Film Feast

From new Irish to Italian cinema, from documentaries to acting masterclasses. Michael Dwyer on what's on offer at this year's Galway Film Fleadh.

OPENING next Tuesday night with Steen Argo's Czech black comedy, Shut Up and Shoot Me, the 18th Galway Film Fleadh continues until the following Sunday with a wide-ranging programme of international and Irish productions, and an impressive guest list led by Robert Towne, Nicolas Roeg and Kathy Bates. In addition to all the feature films on show, the screening schedule includes a wealth of new short films competing for the fleadh's prizes. Principal venues are the Town Hall Theatre, the Cinemobile (which will be parked outside the theatre) and the Omniplex.

NEW IRISH CINEMA

Once again the fleadh fields an interesting mix of new and recent Irish and Irish-made productions. They include:

THE FRONT LINE

The second feature from Irish writer-director David Gleeson (after Cowboys & Angels) is the closing film on July 16th. A thriller set in Dublin, it features Eriq Ebouaney as a Congolese immigrant working as a bank security guard and James Frain as the ruthless criminal who forces him to help arrange a heist.

MIDDLETOWN

Brian Kirk's dark Northern Ireland drama scripted by Darragh Carville features Matthew Macfadyen as a fundamentalist clergyman, with Daniel Mays, Eva Birthistle and Gerard McSorley.

ONCE

John Carney's musical is set in Dublin, with Frames singer-songwriter Glen Hansard playing a Dublin busker (and performing eight songs) and Marketa Irglova as the immigrant for whom he falls.

SMALL ENGINE REPAIR

Writer-director Niall Heery's debut feature is set in a small Irish town, with Iain Glen as a country singer in his forties who makes one last determined effort for success. Steven Mackintosh co-stars.

PRIDE AND JOY

Ronan Glennane's drama of a Dublin family in conflict over the inheritance arrangements for a house features Owen Roe and Michelle Forbes.

48 ANGELS

In Marion Comer's second feature film, a young boy with a serious illness seeks a miracle. Shane Brolly and John Travers head the cast.

JOHNNY WAS

Set in London and shot primarily in Belfast, Mark Hammond's gangster thriller features an eclectic cast including Vinnie Jones, Samantha Mumba, Patrick Bergin, Eriq La Salle, Laurence Kinlan, Roger Daltrey and Lennox Lewis.

WILDERNESS

Sean Pertwee and Alex Reid feature in Michael J Bassett's thriller of young offenders under threat on an island.

INTERNATIONAL CINEMA

Highlights include the Australian drama, Little Fish, with Cate Blanchett as a recovering drug addict struggling to build a new life for herself, and Atomised, Oskar Roehler's film of Michel Houellebecq's novel, which intersects the experiences of a geneticist (Christian Ullmen), who's planning to return to his Irish laboratory, and his half-brother (Moritz Bleibtrau) who lusts for the girls he teaches.

Two notable new Spanish pictures on show are Montxo Armendariz's Basque film Obada, and the prostitution drama Princesas from Mondays in the Sun director Fernando Leon de Aranoa. In Emily Atef's German film Molly's Way, a young Irishwoman (Mairead McKinley) arrives in a small German town seeking out the man with whom she spent one unforgettable night. Pernille Fischer Christensen's A Soap is a Danish tragicomedy of the relationship between a beauty clinic owner and a transsexual. And Jasmila Zbanic's Grbavica, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin festival this year, deals with the experiences of a single mother in Sarajevo.

DOCUMENTARIES

The programme includes An Inconvenient Truth, an absorbing filmed record of Al Gore's touring multi-media presentation to raise awareness about global warming; Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Robert Greenwald's caustic commentary on the powerful US retail chain; GuinnessSizeMe, in which Northern Ireland film-makers Chris Kelly and Robert James live on the eponymous brew for a week; Bob Quinn's ConTempo Goes West, in which a musical quartet from Bucharest absorbs traditional Irish music influences; and The Trials of Daryl Hunt, charting a miscarriage of justice case in which a young black North Carolina man was charged with the rape and murder of a white newspaper reporter.

ITALIAN CINEMA

Classics showing in this season include such gems as Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria, I Vitelloni and Amarcord, Pier Paolo Pasolini's Mamma Roma, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's The Night of San Lorenzo, and Luchino Visconti's magnificent The Leopard. Recent productions in the season are Private, which is set in Palestine and was shot in Italy, Francesco Munzi's immigrant drama, Saimir, and the new Gabriele Salvatores film, the crime thriller Quo Vadis, Baby?

MASTERCLASSES

The celebrated US screenwriter, script doctor and director, Robert Towne, will give the screenwriting masterclass, and the fleadh will screen two of the many notable films he has written - his masterpiece, Chinatown, which earned him the best original screenplay Oscar in 1974, and The Last Detail - and Without Limits, one of the four films Towne has directed .

Kathy Bates, an Oscar winner for Misery in 1990, will give the acting masterclass and she will participate in a public interview on July 16th. She also features in four films on the programme: Misery, Primary Colors, About Schmidt and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café.

A highly regarded cinematographer before he turned director, Nicolas Roeg will give the directing masterclass, and three of the films he has directed will be shown -- Track 29, The Man Who Fell to Earth and the astonishing Don't Look Now.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Brendan McCaul will discuss his 50 years in the film distribution business in a public interview with Lelia Doolan, and the fleadh will screen his favourites from the many Irish productions he has released: The Commitments, I Went Down and A Love Divided.

Industry events include a case study of how the award-winning The Wind That Shakes the Barley was financed from six European countries, and an open forum with the Irish Film Board.

Running parallel to the fleadh will be the annual Film Fair, at which Irish film-makers have an opportunity to pitch their projects to producers, distributors and sales agents.

And there will be a Sunday afternoon open air screening in Eyre Square of John Ford's The Quiet Man, which was filmed over the border from Galway in Mayo.

[ www.galwayfilmfleadh.com ]