Join the Dublin Film Critics Circle as they ponder JDIFF 2011 and name their final selections for Best Film, Best Director, Best Irish Film, Best Documentary and Best Performance from the festival programme. This year, a jury that includes John Maguire (Sunday Business Post), Dave O’Mahony (Access Cinema), Donald Clarke (Irish Times), Declan Burke (Irish Examiner) and DFCC president Tara Brady (Irish Times) will, additionally, announce the recipient of the second Michael Dwyer Discovery Award, named for our late friend and colleague.

 

Wild Strawberries, bimonthly film club for the over 55s.

 

Wild Strawberries, bimonthly film club for the over 55s.

 

Irish premiere. Promo director Emmett Malloy captures the band's incredible performances and many intimate candid moments.

 

The Secret of Kells + The Door + Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty.

 

With his customary grace and skill, acclaimed Irish documentary maker Desmond Bell has mixed early cinema archive film and new material to retrace the story of navvy poet, novelist, dramatist and screenwriter Patrick MacGill. Born in 1889 into crushing poverty in Donegal in the west of Ireland, MacGill went on to become one of Ireland’s most successful authors. His autobiographical novels penned in Scotland and hugely popular at the time, paint a vibrant picture of the life of the navvy, the labourer and the whore, “the outcasts of a mighty industrial society”. MacGill lived the life of a navvy in the Scottish highlands and in his writing fact and fiction, social report and love story mingle. Director Bell, alongside his collaborator Stephen Rea has fashioned an elegant and engaging portrait, while also interrogating the basic principals by which biographies are told and retold. Director Desmond Bell will be in attendance at this screening

 

Join the Dublin Film Critics Circle as they ponder JDIFF 2010 and name their final selections for Best Film, Best Irish Film, Best Documentary, Best Actor and Best Actress from the festival programme. In addition, this year, a jury that this year includes John Maguire (Sunday Business Post), Paul Lynch (Sunday Tribune), George Byrne (Evening Herald), Donald Clarke (Irish Times) and DFCC president Tara Brady (Hot Press) will announce the recipient of the inaugural Michael Dwyer Discovery Award, named after our late friend and colleague. TV stars and DFCC members Taragh Loughrey Grant (RTÉ) and Mike Sheridan (Entertainment.ie) will be on hand to introduce the final deliberations of the 2010 jury from 6.30 pm on 27th February at the IFI.

 

Kenneth Anger himself will be in attendance at this screenings.

 

Conceived by Padraic. E. Moore, this unique evening of music, ritual and performance has been organised as a response to, and celebration of, Anger’s work. It includes a special performance by one of Ireland’s most exciting young musicians, David Turpin.

 

Filmmaker, artist and wild man of British cinema Andrew Kötting reinvents himself – in French – as a Franco-Swiss filmmaker with this intimate and eccentric family story. Alex (Auzanneau) and his older sister Freya (Leroux) are teenage scions of the dynasty of an émigré Russian patriarch (Bideau). When the pair are caught playing taboo games, Ivul père is furious, telling his son never to set foot on his land again – an order the boy follows literally, taking to the trees and living a life off ground. Absolutely convincing as a French film in the ‘intimist’ vein, Ivul is at the same time 100% Kötting – mixing English ruralism and French family narrative with the kind of visual and sonic mixing familiar from the director’s Gallivant and This Filthy Earth. Ivul sees Kötting developing a bold but tender new variant on his idiosyncratic outsider aesthetic.

 

We present a showcase of work by one of the most innovative film companies in the world, VooDooDog, which is run by Irish brothers Paul Donnellon and Noel Donnellon with David Z. Obadiah. Named after a character called VooDooDog, a resurrected zombie canine that seemed to reflect the left field approach of the company’s work, a range of talented individuals create unique animation, motion graphics, live action and creative content for all media. Best known for their motion picture title sequences including the Emmy nominated sequence for The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Nanny McPhee (and its forthcoming sequel), Love In The Time Of Cholera, Smokin’ Aces and also their typography title design for such films as The Boy In The Stripped Pyjamas, Everybody’s Fine, Maid of Honor, When Did You Last See Your Father? and The Debt. Noel Donnellon and Paul Donnellon will be in attendance at this screening.

 

With his previous feature, Our Wonderful Home (shown in JDIFF 2009), Ivan Kavanagh proved to be an acute observer of the fissures and fractures of the modern Irish family. He returns to the subject with his remarkable new film. Alongside her sister Cathy (Regan), Yvonne (Kane) returns home to Dublin to watch over her dying mother (Larsson), a widow who cares for their disabled brother, Peter (O’Donnell). As the days pass, both sisters struggle with their own fears and doubts, their mother’s imminent death forcing them to address their complex relationship. A family united will be torn apart, as the siblings must decide: who will care for Peter when their mother dies? Shot with simplicity and featuring impressive performances from its young Irish cast, a highly emotive subject is tackled with great skill and control by talented young filmmaker Kavanagh.

