THE GALWAY Film Fleadh celebrates its 21st anniversary this year and to mark the occasion - and as a way of combating the gloom of the recession - this year’s theme is ‘uplifting films’.
The fleadh will run from Tuesday July 7 to Sunday 12 and as well as plenty of feel good films, there will be Irish and world premiers, short films, documentaries, workshops, and a public interview.
Films and documentaries
Among the feature films being shown this year is The Maid (Chile/Mexico, directed by Sebastian Silva, 2009 ). Raquel has been the maid for the Valdes family for 23 years. After increasingly bitter arguments with the Valdes’ eldest daughter, Mrs Valdes decides Raquel is overworked and hires an additional maid to take the pressure off Raquel. However Raquel feels her position is under threat and resorts to childish antics to force each new maid to quit.
Baraboo (USA, directed by Mary Sweeney, 2009 ), is set in Wisconsin and follows six people who have carved out a life at Petersen’s Cabins, a rundown motel/resort. Some are there by choice, others by circumstance. They circle one another with caution, desire, humour, anger, and compassion, inching their way to understanding.
Sugar (Britain, directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, 2008 ) looks at how baseball, to a select few talented players, offers a way out of the slum of the Dominican Republic. Miguel Santos gets his chance when he is selected to play in the United States’ minor league system, but when his play on the mound falters, he begins to question the single-mindedness of his life’s ambition.
As part of the ‘uplifting theme’, this year’s fleadh will have a ‘comedy strand’ where comedians Maeve Higgins, Des Bishop, Ardal O’Hanlon, and Neil Delamare will all pick their favourite film to show during the fleadh.
Also picking their favourite film for screening will Lelia Doolin, Anthony Sellers, Pat Collins, and Sally Ann O’Reilly, who are all former programmers of the Galway Film Fleadh.
More than 100 short films will be screened and several of the shorts will compete for the following awards: Best Short Drama 2009 Tiernan McBride Award, Best Short Documentary 2009, Best Short Animation 2009, Best Debut Short Drama 2009, and Best Debut Short Animation 2009 James Horgan Award.
The main documentary at this year’s fleadh will be The September Issue (USA, directed by RJ Cutler, 2009 ). This is an unprecedented look behind the scenes of the world’s most influential fashion magazine, Vogue.
Award winning director RJ Cutler takes an intimate, often funny, look inside the hallowed hallways of Vogue. Jet-setting through the fashion capitals of the world, he chronicles the tedium of staff meetings, the scrutinising of designers’ new collections, and the chaos of a high glossed cover photo shoot in the streets of Rome.
Behind these doors he reveals the stressful, entertaining, and demanding process it takes to create this fashion bible and most importantly, the extraordinarily passionate people at its heart.
Modern Life (France, directed by Raymond Depardon, 2009 ) is a series of portraits, chronicling farmers’ lives, values, and family stories, all that bind them to the land and its legacy.
Guests
There will be no directors’ masterclass this year, but there will be a producers’ masterclass with independent New York film producer Ted Hope (The Devil and Daniel Johnston, 21 Grams ). The screenwriter’s workshop will be given by Christopher Hampton, who wrote the screenplays for Atonement and Dangerous Liaisons.
There will be an actors’ masterclass and this year’s public interview will be with Anjelica Huston (The Darjeeling Limited, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Addams Family, and The Witches ) in the Town Hall Theatre on July 12.
Out On Film
An increasingly popular part of the Galway Film Fleadh is the Out On Film Screenings, featuring the best in gay and lesbian films.
The films being screened this year are: An Englishman In New York, starring John Hurt, which traces the adventures of Quentin Crisp in New York; Fig Trees is a moving documentary/opera about AIDS activists as narrated by an albino squirrel, an amputee busker, and St Teresa of Avila; First Kiss features brief interviews about the first kiss for young Irish gay people, juxtaposed with the experiences of Tony Fitzpatrick, who was a teenager in the 1950s in rural Ireland.
Wild Combination is director Matt Wolf’s visually absorbing portrait of the seminal avant-garde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist, and disco producer Arthur Russell who died from AIDS in 1992; Identities is a sensitive and compelling feature documentary which explores the diverse transgender community in Ireland; Dolls is a film about three young female friends who plan to hitchhike to Holland, but one girl’s brother and her father’s friend have other ideas.
Tickets for all screenings are available from the Town Hall Theatre on 091 - 569777. The full festival programme will be on www.galwayfilmfleadh.com next week.
