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CIFF Programme 1987

Page 1

TOM BROSN.1 Lord Mayor

I am delighted once again on my own behalf and on behalf of the people of Cork to extend a warm welcome to visitors attending the 32nd Cork Film Festival. I congratulate the Chairman, Executive Committee, Directors and the many unsung heroes who make this festival possible. The Film Festival has been a part of Cork for many years and holds a special place in the affections of Corkonians.

After a number of lean years the Festival has made a remark­ able comeback due to strenuous efforts and the backing and generosity of many individuals and companies. The Festival would not have survived without the support of the ordinary people of Cork. Long may this support continue and increase.

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I wish the Festival every success and hope that the undoubted potential is achieved.

32nd CORK FILM FESTIVAL PRESIDENT The Right Honourable, The Lord Mayor of Cork, CouncillorTom Brosnan

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EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Charles Hennessy, Chairman Jack Casey Dick Langford Tiernan McBride Michael O'Connell Robin O'Sullivan Aidan Stanley DIRECTORS Theo Dorgan Michael Hannigan

ADMINSISTRATION John Kelly, Office Fran Bergin, Finance Neil Crowley RECEPTION & REGISTRATION Anne O'Sullivan Anne Kennedy

PRESS OFFICER Robert McDonald Camille Dorney, Assistant

PRODUCTION MANAGER Ger O'Riordan

TRANSPORT Donal O'Sullivan

THE TRISKEL TEAM Robert McDonald Anne O'Sullivan Vai Bogan Ger O'Riordan Mary Buckley Noreen Thornton Tony Sheehan Barry Fitzgerald James Kearney

Harry Conboye Kevin Breen Kay Stanton Liam Leisk Tom Foley and our magnificent Corps of Volunteers ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The assistance of the Department of Labour Social Employment Scheme is gratefully acknowledged

PROJECTIONISTS Declan Lynch John McEvoy courtesy of RTE

AUDITORS Arthur Young and Company

SCHOOLS PROGRAMME CO-ORDINATOR Stephen Daunt

PRINTED BY Guy & Co. Ltd., Cornmarket Street, Cork

EEC JURY CO-ORDINATOR Mark Hathaway COVER DESIGN & POSTER John Murphy Signrite SPECIAL THANKS TO Katie Burgess Donna McNamara Ben O'Reilly Helen Farrell Stephen Dorgan


CHARLES HENNESSY

We continue the proud tradition established over thirty-two years of bringing the best of national and international cinema to Cork and Ireland. Few of the world's festivals can boast such a continuity in age, and we are, I hope, justly proud of our record.

Chairman

We are again indebted to Theo Dorgan and Michael Hannigan, our two Directors. They did a magnificent job last year, and I am sure that this year will see their and our plans for the continued growth of the Festival carried significantly forward. Between them they have been at Cannes, Berlin, Moscow and the Celtic Film Festival; no effort has been spared in assembling the best possible programme of films, and I am confident that for entertainment, excitement and intellectual challenge our programme can have few equals. We are again supported by an absolutely marvellous team of workers within the Triskel Arts Centre, by our many sponsors, and by a large and enthusiastic corps of voluntary workers who continue to give of their time and talent unselfishly to the art of film and to the advancement of this city.

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I am glad that we will again be 'breaking bread' with our visitors from San Francisco, and we are immensely pleased that the relationship between the City of San Francisco and the City of Cork continues to flourish. The Cork Enterprise Board deserves our thanks for helping to organise this visit of our friends, and I take this opportunity to thank those friends, present and absent, who have so generously contributed towards the cost of running our Festival. On a sad note, I have to report the recent death of a man whose life was devoted as much to this Festival as it was to our City, my predecessor Mr. A. A. (Gus) Healy. With Der Breen a founding father of the Festival, he did an enormous amount to make this and other festivals in the City a reality. He will be sadly missed. BeannachtDe lena h-anam. It is our aim to present to you a programme that we hope contributes to the advancement of film as an art form, and our further hope that we may as best we can be of assistance to film-makers. We also hope, of course, to play our part in the continuing struggle to build Cork into Ireland's Festival City. And so, on behalf of my Executive Committee, I extend to you our audience, and especially to our many visitors, a hearty welcome.

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THEO DORGAN Director

'To live your life is not so simple as to cross a field'. Boris Pasternak. Lurching from cinema to cinema at Cannes, or cursing down the phone at a reluctant if not downright obstructive distributor, or trying to field three telephone calls at once while editing a synopsis for our infinitely patient printers-there have been many occasions in the past twelve months when that line from Pasternak came whispering through the back of the mind, bringing, if not exactly calm, then at least perspective. Running a festival can be like riding the dragon - you're thrown all over the place, but nobody believes in dragons.

So the first toast is to all those - staff, volunteers and friends alike who helped us put manners on the beast. The second toast is to all those, from the axed Film Board through to the last volunteer, whose belief and faith in the necessity of this Festival fed, clothed and housed the beast. A third toast to all film-makers and their distributors for making it possible for us to present a first-rate programme of film - the sparkling jewellery of the beast in its final form. The toast we are proudest to offer, though, is to our audience: it isn't only that last year we had such a huge increase in numbersthough that was sweet - what has cheered and encouraged and sometimes humbled us is the quality of response. We have been deluged with praise, advice, criticism, suggestions, for the past twelve months. And that, we believe, is how it should be: the audience stands for history sitting in judgement, on the films and on our work. Our business is to pick the best films we can, to present a rounded, balanced programme of work from all genres of film, from the four corners of the earth. The audience alone judges. Have fun!

