Directing the action

Aine O'Halloran exhales deeply and takes a mouthful of cafe au lait. "I really need to be in two places at once," she says, echoing the way many film-goers begin to feel midway through the Dublin Film Festival. The programme is out, the booking office is open and two weeks of furious juggling lie ahead. Having been festival manager last year, O'Halloran is used to feats of organisation but this is her first year as festival director, with responsibility for selecting the programme of films. "This is a transitional year," she stresses. "In your first year, all you can do is programme the festival to the best of your ability and see how your approach works, with half an eye to the future. I am really happy with the programme." She won't be drawn on any Five Year Plan or Great Leap Forward. "I want to focus on what's happening this year. After that, certainly, the festival needs to look to the future and to question where it wants to be." In addition to the change of programmer since the departure of Martin Mahon to pursue his film-making career, the festival has lost its major title sponsor, ACC Bank, who, after seven years' support, decided to switch to another area. Commercial sponsorship is crucial to the festival's financing - supplementing its core funding from the Arts Council - and a range of other, smaller sponsors had to be found. "We must be commercially attractive, because the commercial end will subsidise the less mainstream, less accessible films we show," O'Halloran says. "A 2 p.m. slot in the Screen could well cost more than a big Savoy special; if you're bringing in a film from China or the Philippines, say, there will probably be only one print, which has to be transported from the Far East. This will cost a few thousand pounds.

"In my view, a film festival should do its best to provide what is otherwise unattainable to cinema audiences. But it is perfectly possible to be commercially viable without losing integrity."

Box-office takings remain the biggest source of income, which is why O'Halloran stresses the importance of audience expansion. Last year, over 7,000 people attended the festival and she is determined to build on this. There have not been any comprehensive surveys or analysis of the festival's audience, although ACC Bank conducted a marketing survey two years ago to investigate public awareness of the event. As part of her expansion drive this year, O'Halloran has introduced a mini-season called "Hollywood Icons", showing films featuring Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Steve McQueen. "These are all seminal films, which many people have only seen on tape. I see this repertory function as an important part of the festival. These are going to play in the UCI's in Coolock, Blanchardstown and Tallaght, to make local audiences aware of the festival."

Cinephiles often complain that the DFF screens many films that are due to open commercially a few weeks later. "You need those films," she says, "so that the festival remains attractive, popular and accessible - not simply catering to an elitist audience. People like to catch the latest big film early. Also, for these screenings, we usually bring in a guest director or actors, so that audiences get a fix on how the film was made." She is keen to break the programme up into manageable parcels. "In recent years we have had separate strands, such as world cinema, documentaries, etc., but I want to make these more specifically profiled, in smaller groups. The problem for any festival punter is the sense of being overwhelmed by an ocean of titles. This year, we have a miniseason called `Directors' Debuts', grouped together in order to put these first features into context, so that they are looked at differently by audiences."

O'Halloran has been working in cinema since 1978, when she joined the British Film Institute, working first in the area of finance, acquisitions and contracts, before moving to the exhibition and distribution area, where she developed her enthusiasm for animation. Originally from Clare, she grew up in London and was always "determined to come back home". In 1993 she returned to become freelance programmer for a number of film festivals, including the Irish Animation Festival, and worked part-time with the Dublin Film Festival until her appointment as festival manager two years ago. This is the festival's only full-time position; until this year, the programme director worked on a consultancy basis. After the departure of Martin Mahon, the festival board decided to double up the function of manager and programmer, to create "a redefined role" which combines elements of both. "This means that in addition to programming the festival, I retain a management and administrative function," O'Halloran says, "and it is up to me to choose part-time staff to whom I can delegate." She emphasises that this arrangement only holds for this year and that the whole structure will be assessed for the future. She acknowledges that there were difficulties selecting an opening and closing film this year. "There always are. Programmers tear their hair out over these, because there is such a huge focus on them. It's a waiting game. You want to get a wonderful film and invite the director, if possible." Although she is happy to have booked Coppola's The Rain- maker for the opening and to spotlight his work in a small retrospective season, she is "very disappointed" not to have secured the prize she had been pursuing, Martin Scorsese's latest film, Kundun, with the director himself as guest. Did she hold out too long for this? "I don't think I could have done anything else. We were so close and it was perfectly possible. I didn't want to go down in festival history as the person who turned down Scorsese . . .

"Anyway, it didn't delay things very much. The programme is a jigsaw and you can't draw up the schedule until you have all the films and every single piece of information."

One problem that made scheduling more difficult this year has been the lack of venue space. The Screen On D'Olier St, which is usually entirely taken over by festival screenings, will be holding non-festival screenings at night. "They didn't want to have a 10-day gap in their own programme," Aine says, "so we have a problem with exhibition." Evening screenings will be at the Ambassador, O'Connell St, as well as the IFC, as usual, so audiences will be dispersed and some of the club atmosphere fostered by having a dedicated venue will be lost. More importantly, it will be a scramble to move between cinemas in time to catch the evening screenings.

"Yes, we'll all be running up and down O'Connell St - the sense of unity will be gone. Another problem is that many of the films this year are longer, so there are more overlaps, unfortunately. It will take dedication on the part of our solid supporters. This has been a difficult problem for me. I had assumed that the usual arrangement would hold, with Screen One, Two and Three taken over from morning to night.

"I'm aware of the mechanical problems for the festival this year," she concludes ruefully, "but let's hope that we all care enough about it to bear with them."