TWO OF the nation’s most admired actors helped launch the programme for the seventh Jameson Dublin International Film Festival last night.
Saoirse Ronan, recipient of an Oscar nomination for last year’s Atonement, and Liam Cunningham, who received acclaim for his recent role in Hunger, joined a throng of celebrities in The Odeon Bar on Harcourt Street to celebrate an event – the largest film festival in Ireland – that will, this year, screen over 130 features from 28 countries.
Gráinne Humphreys, embarking on her second year as festival director, was confident that the event, which runs from February 12th until February 22nd, would (as cinema is said to do) resist recession and continue to increase its attendance figures.
“The festival’s primary remit is to screen the best of cinema from across the world from the last year,” she said. “It is my greatest hope that this year’s programme will transfix audiences during the 11 days of our festival, and that maybe you will find your new favourite film.”
As ever, the festival will be welcoming a horde of prestigious guests and will be hosting a series of Irish premieres. Colin Firth, popular English hunk, is flying in to attend a screening of Genova, the new film by Michael Winterbottom. Michel Houellebecq, controversial author of Atomised, will be discussing his own adaptation of his 2005 novel The Possibility of an Island. Neil Gaiman, revered as a quasi-deity by comic-book enthusiasts and fantasy nuts, is to greet fans after the unveiling of Coraline 3-D, a digital 3-D animation of his popular children’s novel, at the Movies at Dundrum complex.
Events kick off in the Savoy Cinema with a gala screening of John Patrick Shanley’s highly-praised Doubt. Featuring four Oscar-nominated performances, the film stars Meryl Streep as a nun who harbours suspicions that Philip Seymour Hoffman’s priest may be abusing pupils in his charge.
The festival closes with the premiere of The Secret of Kells, a feature animation from the Cartoon Saloon, the Kilkenny-based animation house. The family film, which seeks to construct a myth around the creation of The Book of Kells, features voice-work from Brendan Gleeson and the much-loved actor is expected to attend the event.
Other Irish premieres include The Daisy Chain, director Aisling Walsh’s follow-up to Song for a Raggy Boy; Ivan Kavanagh’s Our Wonderful Home, a tale of a dysfunctional family, and Margaret Corkery’s debut feature Eamon.
The festival will also be dipping into the Irish archives: George Morrison’s Mise Eire, the first feature-length Irish language film, will get an outing, and, under the title The Seasons, the Irish Film Institute is to present a blend of vintage footage of life in Co Mayo with live traditional music from Rossa and Colm Ó Snodaigh and harpist Cormac de Barra.
This year, the festival welcomes a new cinema, Smithfield’s Light House, to its roster of venues and – with events such as a movie quiz for the over 55s and an introduction to the work of the Irish Film Classification Office – makes further efforts to reach into the wider community. Tickets are on sale from today.
The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival runs from Thursday, February 12th until Sunday, February 22nd. Box offices are located at Filmbase, Curved Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 and in Cineworld, Parnell Street, Dublin 1.
Further information at: 01-6728861 or at. www.jdiff.com