MICHAEL HANNIGAN Director

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It has been a good year for film. The effect of glasnost on Soviet film­ making is reflected in our four excellent features from the USSR: The Theme, Golden Bear in Berlin, Robinsonade, Camera D'Or in Cannes, Plumbum, and the stunning Letters Of A Dead Man. Francis Coppola's Gardens Of Stone heads up the American contribution, chiefly notable this year for a strong presence from the flourishing Independent sector, covering features, documentaries, shorts and experimental films. See, in particular, our programme of experimental film from San Francisco, the powerful documentaries Witness To Apartheid, Breaking Silence, Cuba: In The Shadow Of Doubt and the fascinating and entertaining Broken Noses and Sherman's March. \Ne feel we have got the mixture right, between the rough-edged and the glossy, the high-budget and the no-budget (see Three Bewildered People), the comic, the challenging, the imaginative, the profound. We have new films from Eric Rohmer, Volker Schloendorff, Francis Coppola, Pat O'Connor, Kem McMullen and Humberto Solas, and among countries represented are Denmark {Babette's Feast), Hungary {The Wall Driller), Germany {Tommaso Blu, The Little Attorney), Australia {Travelling North - Best Actor Award Montreal 1987 for Leo McKern), the list is long. Our opening film, from Mali, is the wonderful and magical Yeelen. From established Irish film-makers we have Budawanny (Bob Quinn), Celebration Of Light (Louis Marcus) as well as work by new names such as O'Leary, Tighe, Twomey, O'Neill, O'Riordan and McCallion. We are particularly pleased to be opening the Festival with Aidan Hickey's award-winning An Inside Job. Cork Film Festival is not just a series of screenings. It is our policy to invite film-makers to introduce their work, to be available for formal workshops and informal discussions after the screenings. This year we are pleased to welcome to the Festival Constantine Lopouchanski {Letters From A Dead Man), Peter Wollen {Friendship's Death), Ken McMullen and Tariq Ali {Partition), Doris Chase, the subject of our 'Focus On' element and many others yet to be confirmed. One title which must receive special mention is the Dreyer classic The Passion Of Joan Of Arc with live accompaniment by the RTE Concert Orchestra. This, our Gala Closing event, is an experience not to be missed.

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Booking Information membership of tho 2O9S rS a,r robliged t0 become members of the 32nd Cork Film Festival Association in order to purchase tickets for admission to screenings. The membership fee is £1. Membership is open to those over eighteen years of age. Membership is non-transferable and card must be produced when buying tickets for screenings. Members may purchase admission for one guest for each screening. Members are advised that seats must be occupied ten minutes before a programme begins. We cannot guarantee that seats will be held.

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TICKET PRICES Season Tickets: £35 and £30 (concessions), valid for all screenings and Festival Club. This includes membership. Individual Screenings: Opera House, £3 and £2.50 (concessions); Triskel Arts Centre £2 and £1.50 (concessions).

GALA CLOSING 'The Passion Of Joan Of Arc' with the RTE Concert Orchestra. All seats £8. ADVANCE BOOKING Tickets for all screenings including the Gala Closing in the Opera House may be booked in advance. Box Office hours for advance bookings: 10.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. Telephone bookings with Credit Card: Ring (021)270022.

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Tickets for screenings in the Triskel Arts Centre will be available at the door. CONCESSIONS Concession rate tickets are available to those with appropriate ID-student card, unemployment card, pension book. To buy an Opera House ticket at the concession rate please collect a coupon at the desk marked CONCESSIONS in the Opera House Foyer. At the Triskel Arts Centre please show appropriate ID at the ticket desk.

GRANT AID Bord Scannan na hEireann /The Irish Film Board Cork Corporation Radio Telefis Eireann Commission of the European Communities Cork County Council San Francisco Sister City Committee Cork Enterprise Board SPONSORS Henry Ford and Son Ltd. Penn Chemicals Allied Irish Bank Bank of Ireland

PATRONS C.A.B. Motor Co. Ltd. Beamish & Crawford Statistical Software Ltd. Coras Trachtala Guy & Co. Ltd. Barry's Tea Ltd. Touche Ross Apple Computers Smurfit Print & Packaging Sheehan & Sullivan Ltd. Coal Importers Stokes Kennedy Crowley & Co. Allied Irish Banks Jury's Hotel, Cork Murphy Brewery Ireland Ltd. Cork Savings Bank Cleanaway Ireland Ltd. Tivoli Spinners Ltd. Cork Marts B & I Line Sables, Pembroke Street Colourfilm Services, London Gunther Wulff Film Services Aer Rianta James Bruen O'Sullivan Public Relations Alec Morrogh Southern Electronics Mathews Mulcahy & Sutherland Ltd. Arthur Young & Co. Iprodex

Note: List of sponsors and patrons is correct at time of going to press, an up-to-date list is on display in the Opera House Foyer.

Smoking is not allowed in the cinemas.

All inquiries to Information Desks in Opera House Foyer or to Triskel Arts Centre Telephone inquiries to: (021) 272022.

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CORK OPERA HOUSE Friday / 25th September, 1987 8.30 p.m.

