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It's been a good year for Access Cinema, which had a big hand in making His Hers such a domestic success story. Now it is preparing to bring the jewel in its crown, the annual Japanese Film Festival, to a burgeoning grassroots circuit, writes TARA BRADY

EVEN THE most seasoned film industry pundits were taken aback when Ken Wardrop’s wonderful His Hers broke records and stormed the Irish box office earlier this year. It wasn’t as if anyone had questions about that movie’s qualities. But too often Irish audiences have failed to turn out for such fine indigenous documentaries as Saviours and Pyjama Girls. How had this portrait of the Irish mammy managed to buck the trend?

His Hers, it transpired, had a secret weapon: Access Cinema. For more than 30 years, the organisation formerly known as the Federation of Irish Film Societies has sought to facilitate and bring cohesion to the nation’s many cinema clubs. In its contemporary incarnation Access Cinema provides assistance, cheery advice and film prints for societies from Skibbereen to Letterkenny.

Without it, very few denizens outside the capital would have the opportunity to see such certainties for best film 2010 polls as Samson and Delilahor Dogtooth.Fewer still could hope to catch a title like One Hundred Mornings, director Conor Horgan's splendid Irish riposte to Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

“We’ve always known that as a network or model we’re often the only way that regional audiences can get an opportunity to see certain types of films,” says Access Cinema director Maeve Cooke. “And we’ve been working on that for a very long time. But certainly recently, after the closure of the Kino Cinema in Cork, for example, distributors and members of the public have become more aware of our part-time venues. There are so many releases out there but fewer places to see them.”

His Hers represents a special case. Traditionally, the films championed by the dedicated band of cineastes at Access have hit the circuit two or three months after the initial theatrical run. It took the current Access crew and Element Films, the Irish distributors behind His Hers, to hit upon the ingenious idea of releasing simultaneously in cinemas and clubs.

"His Hers marked a particular opportunity for us and for our members," says Cooke. "We had worked with Element before on Garage and Kisses, both of which did well on the circuit. His Hers had played really well at our national conference back in March, so word of mouth was already gaining momentum with our members and programmers. We all thought the film was a great fit for our venues. But we couldn't have predicted what happened. We had audiences made up of people who hadn't been to a cinema in years. We had people coming back for repeat screenings, and not only coming back but bringing other people with them. Portlaoise, for example, has brought back the film for two additional runs and each time it has sold out."

As smaller cinemas shut up shop and multiplexes become increasingly inclined toward grabbing a third print of Harry Potterahead of some Romanian Cannes winner, membership figures across the Access network have rocketed. This burgeoning grassroots circuit has not gone unnoticed. In the past year the organisation has received a flurry of invitations to appear at international conferences and explain the science behind their success. As a result, the network is now internationally recognised as "a viable and innovative model for cultural cinema exhibition and distribution". Simply put: if art-house venues make up the movieverse's answer to punk rock, Access Cinema just became Joy Division.

"Because of the recession, cinemas are under a lot of pressure," says Cooke. "Our remit is cultural, but within that remit you find English-language crossover films or foreign-language titles like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoothat have a ready-made audience. These films used to make it into mainstream cinemas. But that doesn't necessarily happen any more."

For all their recent successes, the jewel in the Access crown is the annual Japanese Film Festival. This year’s festival, the third such collaboration between the organisation and the Japanese embassy, will play across venues in Dublin, Limerick, Galway and Cork, and boasts their fattest programme to date.

“We started off with four films in 2008,” says Cooke. “In our experience, quality Japanese films were not making it through to the Irish market. So when we first showed them in Dublin, Cork and Limerick they went down really well. We had sell-out screenings. Last year, again, we were just overwhelmed by the response. There’s a real appetite for Japanese cinema out there. We’re just hoping to build on it.”

Arigato for that.

Tokyo and beyond Six to catch at the Japanese Film Festival

The Japanese Film Festival runs from

October 29 until November 14

PING PONG

Think table tennis. Think The Matrix. Think The Karate Kid. Think Dodgeball. Stick them all together in a blender and pulse at the highest setting. Only now, Grasshopper, are you ready for Ping Pong.

THE SKY CRAWLERS

The latest mind copulation from Ghost in the Shell director Mamoru Oshii offers a parallel anime universe based around war as entertainment. Try not to over-gasp during the stunning aerial dogfights.

FISH STORY

Have you heard the one about the punk band, the doomsday cult, the terrorists and the meteor? All will be revealed in Yoshihiro Nakamura’s twisty, time-jumping dramedy.

9 SOULS

Nine escaped convicts, mostly murderers, return to their stash of counterfeit yen only to find a mysterious glass key. Hang on – what’s that tower doing here? And did that really just happen to Tokyo?

CONFESSIONS

A teacher stands before her high school charges and reveals that her daughter was murdered by two of the students present. Confessions is one of 2010’s biggest Japanese hits. It presents bullying, HIV, child murder and vengeance before pulling the rug out from beneath your feet.

THE PLACE PROMISED IN OUR EARLY DAYS

Makoto Shinkai creates an alternate timeline in which Japan has been carved up between the US and USSR after the second World War. As ever, the director’s latest parallel universe (below) is put in the service of aching romance.