It may be due to a hiatus in feature film production in the first half of last year but the 1998 Dublin Film Festival has a less prominent slate of Irish or Irish-related features than we've become used to lately, with just one new film in this year's programme. Reflecting the upsurge in production in Northern Ireland over the past year, Cycle Of Violence (Friday, March 6th, Screen, 8 p.m.) based on the novel by Colin Bateman, stars Gerald Rooney as a young journalist who arrives in the small town of Crossmaheart to take up a position in the local newspaper. The man he's replacing is missing, presumed dead, and trying to find out what happened to him drags Rooney into a complex web of intrigue. Directed by Henry Herbert, Cycle Of Violence is the first of two Bateman adaptations to hit our screens this year - the black comedy, Divorcing Jack, is due soon.
Two other feature films receive their Dublin premieres after several months on the festival circuit. In Bogwoman (Sunday, March 8th, Screen, 8.15 p.m.), writer/director Tom Collins spans two decades in the life of a Donegal woman (Rachael Dowling) whose journey from innocence through experience and adversity takes her to a place behind the Derry barricades as the Civil Rights movement explodes in Northern Ireland during the late 1960s.
The Fifth Province (Thursday, March 12th, Screen, 8.10 p.m.), Frank Stapleton's quirky, magic-realist take on the Irish imagination in the post-Maastricht era, stars Brian F. O'Byrne as a would-be writer struggling against the dank weather and his own psycho-sexual problems and includes the first cinematic spoof of the kind of Euro-funded film workshops that seem to be obligatory for every aspiring young Irish cineaste these days.
IN ADDITION to the features, there's a chance to see the first fruits of a new scheme for one-hour dramas funded by RTE and the Irish Film Board. Mark Kilroy's Double Carpet (Thursday, March 12th, Screen, 4 p.m.) stars Darragh Kelly, Garret Keogh and Jasmine Russell in a story of obsession and the strain it puts on a relationship when a risky gamble fails to pay off. Just In Time (Wednesday, March 11th, Screen, 8.15 p.m.), from the talented directing team of John Carney and Tom Hall (whose last film was the impressive no-budget November Afternoon) has Frances Barber and Gerard McSorley as a middle-aged couple forced to confront the difficulties surrounding their relationship when two unexpected guests arrive at their country cottage.
Showing with Just in Time is the latest offering from Armagh's indomitable Enda Hughes, who moves up from the cheap trash aesthetics of his delirious debut feature, The Eliminator, to tasteful black-andwhite Cinemascope, no less, for the 1950s pastiche Flying Saucer Rock 'n' Roll (Thursday, March 5th, IFC, 11 a.m.) starring Ardal O'Hanlon and photographed by Ireland's most in-demand cinematographer, Seamus McGarvey.
Flying Saucer Rock 'n' Roll is just one of a host of Irish short films showing under different banners at the festival. The latest series of Irish shorts produced under the auspices of the film board and RTE's "Short Cuts" scheme gets its annual airing, with a typically strong line-up from rising names like David Caffrey, Declan Recks and Paul Duane.
Short film-making in Northern Ireland has received a major boost with the announcement of an Oscar nomination for last year's Dance Lexie Dance. Flying Sau- cer Rock 'n' Roll gets another outing as part of the Premiere Shorts programme of films from the North, financed by the Northern Ireland Film Commission, Ulster Television and British Screen.
The "Cablelink - Made in Ireland" (Thursday, March 5th, IFC, 1 p.m., 3.30 p.m., 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.) season at the IFC showcases the best of the other Irish shorts of the year, with a strong representation as usual from the graduates of Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design. The 14 films on show in two dedicated programmes range in theme from family comedy (Skin And Blis- ters) to supernatural terror (Somebody). Also at the IFC, Animation Day includes the Frameworks 2 programme (Friday, March 6th, IFC, 9 p.m.), comprising the latest in Irish animation, with seven short films employing a wide range of animation techniques over an equally wide range of subjects.