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Souleymane Cisse 1987

Leading Players

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Issiaka Kane, Aoua Sangare, Balia Moussa Keita, Ismaila Sarr', Niamanto Sanogo Script Sekou Ouedraogo, Fanta Traore Photography Jean-Noel Ferragut, Jean-Michel Humeau Dounamba Coulibaly, Editing Andree Davanture, Marie-Catherine Miqueau, Jenny Frenck, Seipati N'Xumalo Les Films Cisse Executive Producer Michel Portal with Salif Keita Music Production Company Les Films Cisse Export Agents Les Films du Volcan, 16-18 Rue Vulpian, 75013 Paris, France

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AN INSIDE JOB Aidan Hickey Ireland

Animation

1987

Colour

10 minutes 20 seconds

Aidan Hickey, Conrad Wimerlich

Liam 0 Rinn Editing Aidan Hickey Producer Grafliks, 25 Mount Prospect Park, Production Company Clontarf, Dublin 3, Ireland Strange tale from a dentist's surgery. The dentist is called away in media res and is replaced by a mysterious stranger, who proceeds to carry out his own kind of operation on the patient's mouth. A black comedy from Dublin film-maker, Aidan Hickey, winner of the 1987 Prix

de fa Jeunesse at Annecy.

F

Colour

Mali 105 minutes

Subtitled

The film narrates a journey, a sort of initiation, at the cross­ roads between childhood and manhood. The hero, a very young man, is about to be granted the special knowledge for mastering the surrounding forces, a knowledge which has been the privilege of the Bambaras across generations. The father intends to prevent his son from becoming an equal: his plan is to kill him, but the mother rescues her son, and sends him away. During the journey the young man gathers the elements of the ultimate knowledge and brand-new powers with which he will confront his father. "The most convincing magic I have ever seen on screen" Paddy Woodworth. * PVe would especially like to thank Les Films du Volcan, Paris, and the New York Film Festival, for making this screening possible. Their co-operation was quite exceptional.


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CORK OPERA HOUSE Sunday, 4th October, 1987 8.30 p.m.

galaO 32nd CORK FILM FESTIVAL in association with

RADIO TELEFIS EIREANN presents

THE PASSION OF109JOAN OF ARC Carl Dreyer France 1928 minutes English Intertitles with Falconetti, Antonin Artaud

with the

RTE CONCERT ORCHESTRA 4

Leader Alan Smale Conductor Gareth Hudson Music composed by Leo Pouget and Victor Allix Orchestrated by S. V. S. Schultz The Passion OfJoan OfArc has never been seen in Ireland. One of the last classics of the silent screen, it is claimed both by proponents of the avant-garde and of realism. Dreyer's project of 'revealing the soul beneath the facade' prompted Andre Bazin to call the film 'extremely realistic and mystical'. Based on the transcripts of the trial, The Passion OfJoan OfArc compresses the twenty-nine recorded examinations into a single day. Falconetti's hypnotic performance is the living heart of this superb film. Although one version of Dreyer's classic was in circulation for many years, historians have only recently become aware that it differed in a number of ways from Dreyer's

original concept. Thanks to the discovery of an original print in Norway in 1984, it has been possible to reconstruct the film once more to incorporate not only the brilliance of its photography but also the remarkable rhythm of its editing. The Directors wish to express their appreciation to John Ranelagh and Peter Flood of Channel 4 Television, to Mr. Peder Bach of the Odense Symfoniorkester and to Nigel Algar of the British Film Institute for their invaluable assistance with this project. Tickets for the screening are £8. Season tickets are valid for this screening also.

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Focus on Doris Chase The Festival is pleased to welcome to Ireland one of the most outstanding of contemporary American artists. Painter, sculptor, film and video-maker, her work has been honoured atthe Berlin Festival, atthe London Film Festival, in the Pompidou Centre among others. Her work explores deep currents of feeling. Her video work in particular has been described as bringing 'another dimension of visual and experimental depth' to the work of those women poets, actresses and dancers with whom she has collaborated. Each work is at once an exploration in video art, theatre and the critical issues facing women today economic and emotional stability, racial identity, relationships. We will be screening three programmes of Ms. Chase's work, and the film-maker herself will be present at each screening.

Programme I

DEAR PAPA 1986

28 minutes

DORIS CHASE: APortraitOf An Artist Robin Schanzenbach USA 1984 28 minutes A splendid documentary from Schanzenbach, featuring work from the thirty-year career of Doris Chase, intercut with clips from her prizewinning films from the 60's to the present. A wonderful intimate view of the artist, Portrait is also a general historical introduction to video art and is inspiring in the study of dance, drama and the mixed media. From the By Herself senes

TABLE FOR ONE 1985

25 minutes

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Starring Anne Jackson and Roberta Wallach, the film portrays a mother and a daughter, exploring their differing views about the man who is 'papa' to one and 'gramps' to the other. Memories are shared as we hear the grand­ daughter's uncomplicated remembrance of a supportive man juxtaposed with the daughter's more complex recol­ lections.

