Cork Film Festival 2007 (feature films)
Okay, I covered the short films so Slightly later than planned, a few words about the feature films I saw at this year's Corona Cork Film Festival.
TONIGHT IS CANCELLED is a low budget film in which an Irish director turns up in Kosovo with plans to shoot a film based on the experiences of a local couple he meets there. While there's the odd moment of humour and some lovely photography, I found this film to be rather meandering and unengaging. The source material is undoubtedly rich in potential but it's potential that is not fulfilled here; similarly, director Brendan Grant shows enough to make me think he has promise as a director of features, but promise that remains unfulfilled here.
I can't say that I was overly enamoured with Colin Downey's DREAM DIARY either, though it certainly was bizarre enough to sustain the attention. An experimental art film in black and white showcasing some truly bizarre moments involving a giant worm, witchcraft, a woman with a strange disfigurement and plenty of other oddness besides, it's reminiscent in many ways of David Lynch's ERASERHEAD. But for all its similarities, it's not as polished and veers off into strangeness for the sake of strangeness once too often.
When Bob Quinn's Irish-language POITIN was first shown thirty years ago, it had presented a daring vision of the west of Ireland (the remote cottages are the same, but they're populated by scheming bootleggers and thieves), and was almost devoid of music. It is justifiably hailed as a classic of Irish cinema, but the negative went missing for many years. Now it has been recovered (a new 35mm print being blown up from 16mm without looking any the worse for it) and a new score composed for it.
Featuring Irish acting greats Cyril Cusack and Donal McCann, the film tells the tale of a man who makes his own poitin (think Irish moonshine) and sells it on via McCann and partner Niall Toibin. Doublecrossing and dishonesty mean it'll all end in tears for someone however, and what could have been a quirky picture-postcard representation of life in rural Connemara ends up as a gritty and accomplished crime film with a strangely effective bucolic backdrop.
Mel Cheren is the subject of the documentary THE GODFATHER OF DISCO, which covers the emergence of disco through its mutation into what was later called dance music and in an enlightening and enjoyable way sheds light on Cheren's almost unrivalled contribution to the scene with interviews aplenty and lots of archive footage. It's not all shiny suits and glitterballs however and the film covers the disco scene in its entirety, including the outbreak of the mysterious and deadly epidemic that the world would come to know as AIDS, along with Cheren's part in fighting it and trying to raise awareness of the issue.
BOTCHED was a perfect film for the late night slot - a low budget film set in Russia (although managing to make the most of shooting in a soundstage in Ireland for most of it), it stars Stephen Dorff as a criminal dragged into committing the usual "one last job", only to fall foul of forces beyond what he usually has to deal with. Kit Ryan's film is an interesting oddity that plays with audience expectations - what begins as an apparent story about a botched heist soon turns into a gory but endearingly mad horror-comedy which is not ashamed to have fun while tearing its characters to pieces, unlike the current trend for grisly torture movies. It'll certainly do well on the festival circuit (it also played at Horrorthon in Dublin, which I'll be covering soon) but these little films always struggle for cinema release without either an A-list star or a major studio backing them. One can only hope BOTCHED succeeds, as it certainly offers a pleasing couple of hours for potential audiences.
Next up was BOY A, a great little British drama about a young man who has been released from an institution where he was sent for his part in a despicable crime committed with a friend when they were young boys. With a new identity, a desire to leave the past behind and in many ways seeing the world anew, young "Jack" soon finds a new home, a job, new friends and even romance. Of course, it's not long before various parties, including the ever-reliable British tabloid press, are bringing the past back to haunt Jack, a past that finally catches up with him as a result of a snap decision to help a child in danger.
Based on Jonathan Trigell's novel, the story would seem to be in part inspired by one real life case that featured heavily in Britain's tabloids. I'm sure you know which one I'm talking about, and if you don't I've no desire to dredge up unpleasant memories by discussing it here. All I will say is that this is a terrific little film that really deserves a wide audience, though the subject matter may make that difficult.
The final film I saw was TRANCES, a documentary following Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane in the early 80s, as they perform live and espouse their various philosophies on life. It's the first film to be rescued, or restored, or whatever you want to call it, by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation and while I found it enjoyable and acknowledge the need to save it I must also say that if you don't like the band's music the film could be a pretty hard slog for you. As an aside, I should mention that this film is almost three decades old and yet upon consulting the Internet Movie Database entry to see what the average score is I see that, at the time of writing, it is still "awaiting five votes". Rescued from obscurity indeed.
Coming soon: my opinions from this year's Horrorthon festival in Dublin.
