Shake off that gloom – the 2012 festival presents an intriguing selection of Irish cinema.This year's JDIFF – as well as closing with Death of a Superheroand featuring Irish co-production Albert Nobbs– lists 16 pictures in its dedicated domestic section.
Marian Finucane, great friend to the late Nuala O'Faoláin, narrates a moving documentary on the distinguished writer and troublemaker. The hugely talented Ivan Kavanagh, recipient of a Dublin Film Critics Circle prize for The Fading Light in 2009, presents a refurbished cut of his earlier film Tin Can Man.Kirsten Sheridan, another talented tyro, returns with a low-budget picture entitled Dollhouse. Four years after her American debut, August Rush, Sheridan directs a tale following four teenage tearaways as they break into a posh home.
Advance word is very positive on Maurice Sweeney's Saving the Titanic. Arriving a few weeks before the centenary of that vessel's immersion, the picture seeks to recreate crucial incidents from the disaster. Informed sources also recommend a piece entitled Nightdancers. Directed by Emile Dinneen, the film concerns a party of African chaps who take an act – concerning, would you believe "fire-breathing, human- flesh-eaters" – to London's most significant hip-hop theatre festival.
If one is searching for something a tad quieter, then Silence, a collaboration between Pat Collins and Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhríde, might fit the bill. The picture concerns an Irishman, living in Berlin, who is commissioned to record, well, silence, in remote parts of the Irish wilderness. Care for a drift towards the avant garde? Then track down Yellow, a film version of the Amanda Coogan performance piece that played at the Dublin Theatre Festival. Documentaries include Wonder House, which invites scientists to recall the formative experiences that sent them on their roads of discovery; Hill Street, which sounds like an Irish version of Stacey Peralta's great Dogtownand Z-Boys; and The Enigma of Frank Ryan, following the life and times of that unusual IRA volunteer, socialist and Spanish Civil War warrior.
