The sixth Kerry Film Festival, which runs in eight locations across the county from October 24th-30th, is the most ambitious to date, screening more than 200 short films from 18 countries in competition for the festival awards.
Five Palestinian film-makers will attend the event for screenings of their work at the Blasket Centre in Dún Chaoin. A programme of new European shorts will be presented in Tralee. There will be a 10th anniversary screening of Brendan Bourke's short film, Fishing the Sloe-Black River, based on Colum McCann's short story and shot in Kenmare, which is also the venue for an Icelandic film programme.
The festival will present masterclasses on camera skills and experimental film-making, and a series of film appreciation screenings for primary and second-level students. www.samhlaiocht.com/kerry
Down and out in Dublin
Mark Venner, who co-wrote the acclaimed new Irish film Pavee Lackeen, presents a programme of films dealing with people living on the margins of society, which will run over eight Tuesday evenings, beginning next week at Filmbase in Dublin. The films chosen for screening and discussion include some remarkable works rarely seen in recent years, among them Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blue, Alan Clarke's Made in Britain, Barbara Loden's Wanda, Werner Herzog's Stroszek, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's The Promise, and a double bill of early Ken Loach films, Cathy Come Home and Family Life. The course is aimed at film students and aspiring film-makers. www.filmbase.ie
Screen play
Bringing the number of cinema screens in Dublin city and county to 115, the new Movies@Dundrum multiplex opens next Monday night with 12 screens and more than 2,000 seats. The project is a joint venture between the O'Gorman family, which owns the Ormonde complex in Stillorgan, and the Spurlings, who operate cinemas in Greystones, Enniscorthy, Castlebar and Antrim.
The Dundrum multiplex is, they say, designed "with a classical feel to it", featuring hand-painted murals and "old-style theatre features", alongside state-of-the-art auditoria and digital projection; a "premium service" with reclining leather seats and a private entrance, and a coffee and wine bar.
The owners promise a mix of movies from inside and outside the mainstream, along with the Reel Parents initiative that originated at the Ormonde, presenting morning screenings for parents accompanied by babies. The owners are planning two more multiplexes to open next year, with 10 screens in Salthill, Co Galway, and 11 in Swords, Co Dublin.
Movies in Ranelagh
The charming Dublin village of Ranelagh lost its only cinema over 30 years ago, but movies return there tomorrow for a day of screenings in the Cinemobile as part of this weekend's Ranelagh Arts Festival. The film programme includes the 1958 comedy Rooney, which was shot in Ranelagh and Rathmines; Pat O'Connor's superb The Ballroom of Romance (1982), which I look forward to introducing tomorrow; and Vittorio De Sica's 1948 Italian neo-realist classic, Bicycle Thieves. Shorts and archive newsreels will accompany the features. www.ranelagharts.org
Colin hits the beat
Next up for Colin Farrell is Pride and Glory, a drama in which a family of New York police officers is torn apart by corruption and scandal. Farrell will play a cop who's the best friend of a homicide detective (Edward Norton) investigating the precinct run by his older brother (Noah Emmerich). Directed by Gavin O'Connor, who made Tumbleweeds and Miracle, the movie starts shooting in January.
Farrell already has three movies set for release over the next year: Terrence Malick's The New World, Robert Towne's Ask My Dust and Michael Mann's Miami Vice.
Coppola gets back to basics
Francis Ford Coppola, who hasn't directed a film since The Rainmaker in 1997, gets back on the set next Monday and begins production in Bucharest on a low-budget, self-financed drama, Youth Without Youth, based on a novella by Romanian author Mircea Eliade. Starring Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz and Marcel Iures, the film deals with a professor who becomes a fugitive in late 1930s Europe.
Said Coppola: "I was excited to discover, in this tale by Eliade, the key themes that I most hope to understand better - time, consciousness and the dreamlike basis of reality. For me, it is indeed a return to the ambitions I had for work in cinema as a student."
mdwyer@irish-times.ie