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Programme II From the Concept series

Geraldine Page portrays a handsome professional woman dining alone in an elegant restaurant. Though she sits by herself, the room seems crowded with people and events of her life, told to us in a virtuoso monologue that details the pleasures, doubts and satisfactions of being a woman

The Concept series is composed of collaborations with accomplished off-Broadway theatre artists. In these trans­ lations of theatre to screen Chase gives a new visual dimension to words, emotion and dramatic theatre. Video effects are woven in and out of the narratives to punctuate dramatic perspective, and to make visual an emotional intensity. Imagination is extended by creating a flow between the interior and exterior of a personal perfor­ mance.

successfully on her own. 13


ELECTRA TRIES TO SPEAK 1980-83

30 minutes

THULANI 1980-83

30 minutes

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Electra is all women trying to speak, in a modern inter­ pretation of the classic Greek tragedy. Through the sharp, cogent script and the vital, infinitely varied playing of Sondra Siegel, Electra becomes as much experience as performance. Coherence overlaps with freeze-frame con­ fusion; the clear, determined statement is always blurred with flitting doubts, images passing through images to be frozen for an instant before another anxiety or mask wipes them out. Written by Clare Coss, Sondra Siegel and Roberta Sklar.

The poetry creates an emotional expanse of the southern black experience: the visual imagery punctuates dramati­ cally the honesty of the words, bridging the personal with the universal. The dichotomy between the performance and the visual effects is similar to the contrast between woman and woman as artist, the mundane and the imaginative. Thulani's voice takes you on a journey from the black Mississipi delta to the teeming streets of New York. Written and performed by Thulani Davis. Music by Anthony Davis.

TRAVELS IN THE COMBAT ZONE 1

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1980-83

30 minutes

A woman's view of the harsh and beautiful realities of city living, her travels through the eternal combat zone of cities and men. 'Pearl' marries a slick dancer who takes a mistress (who was, some said, actually close to thirty), wears rhinestoned dresses, goes to the movies mostly alone and sings to an empty house Lover Man, Where Can You Be ? Musical, pungent, gutsy, in search of love or solitude, Travels In The CombatZone tells what it is to be a woman, to be 'in search of ... Z Written by Jessica Hagedorn, performed by Mary Lum and Maralyn Amaral, with music by Butch Morris.

WINDOW 1980-83

30 minutes

Window is about memory, not as an act but as form. The script's language moves through memory-scapes and non-linear thinking, and selected elements are visually abstracted. Written by Linda Mussman and performed by Claudia Bruce.

Programme III From the Dance series 'The Doris Chase Dance series was conceived and produced to develop the field of dance for television. Using her kinetic sculpture and video technology, Chase created a wholly original hybrid'. Videodance 'As beautiful as anything I've seen in the movies'. Roger Greenspun, New York Times

CIRCLES 11 1976-79

14 minutes

plus

TALL ARCHES 1976-79

6 minutes

The Mary Staton Dance Ensemble performs with Doris Chase's Kinetic Sculptures producing overlapping coloured silhouettes.

VARIATION TWO 1976-79

11 minutes

Dancer/choreographer Sara Rudner in a video variation to music by Joan Labarbara. 14

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Dancer, \

;Sr Kei Takei in a duet with sculpture.

DANCE TEN

1976-79

1976-79

6 minutes

10 minutes

5-79

Cynthii processed

8 minutes

>-:iet in a duet with video­ ;.

. .... elf.

DANCE FRAME

1976-79 7 minutes

Sara Rudner juxtaposed with geometric form of colour and

line.

JAZZ DANCE

1976-79 4 minutes

Jonathan Hollander in a rhythmic duet with Chase's rocking synthesised sculptures. ?

DANCE SEVEN

1976-79

8 minutes

Marnee Morris of the New York City Ballet; recurring close­ ups of her remarkable footwork with video effects become a metaphor for the dance as a whole.

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Stunning animation with Gay Delanghe dancing to the music of Jelly Roll Morton and the Uptown Lowdown Jazz Band. Awarded at twelve international festivals. Please Note: Programme 111 will be screened on video.


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BOUN OF FILM-MAKING Experimental Films from San Francisco The mutual commitment to cultural exchange between the cities of Cork and San Francisco is reflected in this special pro­ gramme of film.

We are grateful to Karen Holmes and to the film-makers repre­ sented in this programme for their enthusiastic co-operation, and we look forward to a deepening of the relationship between the Festival and the San Francisco film community.

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"San Francisco has long been a centre for experimental and independent film-making. Artists throughout history have been working on the fringes of society as do film artists who often work outside the commercial world of film. We are fortunate here in San Francisco in that there are numerous organizations run by film-makers and public exhibition sites which make it possible for film-makers to work with a sense of support and community. There are also regional and international film festivals in the Bay Area which regularly include a selection of experimental work in their programming. The historical richness and diversity of choice in this large and vital community makes the task of selecting a show all the more difficult. Rather than organizing the programme by theme or style, I elected to bring together a group of newer films which represent the plurality of issues and approaches to experimental film-making that exist in the San Francisco community. Some of the film-makers repre­ sented have made just a few short films, others have been making films for over fifteen years. The works which make up this programme explore the boundaries of film-making. These independently produced films may continue the traditions of avant-garde and experimental cinema in formal or narrative explorations or may investigate controversial or offbeat subject matter. Concerns represented in the programme extend from social issues to deeply personal and introspective views of life experience. These works ask the viewer to reconsider his/her expectations about film, to be willing to engage with unusual, often unexpected and sometimes even disturbing aspects of the films. Experimental film-making encourages the audience to take an active role in viewing new and challenging film forms."

