Fascinating Festival highlights
Dublin Film Festival Director Aine O Halloran (who is
also the director of the West Belfast Film Festival)
has put together a great collection of films for this
year's festival (3-12 March).
The opening film was Francis Ford Coppola's The
Rainmaker, an adaptation of a John Grisham novel in
which a Southern lawyer talkes on an immoral insurance
corporation.
But the heart of the festival is, as always, the
foreign and independent films which you have no chance
of seeing anywhere else. For example, on Friday you can
see Four Days in September, Brazil's entry in last
year's Oscars. It is an account of the kidnapping of
the US ambassador to Brazil by left-wing
revolutionaries. Or - sure to be an interesting
experience - an Austrian version of Flann O'Brien's
classic, At Swim Two Birds, which you can see on
Saturday.
On Sunday you can catch Tom Collins's Bogwoman, the
story of a young Donegal woman who marries a Derry man
and settles in the Bogside in the 1960s. The film
charts the period up to the Battle of the Bogside.
On Friday there is the world premiere of Cycle of
Violence, which claims to be the first film made
entirely in the Six Counties in twenty years. It is a
thriller/love story whose star is a journalist who is
sent to the suspiciously named small country town of
Crossmaheart. There ``with the help of the local
sergeant'' (I know, but that's what it says in the
publicity notes) he ``unravels a web of intrigue''. It
was written by the prolific Colin Bateman.
Always worth catching at the Festival are the shorts
programmes and this year there is a wide selection of
Irish short films on offer.
For further information, phone Dublin 670 8666
By Brian Campbell
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