EVERYTHING IS POLITICS

The upcoming Belfast Film Festival doesn't shy away from the edgy and controversial. But it also knows how to have fun, writes Donald Clarke

Last year, just two weeks after the conclusion of a successful fourth Belfast Film Festival, director Michelle Devlin received unhappy news.

"We'd left the office on Friday night, then we got a phone call the next day to say there had been a fire," she says. "There was lots of stuff - projectors and playback machines - that we had on loan; there was our database and there was all our computer equipment. Ever the optimist, I thought there must be something left, but there was nothing at all. Nothing salvageable."

The mysterious conflagration at the North Street Arcade forced Devlin and her team to rebuild their organisational machine from scratch, so they are to be doubly congratulated for coming up with such an imaginative programme for the fifth festival.

Running from April 7th-16th, the Belfast Film Festival features a special season devoted to racism, a series of Asian anime and a deluge of aquatically themed movies - Jaws, Piranha, Yellow Submarine - to be screened in a boat on the Lagan. There will be a public interview with Albert Maysles, the brain behind such great documentaries as Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens, and a master class with Jonathan Caouette, creator of the unclassifiable cinematic memoir, Tarnation. In the course of 130 events, films from more than 20 countries will be screened.

The schedule reads well but, with film festivals sprouting all over the island, it's only reasonable to ask precisely what distinguishes the Belfast event. "We think that having a strand on politics and general sociopolitical issues gives us an identity," Devlin says. "We are also, perhaps as a result of that political strand, leaning towards documentaries more than other festivals."

There has, over the festival's five years, been an attempt to use the political material to respond to and comment upon relevant issues of the day. Coming as it does in the aftermath of vile attacks on the north's Chinese community, the season on racism - which will feature a contribution from that admirable, left-wing blowhard Darcus Howe - seems particularly well timed.

"People, when you talk to them, say racism has always been here, but in the absence of political violence it is just more visible now," Devlin agrees. "Some foreign media outlets describe Belfast as the most racist city in the world. Now, I don't think that is necessarily true, but we thought that was something we should look at."

You can never quite escape politics in the north. The Belfast Film Festival has its origins in the West Belfast Festival, and Devlin must surely have been concerned that, considering such a lineage, some punters might assume that the current event was organised by and for the nationalist community.

"I think we have managed to prove that the programme is aimed at everyone," she says. "In the first year our political theme was reconciliation, and then another year we looked at Protestant identity in film. There is very definitely something for everyone."

Devlin goes on to explain that she has worked hard at ensuring there are venues at all compass points in the city. One of this year's more mainstream seasons will celebrate 70 years of the Strand cinema, a much-loved feature of east Belfast, with screenings of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Searchers and - acknowledging the city's slightly perverse pride in all things Titanic - A Night to Remember.

Elsewhere, you can catch a glimpse of a Corr in John Irvin's The Boys and Girl from County Clare, revel in the long-awaited reissue of Chris Petit's terrific British drama Radio On, or - should your Mogodon supplies have dried up - suffer through Jean-Luc Godard's mind-numbingly inaccessible Notre Musique.

However, the most bizarre event on the calendar is surely the World Pong Championships. Readers of a certain age will be aware that, rather than having anything to do with grim odours, Pong was a rudimentary video game involving line-segment bats and a tiny square puck.

So what is this doing in a film festival? "It was sort of a tongue-in-cheek thing in the festival club, but then suddenly we noticed it had been picked up on the web."

So the tournament is not actually affiliated with the International Pong Federation or any similar body? "No, but people come from far and wide. Last year we had Bernard MacLaverty and me playing. But it is a fun thing. The main competitors wear masks like wrestlers and so on. Very funny."

Now there's something you don't see at Cannes.

The Belfast Film Festival runs from April 7th-16th. Further information: 048-90330443, www.belfastfilmfestival.org