Karen Holmes, Curator, Boundaries Of Film-making

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DECIDUOUS

Programme I

Lynn Kirby 1982 Colour/Sound 17 minutes 16 mm

YELLOW ARIA Tina Bastajian 1986 Colour/Sound 13 minutes 16 mm Antonioni meets Godard (in Italian, English and silence, with subtitles) in this 'symptomatic view of the lover at work' (Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse). Constantly on the edge of the moments when passion and neurosis overlap, Yellow Aria layers different forms of expression - theatrical gesture, opera, subtitles, dialogue - in humorous and ironic series of confessional vignettes.

4891 Tim Blaskovich 1984 Colour/Sound 3 minutes 16 mm Always the centrepiece of the Chinese New Year Celebra­ tion, the Lion Dance seen here is a condensed series of mocking gestures and silky spectacle. The film-maker joined the throngs of people celebrating the new year 4891 as they gathered to share in the Lion's exuberant and colourful procession along the streets of San Francisco's Chinatown.

AMBI VALENCE

WHITE PASSAGE

David Gerstein

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A film about learning and memories which surface to distort present moments. The seasons change and so do the facts. Bright coloured images trigger events — past experiences influence today's political convictions. L.K.

1982 Colour/Sound 5 minutes 16 mm Ambi Valence is concerned with a way of apprehending film in which perception and interpretation operate on multiple levels. The viewer is allowed to make his/her own way through the work, moving from internal response to external representation/illusion/reflection at will.

Ruby L. B. Yang 1986 Colour/Sound 10 minutes 16mm

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VIOLENT Sal Giammona 1985 Black&White/Sound Violence is rendered abstract.

10 minutes

16mm

EPHEMERALITY Marion Wallace 1979 Colour/Sound 4 minutes 16 mm Torn paper animation and live action, abstract cinema with a multi-layered sound track. The project started out to be a film of a painting painting itself, but eventually worked its way off the stand. M.W.

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This personal film deals with the psychological experience of a woman whose baby was born dead. R.L.B.Y.


REACTION

VALLEY r - ■ . ■

Eric Sayetta 1984

Black & White/Silent

3 minutes

16 mm

Stephanie Beroes 1979 Colour/Sound

20 minutes

16 mm

Inspired by Merleau-Pontys statement, 'there is a perpetual uneasiness in the state of being conscious! this film has to do with questions of perception, the way we see things. In an experimental, non-narrative context, the film presents a man and a woman who carry on a disjunctive conversation superficially about the effects of illness on perception, actually about their mutual inability to perceive the world from any way other than a personal viewpoint. They each set up a film projector and show each other footage of their respective hallucinations under the influence of a fever - images of the desert, palms, swimmingpools, and the American suburban landscape. The hallucination sequences make a lyrical counterpoint to the formal, structured lip-sync sequences. S. B.

RETURNING THE SHADOW Karen Holmes 1985

Colour/Sound

23 minutes

16 mm

am interested in the relationship between the landscape and the living things that occupy it. In Reaction, I use texture, shape and motion to explore some of the ways in which animals take on qualities of their surroundings. E. S. i

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SCENIC RUPTURES Lynne Sachs 1986 Colour/Sound 3 minutes 16 mm Inspired by the Californian garage band sound of Camper Von Beethoven, Scenic Pictures is an experiment in lost and found art. It is a unified yet imaginary world of found footage, animated form and scribble. L. S.

Programme 11 VISIBLE INVENTORY NUMBER NINE: Pattern of Events Janis Crystal Lipzin 1981

Black&White/Sound

12 minutes

16mm

Old family photographs invoke memories and invite comparison to the present. Using five family photographs taken in the 1940's Returning The Shadow considers how the meaning of these visual documents changes with our life experiences. The film's circular structure allows the viewer to contribute personal experience in an effort to identify the characters in their relationships and to reflect on one's own identity within his/her family. Returning The Shadow explores the tension between recorded and remembered past and present as it creates its own internal memory. K. H.

HEART LIKE A LITTLE FIST Ted White 1985

Black&White/Sound

6 minutes

16 mm

A lyrical meditation on childhood and growing up.

K. H.

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iskel Arts Centre, Saturday, 3 U-., Triskel Arts Centre, Thursday, 1 October, 11_arn

AUBREY WILLIAMS: The Mark Of The Hand

ARGENTINA - THE BROKEN SIU:-Victor D. Fridman

Imruh Caesar

USA 1986 Colour 59 minutes Part subtitled

Britain 1986 Colour 52 minutes

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I I Houston International Film Festival, Silver Award; National Educational Film Festival, Silver Apple; Atlanta Film & Video Festival, Best Documentary; Sinking Creek Film Festival, Documentary Award Victor D. Fridman Script Victor D. Fridman Photography Production Company Victor Fridman Productions, 104 Chester Avenue, Fairfax, Ca 94930, USA Argentina - The Broken Silence is a socio-political docu­ mentary outlining Argentina's history from the Peron era to our time; an era ruled by military dictatorships that led to the victimization of 20,000 to 30,000 Argentinians during the years 1976-83. In 1982, after an ill-conceived war with England over possession of the Malvinas/ Falkland Islands, the nation suffered a humiliating defeat and forced the military leadership to relinquish their political power.

