Donald Clarke

• Film Festivals
• November 15, 2011, 19:16

The Corona Cork Film Festival came to a close on Sunday with the handing out of prizes to a wide and varied array of short films. Among the prizewinners was Phil Harrison’s very touching Even Gods. The picture follows an …

• Film Festivals
• September 10, 2011, 20:53

You have to laugh. Almost all the journos at the Venice Film Festival got it wrong. Many thought that Steve McQueen’s Shame would take the Golden Lion. A large bulk felt that Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy was in with a …

• Film Festivals
• September 8, 2011, 02:18

There goes a gondola. Oh no, my mascara is running down my face because I am weeping in my deckchair. Argh! I’ve just been stabbed by a dwarf in a red anorak. Gosh, I love being at the Venice Film …

• Box Office Figures Film Festivals
• July 12, 2011, 19:23

This weeks’s box-office news brings interesting tidings.  Both The Guard and The Tree of Life have gone bananas. To deal with the Irish beast first, John Michael McDonagh’s film hoovered up in excess of half a million euro at the …

• Film Festivals Politics
• July 5, 2011, 22:47

Okay, I think we have to tread very carefully here. Here is a photograph of Michael D Higgins, amiable Presidential candidate, launching the Galway Film Fleadh tonight. As you might expect, he delivered a charming oration peppered with melodic sentences …

• Cannes Film Festivals
• June 2, 2011, 18:11

It would be overdoing it to refer to a conspiracy of silence. But the British film media seem oddly reluctant to point out that one of the world’s oldest film festivals — the oldest by some reckoning — is in …

• Film Festivals Trailerspotting
• December 16, 2010, 21:04

It’s here! It’s here! It’s here! The first trailer for The Tree of Life has arrived. A few months ago, we speculated that, its release delayed more often than the last Guns ‘n’ Roses album, Terrence Malick‘s much anticipated saga …

• Film Festivals
• November 5, 2010, 12:08

A few weeks ago, we were pondering the purpose and prominence of film festivals. If you’ve never attended such an event, you might reasonably wonder what the heck they are for. Well, the Cork Film Festival, by virtue of its …