the electrifying, photogenic and iconic presence of the Kansas-born actress Louise Brooks. it’s an Expressionist-Realist walk with love and death, as the sensual and erotic charge of a Berlin prostitute and Kurfürstendamm revue artist sets herself and all who come in contact with her into a destructive social, emotional and physical spiral, ending with her swooning embrace of Thanatos in the person of a mythical, murderous Jack the Ripper. But it may not have seemed quite so modern, vital and powerful, had Pabst chosen, say, Dietrich, or any of the rumoured 2,000 others who the German director screen-tested for the role of the arch femme-fatale, Lulu.
in the words of German critic Lotte Eisner, Wedekind’s Lulu was endowed with an ‘animal beauty, but lacking all moral sense, and doing evil unconsciously’. Brooks had the animal beauty alright – and a modicum of self-destructiveness, as her biographical writings testify – but it is her qualities of intelligence and sheer vitality as Lulu, not her putative ‘reflective passivity’, that ensures that her performance seems as exciting and fresh, as well as disturbingly enigmatic, transgressive and deeply moving, today as it did in 1928.
That does not diminish, however, the importance of Pabst’s artistry: his psychological insights, atmospheric use of chiaroscuro lighting and thrilling mise-en-scène, not to mention his taboobreaking audacity in flaunting this ‘corn-fed Hollywood flapper’ and exposing the dark appetites and hypocrisies found in the dank, pansexually decadent salons of Weimar Berlin. All offer a perfect context in which Lulu can dazzle and entice, if not – to borrow the line Nic Ray coined in 1949’s Knock on any door’ – ‘to live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse’.
Wally Hammond, Time out London
Print Source: British Film Institute
Producers: Heinz Landsmann, Seymour Nebenzal Screenplay: Ladislaus Vajda, based on the plays of Frank Wedekind www.bfi.co.uk.org
H 3EPKANO are a Dublin based, seven piece band/ensemble who specialise in producing original and innovative soundtracks for films from the silent movie era. The band were formed in early 2004 by Matthew Nolan and Cameron Doyle. The line-up includes 2 electric guitars, bass guitar, keyboards/organ, drums/percussion, cello and viola – the music is minimalist, guitar based, and almost entirely instrumental.
in keeping with JDiFF tradition, the Surprise Film has not been selected as we go to print with the festival programme. One of the most eagerly anticipated presentations in the line-up, it is usually first to sell out and the source of constant conversation thoughout the run up to the festival and for the duration of the event itself.
it has always been one of my favourite slots in the festival, i am one of many who is addicted to the annual pleasure of booking a ticket for about which i know absolutely nothing. For the uninitiated, the ritual starts with the growing sense of excitement as the Savoy auditorium fills, the last minute suggestions placed in the festival competition, followed by the gasps which accompany trailers which kick off the proceedings. Then the lights dim and the opening credits are revealed…
My lips are sealed as to what films i am hoping to confirm for this cherished slot, but i can tell you this, don’t listen to anyone who tells you that they know what the Surprise Movie is. it is the festivals most closely guarded secret and no one will know until the lights dim…
Enjoy
Gráinne Humphreys, Festival director Sunday 23rd February at 5.30pm in Savoy 1.
Principal Cast: Aidan Kelly, Eileen Walsh, Karl Shiels, Padraic Delaney, Lesley Conroy
This years closing gala is the latest collaboration between director Declan Recks and award winning playwright Eugene O’Brien.
Following on from the massive success of their television miniseries Pure mule, eden manages to sidestep the many clichés associated with traditional ireland and is instead an unflinching meditation on married life in a claustrophobic, provincial town.
Winner of the 2001 irish Times Theatre Award for Best New Play, eden tells the story of a week in the lives of Billy and Breda Farrell as they approach their 10th wedding anniversary. Billy is routinely drunk who deludes himself into believing he is still one of the ‘lads’, despite his marital and parental commitments. Still trading on the past glories (he heroically rescued a drowning child from the local river many years previously), his weekends are spent in the local pub, getting dutifully drunk while fantasising about heroic sexual encounters with younger women. Breda, on the other hand, feels isolated and unsure of herself and has resorted to adapting herself to her husband’s flagging desire. However, she harbours her own erotic fantasies and dreams that her husband will some day fulfil her all-consuming need for love.
Breda is determined that the milestone will re-ignite their passion in their marriage. Billy, on the other hand, has developed an obsession with imelda Egan, a pretty but unobtainable young
thing, and convinced himself that the coming weekend will see them become lovers under the eyes of everyone. As the date draws closer, Billy’s behaviour becomes more and more chaotic, while Breda’s frustrations crystallise and find more mature, high-risk expression.
under Recks’ impressive direction, both Billy and Breda gradually reveal themselves to be remarkably complex characters, consumed by the age-old irish obsessions of alcohol, sex and a smattering of self-loathing. With multi-faceted and revealing performances from Aidan Kelly and Eileen Walsh in the lead roles, Eden takes the viewer on a dark and exhilarating ride through the depths and despairs of modern-day ireland.