Awards

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In their darkest hour, the people of Argentina seized the opportunity to elect a new democracy. Led by Raul Alfonsin, the newly-elected government ushered in a new era of hope by restoring freedom and democracy to the nation. For the first time in history, former military dictators were brought to trial and forced to account for their crimes against humanity. Argentina - The Broken Silence is about the dramatic struggle of the new democratic government and its attempt to break the chain of military dictatorships which had controlled Argentina during the last fifty years.

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Photography Editing Sound Producer Production Company Export Agents

Chris Cox Stuart De Jong Albert Bailey, Keith Desmond Henry Martin

Kuumba Productions The Arts Council of Great Britain, 105 Picadilly, London W1V OAU, England

Aubrey Williams was born in Guyana, on the Caribbean coast of South America in 1926. His early interest in painting was influenced by E. R. Burrows and the Working People's Art Group, still a unique development in the English-speaking Caribbean. But his family insisted he needed a 'proper' job and he became an agricultural officer. It was in this capacity that he was sent to Hosororo in the far north-west of the country to take up a post at an experimental agricultural station. He came into contact with pre-Colum­ bian art in the form of rock paintings or 'timehri', an Arawak word that translates literally as 'the mark of the hand'. His experiences were decisive in forming his identity as a painter and have remained a creative source for his paintings. In 1952, Aubrey came to England to study agricultural engineering. He soon abandoned his studies to devote his time fully to painting. Today, his work is exhibited inter­ nationally. Living in England sincethattime, he admitsto a sense of being in 'an aesthetic desert', overlooked by most critics. Despite his involvement with European avantgarde art he is still a distinctly Caribbean artist, drawing on the myths of pre-Columbian culture and the landscape of Guyana for subject matter and inspiration.


Cork Opera House, T.

•somber, 8.30 pm

BABETTE'S FEAST Babette's Gaestebud Gabriel Axel Denmark 1986/87 Colour 105 minutes

Subtitled

Triske! An.

’ ' • -30 pm

breaking silence

Teresa Tollini Director/Producer USA 1985 Colour 58 minutes

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Leading Players

Stephane Audran, Jean-Philippe Lafont, Gudmar Wivesson, Jarl Kulle, Bibi Anderson

Script

Gabriel Axel from the novel by Karen Blixen Henning Kristiansen Finn Henriksen Just Betzer

Photography Editing

Executive Producer Music Per Norgard Production Company Just Betzer, Panorama Film International in co-operation with Nordisk Film A/S and the Danish Film Institute Export Agents The Danish Film Institute, P.O. Box 2158, DK-1016 Copenhagen K, Denmark

Babette, an exile from Paris in the days of the Commune, finds herself an exile in Denmark, in a little fishing village on the chilly coast of Jutland. Here, for years, she dutifully does the chores for two elderly sisters, Danish daughters of the manse, in an atmosphere of the utmost frugality, gentility and piety. But in Paris, Babette had been the famous cook at a famous restaurant, and destiny intervenes to allow her one final chance to exercise her art — to create magic, in a sense, for the last community capable of appreciating the source of their own pleasure. And Babette, in her turn, does not know that one ofthe quiet old ladies ('little ladies' in her patronising phrase) could have been a great singer, and the other have led a glittering social life. It's a diamond-bright story, faceted with irony, humour and regret, but one realises, on re-reading it, that Axel nas managed the impossible and improved on Dmesen. He holds fast to the story's values, but fills out some wispy outlines of character, elaborates agreeably on the prepara­ tion of the dinner, creates a setting around it. And it s

Awards

Special Jury Award, Hemisfilm International Festival, Bronze Hugo, Chicago International Film Festival, Blue Ribbon, American Film Festival Script Michelle Morris Photography Frances Reid Editing Jennifer Morris Music Paul De Benedictus Production Company Futura Educational Films Inc., 1628 Union Street, San Francisco, Ca 94123, USA

A powerful film which pulls the sexual abuse problem out of the shadows, Breaking Silence treats the subject of incest and the process of healing through the personal stories of adults molested as children, mothers of victims, and perpetrators. Interwoven with personal stories are family photos, home movies, newspaper headlines, and drawings and paintings by children who have been molested. As we witness the struggle and transformation these victims of incest go through to become survivors, Breaking Silence gives strength and hope to those who are just beginning their own process of healing. Breaking Silence breaks many myths about incest and the sexual abuse of children, educating viewers to some of the underlying causes of this crime and directly speaking to families in which this is or has been occuring. "This is a film that speaks of the heavy burden incest places on the child to struggle to be free. It celebrates the courage of that struggle so vividly. Viewing it strengthens our alliance with children everywhere". Alice Walker, Author

his cailles en sarcophage. Penelope Houston, Sight and Sound

21


Triskoi Arts Centre, Monday, 28 September, 11 am

BREAKTHROUGH - A Portrait of Aristides Demetrios Eames Demetrios USA 1986 Colour 45 minutes

Cork Opera House, Sunday, 27 September 4 nn,

BROKEN NOSES Bruce Weber USA 1987 Colour, Black & White

Leading Players

Producers Eames Demetrios, Donald Bull Photography & Eames Demetrios Editing Production Company Eames Demetrios, 1448 Seventh Street, 5 Santa Monica, Ca 90401, USA