 

Loopline Film's new feature documentary will premiere at the Dublin International Film Festival on 24th February at 6.30pm. Jimmy T. Murakami is a world-renowned animator whose credits include ‘When the Wind Blows’ and ‘The Snowman’. He has received accolades (Oscar nominations and doctorates) across the world but there is one dark chapter in his life that he has not revealed until recently. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbour during WW2, Japanese-American citizens like Jimmy (then eight years old) and his family were evacuated to a concentration camp called Tule Lake in the California desert, specifically built for this purpose. On the ridiculous basis that they were a threat to national security, Jimmy’s family, along with many thousands of other internees, spent four years in the camp where they suffered all kinds of deprivations and where his young sister Sumiko died of leukemia. This film takes you on an extraordinary journey with Jimmy, from his adopted country Ireland, through his Hollywood career and all the awards, climaxing with his return to Tule Lake to confront his childhood and his still present anger with the American government that put him there.

 

From the Wind that Shakes the Barley to Once, from The Quiet Man to Leap Year, there have been very different images of Ireland and Irish films presented to the world. With more and more Irish filmmakers going abroad to make their own films and increased levels of European and US filmmakers making co-productions with Irish talent attached, what is the perception of Ireland and Irish film to a global audience? Is the vision of authentic Irish film changing in a new and interesting way or are we at risk of losing our identity to a stereotypical vision of what it means to be Irish? Join us for a panel discussion about Irish film and its place in the international cinema landscape. Participants will include our trio of JDIFF 2010 Irish Film Talent Spotlight nominees; director Conor Horgan (The Beholder, One Hundred Mornings), cinematographer Kate McCullough (His & Hers) and actor Darren Healy (Savage). Joining them will be Trevor Groth, (Director of Programming, Sundance Film Festival), Mira Fornay (Foxes) and Anna Trzebiatowska (Festival Director, Off Plus Camera Film Festival, Krakov). Chairing the panel is Irish Film Board Chief Executive Simon Perry.

 

Irish writer J.S. Le Fanu’s creation, the female vampire Carmilla, has established a fascinating lineage through filmic adaptations, arguably inspiring a more radical and transgressive creative wellspring than her literary successor Dracula. Made under the Arts Council’s Reel Art Initiative, Fergus Daly and Katherine Waugh’s engrossing new film explores the radical influence of Carmilla on generations of filmmakers – from Carl Dreyer’s extraordinary Vampyr to Roger Vadim’s Blood and Roses, from the Gothic kitsch of Hammer through to films produced within a visual art context. Featuring interviews with leading film scholars and artists influenced by Le Fanu, this film seeks to redefine his critical importance as an Irish writer whose ghostly traces remain profound and enigmatic.

 

Director Conor Horgan will be in attendance at this screening The making of a portrait is an intimate experience, one which can be a pleasurable event for both parties or one that’s fraught with difficulties – either way, to paint someone’s picture is a unique way of really getting under their skin. In a world where anyone can make a realistic likeness on their cellphone, the importance of the painted portrait remains: as an emblem of power and prestige, as a political act and ultimately as a memorial. These themes and many others are explored through the work of three of Ireland’s most notable portrait painters: James Hanley, Mick O’Dea and Brian Maguire. Made under the Arts Council’s Reel Art Initiative, Conor Horgan’s witty new documentary follows each artist as they create new work, providing an illuminating insight into their individual creative processes

 

The Man in 301 Director: David Freyne Three prisoners recount the story of their crimes. Moore Street Masala Director: David O’Sullivan Shop clerk Baba falls for a sexy estate agent… Bollywood-style. Chairs Director: Pete Moles A romance revolving around the World Musical Chairs Championships. Mr. Foley Directors: D.A.D.D.Y. A man wakes after an operation to discover that he is not alone.

 

Kenneth Anger himself will be in attendance at this screenings.

 

Bye Bye Now, Runners, Corduroy, If These Walls Could Talk, Circus Man, Alibi, Jericho and The Ballad of Kid Kanturk.

 

Kenneth Anger himself will be in attendance at this screenings.

 

To celebrate a quarter of a century of the teaching of film-making in Dun Laoghaire, JDIFF is delighted to present a selection of its live action graduate films. Beginning in the academic year 1984/85 at the then Dun Laoghaire College of Art & Design, the National Film School at IADT has become the leading centre of excellence in the country at third level for professional education in film, television, animation and new media, and is the only full member in Ireland of CILECT, the international Association of Film and Television Schools. The NFS has built its reputation on the consistently high percentage of its graduates entering the entertainment and media industry, whose achievements have also been recognised through successes in competitions and festivals, both at home and abroad. Last month NFS graduates received 17 nominations for the 2010 IFTA Awards.