IT WILL be a Galway Film Fleadh like no other in the festival’s 32 year history. There will be no screenings at the Town Hall Theatre, no after parties in Woodquay, no spotting that film star walking down Shop Street.
And yet, there will be a Galway Film Fleadh 2020 streaming into every home in Galway that wants to take part, because the Fleadh is a resilient festival, and by its very nature, perfectly suited to adapt to the restrictions imposed by the Coronavirus Lockdown.
The Galway Film Fleadh 2020 will this year be a completely digital, online only festival. All selected films will be available to rent from www.galwayfilmfleadh.com and will be viewable across multiple devices, from Tuesday July 7 to Sunday 12.
It is a far cry from March and April, where festival programmer, Will Fitzgerald [pictured below], and his team, fearedn that the festival might not go ahead at all.
.
“In April things were more uncertain than they are now, and we thought about postponement,” Will tells me during our Tuesday morning conversation. “If we did postpone we would be competing with other festivals that had decided to postpone, and we would also end up clashing with winter festivals.
“We knew also, that, even if we postponed, we would still be looking at a social distancing, and a socially distant Fleadh is not what the festival is about. The social element is huge. At the Fleadh, there can be 600 meetings a day between film-makers and financiers - that’s at least 600 pairs of hands shaken. It wasn’t part of our identity, so that’s when we went with the digital option.”
Festival Scope, which brings festival venues to the web, and Shift72, which provides end-to-end online video platform solutions, provided the Fleadh with the platform to ensure the 32nd festival could proceed.
Going online
This year’s Fleadh boasts 10 world premieres, 40 new features, and 10 new short film programmes. Providing some continuity in the face of unprecedented circumstances has influenced how the programme has been scheduled.
.
“We’ve scheduled it in the traditional way,” says Will. “There will be new films each day at 3pm, 5pm, 7pm, and 9pm, and we hope that people will tune in at those times so that watching the film will still be a communal experience. To encourage people to watch at those times, we have also scheduled the audience Q&As with the director and cast for immediately after the film screening.”
Will is delighted that, by going online, the festival will be available to view/participate in across the entire island of Ireland, but, he is advising films fans to book their tickets early as each screening is limited to the capacity of the Town Hall Theatre - ie, 400 tickets are available for each screening, and “once they’re gone, they’re gone”.
Irish films at the Fleadh
The opening film at Fleadh 2020 is The 8th, a documentary on the campaign and referendum to liberalise Ireland’s abortion laws. Directed by Aideen Kane, Lucy Kennedy, and Maeve Boyle, Will describes it as “an emotional roller coaster, which takes you by the hand through the whole campaign, and will have you bawling at the end”.New Irish cinema, will, as ever, play a huge part in this year’s Fleadh, and Will predicts one of the highlights will be Redemption Of A Rogue, a black comedy directed by Philip Doherty and starring Aaron Monaghan.
.
“Many viewers will know Aaron Monaghan from his work in Druid, and from being on Vikings, they will also know of Philip from his work with Fíbín Theatre,” says Will. “I’ve been describing this film as Beckett meets Groundhog Day. This is Philip’s first feature film, and he brings an original vision and a new voice. It’s set in Cavan and captures the bleak beauty of the county.”
Here Are The Young Men, the new feature from actor/director Eoin Macken, will get its world premiere at Fleadh 2020. Adapted from the book by Rob Doyle, it stars Dean-Charles Chapman (1917 ), Ferdia Walsh-Peelo (Sing Street ), and Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch, New Mutants ). “It also stars Lola Petticrew, who won the Fleadh’s Bingham Ray Award for Best New Talent in 2019,” says Will. “It has lots of up and coming talent.”
.
Other highlights include Henry Glassie: Fieldwork directed by former Fleadh programmer Pat Collins, about the renowned American folklorist; and Loïc Jourdain’s Tribe Of Gods, about the residents of Tory Island.
Peripheral Visions
A new strand for the Fleadh will be Peripheral Visions, in conjunction with Galway 2020. This has been programmed with 11 other European film festivals, including Hamburg, Athens, Bordeaux, and Reykjavik, with a view to highlight films and locations located at the periphery of the European continent. A winner will be chosen from the films submitted, and receive a prize of €3,000.
Queer cinema will be represented this year by German film No Hard Feelings and Sweden’s Always Amber, the latter benign particularly topical in dealing with the issue of Transgender and following the livea of teenagers who are transitioning.
“It is topical, but this film is also a lot of fun,” says Will. “It follows the teenagers lives and manages to blend the serious and fun tones in an interesting way.”
Another highlight will be the Palestinian documentary, Walled Citizen, Directed by Sameer Qumsiyeh.“This is a terrific documentary,” says Will. “The filmmaker travels as a backpacker, but he doesn't have the freedom of travelling across borders as do other other backpackers, because he comes from Palestine, and the weakness of the Palestinan passport. This is a film about freedom, but it’s not one that is about killing, or violence, or tragedy. It’s about the people he meets and it’s a really positive representation of Palestine.”
For more information and for full details on the festival programme, see www.galwayfilmfleadh.com. Tickets are priced from as low as €5 only a limited number will be available for each film. There will also be a 30 hour window to watch a film once it is rented. Buy your Galway Film Fleadh 2020 tickets.