A beautiful statement, both artistically and personally, Breakthrough is a documentary about San Francisco sculptor Aristides Demetrios, made by his twenty-fouryear-old son, Eames. Such a film runs the risk of being too reverent, too intimate, or just plain dull as it attempts to translate the mysterious process of artistic creation to the exceedingly naked screen. Fortunately, however, Breakthrough manages to avoid these pitfalls, opting instead for a truly fascinating look at a man in love with his strange work and the relationship of that work to the world. I use the word 'strange' because that's what it might seem to many of us: Demetrios creates abstract steel monuments of monolithic proportions and lives much of his life encased in a welding mask and suit, surrounded by sheets of metal in a warehouse. But the beauty of the film lies in its deft exploration of the intriguing contrast between the cold of the steel and the warmth of the dream, the precise calculations of the mathe-matician and the unbridled sensuousness of the resulting geometric forms. There is something unspeakably sweet about watching Demetrios explode with joy at the dis-covery of the perfect metal scrap, and knowing that the world, to him, will always be brand-new as long as there are shapes and textures to behold and

mould. L. A. Weekly

Andy Minsker and the kids from Mt. Scott Boxing Club Photography Jeff Preiss Editing Phyllis Famiglietti Executive Producer Steven Cohen Associate Producer Nan Bush Music Julie London, Chet Baker, Robert Mitchum, Danny Small, Gerry Mulligan, Joni Jones, Ken Nordine Production Company Steven Cohen and Kira Films Export Agents Nan Bush & Bruce Weber, 135 Watts Street, New York 10013, USA

In the Summer of 1983 at the Colorado Sports Festival, I was photographing, tor Interview Magazine, all the young athletes who had a chance to go to the Olympics. We had photographed a boxer from the Navy named Nathan Houser. He wanted to show off his body so he chose to wear a very small old-fashioned bathing-suit. This got back to the boxing federation when Nathan told them that we forced him to wear it. We were then banned from photographing the rest of the Olympic boxing team even though we went before the boxing federation at the festival. One day, a lightweight boxer, Andy Minsker, came to be photographed. He looked like a young Chet Bakerwhen he was playing his trumpet in Rome. We asked him why he came. He said, 'They told me I was forbidden to come meet you. They said that you'd give me a weird haircut and make me wear skimpy see-through clothes, and who knows what else you'd do to me, and I thought, that's all I needed to hear, I'm on my way'. This is an experimental film in colour and black and white, about being macho. It is a story about a professional lightweight boxer, Andy Minsker, and his small boxing club in Portland, Oregon. The club consists of twelve boxers between the ages of ten and sixteen. Most ot tne kids are from broken homes and many of their parents are in prison. The film traces Andy's boxing career with tne U.S. Olympic Boxing Association, his fights in Las Vegas and his training of the young men whom he s aimo adopted as his own sons. This is my first film. Bruce Weber j


Triskel Arts C.?

>ay, 3 October, 4 pm

. jber, 11am

BUDAWANNY Bob Quinn Ireland 1987 Colour, Black & White 80 minutes

Leading Players

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Donal McCann, Maggie Fegan, Tomas 6 Flatharta, Freda Gillen, Sean 6 Coisdealbha, Peadar Lamb, Oliver O'Malley Script Bob Quinn Photography Seamus Deasy Editing Martin Duffy Executive Producer Tiernan McBride Music Roger Doyle Production Company Cinegael, Carrore, Co. Galway, Ireland

Clare Island, a remote outpost of the West of Ireland governed by tradition - a place where life is set against a backdrop of Irish culture, crafts and music, ruled by traditional values. And, traditionally enough, the parish priest provides a central point towards which all activities are directed. Ubiquitous and dedicated, he covers every inch of the island on an antiquated motor-cycle, ministering to the spititual and, more often, the human needs of a scattered but faithful flock. Devoted to them, they return his humour and kindnesses with affection, trust and total acceptance of him and all he represents. This comfortable relationship is considerably altered by the arrival on the island of a beautiful young girl who comes to visit him and remains to become his housekeeper and, ultimately, his lover. The community's suspicions, already aroused,,are con­ firmed by a Sunday sermon during which the priest announces that he is to be a Father in more than one sense, and that he intends to remain as parish pries look after the child and its mother. With the support .of some of the islanders he takes on the antagonism of the remainder, and the vast and powerful bureaucr y Catholic Church.

CHELA - Love, Dreams and Struggle in Chile Lars Palmgren Sweden 1986 Colour 48 minutes

Producer Photography Editing Production Company

Lars Bildt Goran Gester Goran Gester Kurmi Foto & Film, Brannkyrkagatan 87, S-117,23 Stockholm, Sweden

"My name is Chela. I am sixteen years old and live in La Legua. I was four when the military seized power. On the day of the coup, some soldiers killed my dog . . . . because it barked when they came to search our house" Chela is part of a generation formed during the Pinochet dictatorship. This film is about that generation, about its political awakening and determination, but about its doubts and confusion as well. Chronologically, the film centres on the period before, du ring and after the 'Day of Protest', 4 September, 1985, as it happened in La Legua and was experienced by Chela. La Legua is one of the poblaciones (poor neighbourhoods) in the city of Santiago where opposition to the Pinochet regime has been particularly intense. During the protest, police and military opened fire with live ammunition and tear-gas on demonstrating youths. Depicted here, however, are not only the very tangible political developments but also Chela's craving for a normal teenage life, her struggle to find herself, herdreams.