Colm mcauliffe
Jameson dublin International Film Festival
Print Source: Samson Films
Producer: David Collins
Screenplay: Declan Recks, from a play by Eugene O’Brien www.samsonfilms.com/
H We are delighted director declan recks, producer david Collins and lead actors aidan Kelly and eileen Walsh will attend the screening.
the festival board & teaM would liKe to extend their sincere gratitude to the Many volunteers whose sPirit and generosity have enabled us to realise the aMbition of the dublin JaMeson international filM festival.
aLL The sTaFF aT
CInewoRLD CInemas
aLL The sTaFF aT FILmBase
aLL The sTaFF aT The IRIsh FILm InsTITUTe
aLL The sTaFF aT
moVIes aT DUnDRUm
aLL The sTaFF aT RoBoT
aLL The sTaFF aT The BUTTon FaCToRy
aLL The sTaFF aT The sCReen
aLL The sTaFF aT The saVoy
aL asTaIR smeaTon
aLex agRan
aLI TooLIn
aLICIa CoyLe
aLIson CRInnIon
aLLIson gaRDneR
anDRe PUng
anDRew FReeDman
anDRew yoUDeLL
angeL a gaRTon
anna goDas
anna LaVaRy
anne gaRTsIDe
anne RICe
aoIFe LynCh
aUDRey sheILs
BaRBaRa mURPhy
BaRBaRa sTone
Ben LUxFoRD
Ben noRThoVeR
BeRnaDeTTe hUnkeLeR
BRown
BoB gRa y
BonnIe DemPsey
BRenDan mCCaUL , BRIan FURey
BRITTa BeUTeR
BRUno BUsseTTI
CaTheRIne o’gRaDy
CaVs
ChaPTeR one
ChaRLes henRI BeLLeVILLe
ChRIs UPTon
ChRIsTIne sheRIDan
ChRIsToPhe BIChon, LIghT Cone
ChRIsToPheR Rowe
CIaRan CaRThy
CL aIRe CRILLy
CL aIRe mCCoLLUm
CL aULDIa naTIVIDaDe
DamIan sPanDLey
DanIeL De CasRILeVITz
DanIeL gRaham
DaRa o’LeaRy
DaRRen keLLeheR
DaVe aLLen
DaVe o’sULLIVan
DaVID BURke
DaVID CoLLIns
DaVID Rane
DaVID sheaR
DeCL an sheehy
DonaL sheILs
DR haRVey o’BRIen
DR keVIn RoCkeTT
DUBLIn DoCkL anDs aUThoRIT y
DUBLIn FRInge FesTIVaL
Éanna De BUIs, CoRk FILm FesTIVaL
eDDIe shanahan
eDeLLe moss
eDen
eDwaRD FLeTCheR
eIThne BILLIngTon
eL aIne gRange
eL aIne kInseLL a
emeLDa Rae
emILy DaVIs
emma PyCRoFT
esTheR mCCaRThy eUgene kaVanagh
Feena o’BRIen
FInTan mURPhy
FIona CURTIn
FIonnUaL a sweeeny
FRank mannIon
gaRy mooRe
geoRge keaRns
geRaRD sTemBRIDge
geRhaRD sCULLy
gIoRgIa Lo saVIo
gLen FoRBes
gLenn hogaRT y
gRaInne FL anagan
heIDRUn RoTTke
heLen mCmahon
heLge aLBeRs
hIRe InTeLLIgenCe
hUgo jeLLeT
IaIn InCh
Ian jaCoBs
IsaBeLLe eTIenne
jaCk gILLIgan
jake PeRLIn
jamIe o’haLLeRon
jane FITzPaTRICk
jane o’keeFe
jaRL aITh jennIngs
jason BUTLeR
jason soLomons
jayne mURPhy
jean sCaLLy
jIm keenan
jIm keLLy
joanne kIeLy
joeL ConRoy
john CaRRoLL
john keLLeheR
john keLLy
john mhIRIPIRI, anThoLogy FILm aRChIVes
jonas mekas
jULIan DoUgL as
kaRL wInTeR, aRsenaL kIno
kaTe Bowe
kaTe LamBeRT
kaTe mCCULL agh
kaTIe maLoney
keITh mCgUInness
ken waRDRoP
keRRy anne Conway
keVIn o’BRIen
kohLoon Loke
LaURens zIeRen
Lenny aBRahamson
LeonIe sChULTe
LIna ChamIe
LInDa Dagge
LIsa PoRTeR
LIzeTTe gRam mygInD
LoCky BUTLeR
LoUIse aCheson
LoUIse Ryan
maeVe o’meaRa
maRC zImmeRman
maReTTa DILLon
maRgaReT gILsenan
maRgo haRkIn
maRjU TooDIng
maRk aDams
maRk o’haLLoRan
maRTIn CaRaUx
maRTIna nIL anD
maRy BanoTTI
maRy CLoake
maRy mCCaRThy
maRy weIR
maRyRose DooRLy
maRyse FITzPaTRICk
maTT smITh
maTThew hUTChInson
mIa gaLL agheR
