On The Town: Stylish berets, Gauloise smoke wafting in from outside, strong-smelling cheeses and great coffee . . . it had to be the opening of this year's Carte Noire French Film Festival.
The festival, at the Irish Film Institute in Dublin's Temple Bar, is a celebration of French films ranging from the silent era to the newest and most innovative. More than 30 films will be screened, and there will be a special presentation of the work of documentary maker Nicolas Philibert, who is guest of honour at the festival today.
"In France, cinema is as important a part of daily life as eating and drinking," said Alice Black, the festival's director. "It is celebrated as an art form in France but it is also a wonderful tool for communicating French ideas, the French way of life and French culture to the rest of the world."
"They are screening Le Secret, which is based on the book by Phillipe Grimbert," said Daniel De Casrilevitz, Israel's cultural attaché in Ireland. "The book is about the Holocaust . . . about a man who didn't know he had a brother who died in Auschwitz because his parents never told him."
"It's a good programme, very diverse, showing the wide range of styles," said Laurent Marie, a lecturer in French Studies at UCD. Today, he said, 220 feature films are made every year in France. Film-makers must "resist the onslaught of Hollywood or American cinema. The film-makers say that they have to fight for their ground, their share of the market. They don't want to fall into the recipe of American cinema."
Guests on opening night included the French ambassador, Yvon Roe D'Albert along with Isabelle Etienne and Christophe Lerouge of the French Embassy; artist Fiona Arnold and DCU student Ciara Banks, her husband Conor Kearney and her mother Patricia Banks.
• The Carte Noire French Film Festival continues at the Irish Film Institute, 6 Eustace St, Temple Bar, Dublin, until Thursday. For information Tel 01-6793477. www.irishfilm.ie
All the southside's a stage, roysh?
Fans of Ross O'Carroll-Kelly were out in force at Dublin's Olympia Theatre this week for the realisation on stage of their favourite fictional character from south Co Dublin.
Teenagers Megan Doyle, Kate Foley, Aoife Garland, Helen McGee, Julie Molloy and Sarah O'Grady, of Our Lady's School, Terenure, and Séamus Ryan of Terenure College, all declared their love of the despicably bad southsider, in spite of his spoilt, selfish and snobbish persona.
"Roysh, like!" they chorused, getting in the mood to have fun at the play, entitled The Last Days of the Celtic Tiger.
"Oh my God! I just love his accent," one of them added in the voice of the character's vacuous girlfiriend Sorcha, as played by Lisa Lambe.
"I've had Ross in my head for nine-and-a-half-years," said a delighted Paul Howard, creator of the satirical character, as he prepared to take his seat and enjoy the opening night performance. "Of course you are going to be apprehensive about what he's going to look and sound like, but Rory Nolan is extraordinary in the part."
Howard was joined by his father, David, and his brothers, Mark, Vincent and Richard and his girlfriend, Mary McCarthy. Some of his schoolfriends from Ballybrack, Co Dublin, where he grew up, were also in to cheer him on, including Alan and Colin Kelly, Dave Cleary and Paddy Cahill.
"There's a bit of Ross in everyone," said Alan Kelly philosophically. "I think he's got it spot on."
Others who came to applaud Howard's first stage play were Paul McGuinness and his wife, Kathy Gilfillan, Michael Colgan, director of the Gate Theatre, actor and comedienne Pauline McLynn and writer and playwright Peter Sheridan.
The Last Days of the Celtic Tiger by Paul Howard continues at the Olympia Theatre until Dec 5
Words take on a new dimension
Images of naked men and women, cavorting, sleeping and arguing in rural idylls, drew sighs of approval all round.
The visual translation of Brian Merriman's epic poem, The Midnight Court, by artist Pauline Bewick, conveys "the flight of the poem, the spirit of the poem", said Prof Kieran Byrne, director of the Waterford Institute of Technology, who came up with the idea when in discussion with her agent, Waterford gallery owner Pat Keegan, that Bewick create a series of paintings based on the poem.
"Of all poems, Brian Merriman's is the most intriguing . . . It's an epic poem from an epic poet and [ this is] an epic translation from an epic artist," said Byrne. The 18th-century comic poem "survives because it's timeless. It's universal," he added.
The idea "grabbed me instantly," said Bewick at an unveiling of her work in Dublin's Shelbourne hotel this week. "I knew it was the right thing for me. I got the feeling of the lake and the bend in the river and all the things that are mentioned in the poem. They poured out of me at a rate of knots."
She set off earlier this year to visit the area around Lough Grany, Co Clare, where the poem opens. "I didn't dress them [ the characters] in clothes of the day apart from those in the courtscene. I wanted it to be timeless. They are draped or naked," she explained.
"They are so alive. It has a life of its own," said Mary Moss, a friend of the National Gallery. "It's so lively, even the flowers, the honeysuckle."
Others at the official launch of the work included the Knight of Glin, Desmond Fitzgerald and Carmel Keenan from Chapelizod with her daughters, Michelle and Elaine, and her friend, Maureen Kavanagh, from Dorset Street.
Pauline Bewick's 11 images of The Midnight Court will be on view at the Kenny Gallery, Galway until Nov 30
Life at the cutting edge of cinema
In his time, Sheamus Smith has been a press photographer, a television director and producer, Ireland's film censor and managing director of Ardmore Studios.
Off Screen, A Memoir, "reminds me how lucky we all were to be involved in the early pioneering days of television," said Prof Brian Farrell when he launched the newly-published book at the Solomon Gallery in Dublin this week.
"Here, in a few short chapters, Sheamus reminds us of those pioneering days when it all still seemed so magical. Anybody having anything at all to do with television was given VIP treatment and existing protocol gave way to a breezy informality," he said.
The book will be a necessary and enjoyable read "for anyone involved or interested in any aspect of the development of the media and the many exotic characters who inhabit its far-flung stages, from Hollywood to Cannes, to the arcane worlds of the film censor's office to RTÉ in its infancy to the present" and the struggle to create an Irish film industry.
Smith "had an international vision for the [ film] industry at a time when it wasn't recognised on the map," said Kevin Moriarty, the current managing director of Ardmore Studios. "He went [ to Hollywood] in a pioneering way and a lot has followed on from that. He put Ardmore on the map and we all benefitted over the years," he said.
Among those in attendance were film-maker Muiris Mac Conghail and Ronan O'Leary; Gráinne Humphreys, director of the Dublin International Film Festival; Trish Long, vice-president of Buena Vista; broadcasters Rodney Rice, Bill O'Herlihy and Mary Kennedy; Fine Gael TD Olivia Mitchell ; former Labour Party leader Ruairí Quinn TD and former President of Ireland Dr Patrick Hillery and his wife, Maeve.
Off Script, A Memoir by Sheamus Smith is published by Gill & Macmillan