TONIGHT IS CANCELLED is a low budget film in which an Irish director turns up in Kosovo with plans to shoot a film based on the experiences of a local couple he meets there. While there's the odd moment of humour and some lovely photography, I found this film to be rather meandering and unengaging. The source material is undoubtedly rich in potential but it's potential that is not fulfilled here; similarly, director Brendan Grant shows enough to make me think he has promise as a director of features, but promise that remains unfulfilled here.
I can't say that I was overly enamoured with Colin Downey's DREAM DIARY either, though it certainly was bizarre enough to sustain the attention. An experimental art film in black and white showcasing some truly bizarre moments involving a giant worm, witchcraft, a woman with a strange disfigurement and plenty of other oddness besides, it's reminiscent in many ways of David Lynch's ERASERHEAD. But for all its similarities, it's not as polished and veers off into strangeness for the sake of strangeness once too often.
When Bob Quinn's Irish-language POITIN was first shown thirty years ago, it had presented a daring vision of the west of Ireland (the remote cottages are the same, but they're populated by scheming bootleggers and thieves), and was almost devoid of music. It is justifiably hailed as a classic of Irish cinema, but the negative went missing for many years. Now it has been recovered (a new 35mm print being blown up from 16mm without looking any the worse for it) and a new score composed for it.
Featuring Irish acting greats Cyril Cusack and Donal McCann, the film tells the tale of a man who makes his own poitin (think Irish moonshine) and sells it on via McCann and partner Niall Toibin. Doublecrossing and dishonesty mean it'll all end in tears for someone however, and what could have been a quirky picture-postcard representation of life in rural Connemara ends up as a gritty and accomplished crime film with a strangely effective bucolic backdrop.
Mel Cheren is the subject of the documentary THE GODFATHER OF DISCO, which covers the emergence of disco through its mutation into what was later called dance music and in an enlightening and enjoyable way sheds light on Cheren's almost unrivalled contribution to the scene with interviews aplenty and lots of archive footage. It's not all shiny suits and glitterballs however and the film covers the disco scene in its entirety, including the outbreak of the mysterious and deadly epidemic that the world would come to know as AIDS, along with Cheren's part in fighting it and trying to raise awareness of the issue.
BOTCHED was a perfect film for the late night slot - a low budget film set in Russia (although managing to make the most of shooting in a soundstage in Ireland for most of it), it stars Stephen Dorff as a criminal dragged into committing the usual "one last job", only to fall foul of forces beyond what he usually has to deal with. Kit Ryan's film is an interesting oddity that plays with audience expectations - what begins as an apparent story about a botched heist soon turns into a gory but endearingly mad horror-comedy which is not ashamed to have fun while tearing its characters to pieces, unlike the current trend for grisly torture movies. It'll certainly do well on the festival circuit (it also played at Horrorthon in Dublin, which I'll be covering soon) but these little films always struggle for cinema release without either an A-list star or a major studio backing them. One can only hope BOTCHED succeeds, as it certainly offers a pleasing couple of hours for potential audiences.
Next up was BOY A, a great little British drama about a young man who has been released from an institution where he was sent for his part in a despicable crime committed with a friend when they were young boys. With a new identity, a desire to leave the past behind and in many ways seeing the world anew, young "Jack" soon finds a new home, a job, new friends and even romance. Of course, it's not long before various parties, including the ever-reliable British tabloid press, are bringing the past back to haunt Jack, a past that finally catches up with him as a result of a snap decision to help a child in danger.
Based on Jonathan Trigell's novel, the story would seem to be in part inspired by one real life case that featured heavily in Britain's tabloids. I'm sure you know which one I'm talking about, and if you don't I've no desire to dredge up unpleasant memories by discussing it here. All I will say is that this is a terrific little film that really deserves a wide audience, though the subject matter may make that difficult.
The final film I saw was TRANCES, a documentary following Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane in the early 80s, as they perform live and espouse their various philosophies on life. It's the first film to be rescued, or restored, or whatever you want to call it, by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation and while I found it enjoyable and acknowledge the need to save it I must also say that if you don't like the band's music the film could be a pretty hard slog for you. As an aside, I should mention that this film is almost three decades old and yet upon consulting the Internet Movie Database entry to see what the average score is I see that, at the time of writing, it is still "awaiting five votes". Rescued from obscurity indeed.
Coming soon: my opinions from this year's Horrorthon festival in Dublin.
Labels: cork film festival, documentaries, Film festivals, horror, Irish film, Music on film
posted by Alan at 7:40 pm
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