mIChaeL o’TooLe
mIChaeL wILDe
mICheLLe Chaney
mICk o’ConneLL
mILLIe BL aney
moBILe RaDIo LInks
moIRa TIeRney
myLes DUngan
neIL ConnoLLy
nIamh mCCaUL
nICk o’DonoVan
nICoL as PIaLL aT
nIkoL a sek
oLI haRBoTTLe
oRna RoChe
PaDDy keLLy
PaDDy o’TooLe
PasCaLe RamonDa
PaT BoyL an
PaT keaRns
PaTRICk gIng
PaTRICk magUIRe
PaUL eLLIs
PaUL FaDDen
PaUL RICheR
PaUL waRD
PaUL-RoBeRT BoUhIeR
PeTeR ByRne
PhIL keLLy
Pj TImmons
RaCheL BResLIn
Ray DemPsey
RIChaRD BL aCk
RIChaRD CaRoL an
RIChaRD weLD-mooRe
RoCIo FReIRe-BeRnaT
RoD sToneman
RoDDy FLynn
RoLF sTehLe
RUTh BRaDLey
RUTh mCmanUs
RUTh sPURLIng
saRah anne mURPhy
saRah jane ToIBIn
saRah shaRe
sean hanLy
sean mCmahon
shaRon mCgaRRy
shayne mURPhy
sheamUs smITh
sImon CaPL an
sImon PeRRy
sIoBhan FaRReLL
sL aTe
sTePhanIe mCBRIDe
sUnnIVa o’FLynn
sUPT. Ray BaRRy
TaRa BRaDy
TemPLe BaR CULTURaL TRUsT
TeRRy moLLoy
The meRmaID
The TRoCaDeRo
TheResa RoBeRTs
Thomas aRBez
TIm FLemIng
TIm moRRIs
TIm seageR
TIm weImann
ToDD mCCaRThy
Tom CoFFey
Tommy weIR
Tony CassIDy
Tony FITzPaTRICk
Town
TRaCy Ryan
TReVoR FehIn
TRIsh Long
TRIsTan wooDs
Una mCCaRThy
Una sPILL ane
VajDa kaTaLIn
Vanessa gILDea
VIk kUmaR
wahIDa BegUm
wenDy DemPsey
Print source
Arrow Films
Orchard Villa Porters Park Drive
Shenley Radlett Herts. WD7 9DS
England
T: +44 (0)1923 858306
F: +44 (0)1923 859673
E: info@arrowfilms.co.uk www.arrowfilms.com
Arsenal Kino Potsdamer Straße 2 D-10785 Berlin
T: +49-30-26955-100 F: +49-30-26955-111 www.fdk-berlin.de/ arsenal arsenal(at)fdk-berlin.de
Artificial Eye Film Co. Ltd 20-22 Stukeley St. London WC2B 5LR
T: +44 207 2405 353
F: +44 207 2405 242 E: info@artificial-eye. com
Axiom Films
2nd Floor
Above The Gate Cinema
87 Notting Hill Gate London W11 3JZ
T: +44 20 7243 3111
F: +44 20 7243 3152
E: mail@axiomfilms. co.uk www.axiomfilms.co.uk
Bavaria Film International Bavariafilmplatz 8 D-82031 Geiselgasteig
Swan Productions 2 Rue Bleue 75009 Paris France T: +33 1 42 80 09 63 F: + 33 1 42 46 11 49 swanproductions@ orange.fr
Swipe Films 79 Wardour Street London W1D 6QB T: +44 207 494 1400 F: +44 207 439 1922 E: frank@swipefilms.com
Tartan Films Roylaty House 72-74 Dean Street London W1D 3SG T: +44 207 494 1400 F: +44 207 439 1922 E: info@tartanfilms.com
The Film Library thefilmlibrary@aol.com
Transmedia Releasing Caparo
dublin on screen
Key resources
inspired by the flurry of recent publications, i want to make special mention of the contribution of individual authors Jim Keenan, Marc zimmerman, george Kearns and Patrick Maguire for their invaluable support for this programme, and their help with sourcing images and speakers for the dublin on screen programme. i can only hope that our season of talks and screenings will encourage many to return to these invaluable and illuminating publications.
Gráinne Humphreys
dublin cineMas: a Pictorial selection –Jim Keenan (Picture House Publications, 2005)
the a-z of all old dublin cineMas –George Kearns and Patrick Maguire (Published by authors, 2006)
the history of dublin cineMas –Marc Zimmerman (Nonsuch Publishing. 2007)