23


Centre, Sunday, 27 September*, pm

Triskel Arts Centre, Monday, 28 September, 4 pm

CLASH OF THE ASH Fergus Tighe

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Ireland 1987 Colour 50 minutes

COAST TO COAST Sandy Johnson Britain 1986 Colour 96 minutes

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'{Ml Starting Out Award, 1987 Celtic Film and Television Festival, Lorient Festival William Heffernan, Leading Players Vincent Murphy, Gina Moxley, Michael McAuliffe, Kay Rae Malone Fergus Tighe Script Declan Quinn Photography Jim Duggan Editing Jane Gogan Executive Producer Production Company Circus Films in association with Radio Telefis Eireann Export Agents Circus Films, c/o Filmbase, 4-7 Temple Bar, Dublin 2

Awards

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Phil Kelly is a natural on the hurling field, but in his final year at school with exams looming he can no longer post­ pone decisions on his future. He looks around his small home-town and is not inspired by the fate of his friend Martin who squanders his dole money on drink. His father hopes to get him a job in a back-street garage, his mother wants him to work in a bank while the team-trainer promises him a job if he makes the grade in hurling. There are too many people telling Phil what to do. Then Martin's ex­ girlfriend Mary arrives home from London with tales of glamorous places Phil had only read about in magazines. His horizons are broadened and the small town is not big enough anymore.

Leading Players

Lenny Henry, John Shea, Pete Postlethwaite, George Baker, Peter Vaughan, Cherie Lunghi

Script Photography Editing

Stan Hey

Executive Producer

Colin Munn Ken Pearce David N. Wilkinson Various Tamla Motown' artistes

Music Production Company BBCTelevison, Brittania-DeanClough Productions Brittania Television, The Studio, Export Agents Town House, Scaynes Hill, West Sussex RH17 7NR

Coast To Coast teams John Shea and Lenny Henry in one of the most inspired screen partnerships to appear in a long time. Shea plays a footloose American, revisiting Liverpool in an attempt to recapture the spirit of the 60's.

He packs his prize collection of 60's soul music into Lenny Henry's converted ice-cream van, and together they form the R & B Roadshow, the hottest mobile disco in town. Hotter still are the counterfeiting plates that are hidden in the van, and with the mob and the police on their trail, they put their faith in rock 'n' roll and head for the open road. With Shea and Henry's splendid double act supported by marvellous performances from Peter Vaughan and George Baker as a couple of really nasty villains - and a soundtrack packed with enough 60's hits to stock a Chantel Meteor 200 - Sandy Johnston's relentlessly inventive, genre­ bending road movie-comedy-thriller marks him out as one of Britain's most gifted and original comedy directors. (But then, he is Glaswegian). Clive Hodgson

24 I

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stivalClub

CUBA:

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Jim Burroughs

BarExt.Until l-30am every night from Sept. 24th-Oct 4th. (except Saturday)

USA 1986 Colour 59 minutes

Come and enjoy the relaxed pub atmosphere.

We are ideally situated between the Triskel Art Centre and the Opera House.

We offer a wide selection of Salads & Hot Meals during lunch daily.

iffi®

Awards

Honourable Mention, San Francisco Film Festival Script Suzanne Bauman, Peter Winn Photography Jeffrey Wayman, Jean-Pierre Janssen, Tom Hurwitz Editing Suzanne Bauman, Kate Taverna Executive Producer Carol Polakoff Music Jim Burroughs, Brian Keane Production Company Seven League Productions Inc., 2324 N. Beachwood Drive, Los Angeles, Ca 90068

In a time of increasingly polarized positions in Central America and the Caribbean, this film offers an opportunity to understand Cuba today by interrogating both pro- and anti-Castro positions in a wide range of interviews which takes in an almost unprecedented interview with the legendary Fidel himself. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 is viewed in an historical perspective which stretches from the revolt of slaves and patriots in 1868 through the times of the dictators to the present day. The history of Cuba, with particular emphasis on CubanAmerican relations, on North-South and East-West align­ ments, intercut with many interviews with Cuban exiles and supporters of the Revolution, footage shot on the streets, in a women's prison, in a library, in a psychiatric hospital, forms a frame for the long interview with Fidel which occupies the centre of the film. The film-makers received unprecedented permission to film in La Plate, Castro's legendary and never-before­ filmed redoubt in the Sierra Maestra. “Our film is neither a rationale for Communist Cuba nor a political tool for Cuban exiles. We have tried to present the legitimate points of view on both sides. It is our hope that audiences of all political persuasions might watch the film without rancour, and appreciate their common humanity"

PENNY FARTHING INN PAUL ST., CORK

25


, a House, Sunday^

:r, 6 pm

Triskel Arts Centre, SaturdayJ^September,

ADVENTL •I■I ADVENTl ■ '-TTE AND

FACES OF THE ENEEVi

/2llwres de Reinette et Mirabelle

Bill Jersey, Jeffrey Friedman

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USA 1987 Colour 58 minutes

i OF -.ABELLE

Fric Rohmer France Colour

1986 95 minutes

Subtitled

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Leading Players Script Photography Editing Executive Producer Music Production Company

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Sam Keen Bill Jersey Jeffrey Friedman Bill Jersey Mark Adler Quest Productions Inc., 2600 Tenth Street, Berkeley, Ca 94710, USA

Faces Of The Enemy looks at the universal concepts of enmity which spark and fuel conflicts around the world. The film follows author and commentator Sam Keen in an intellectual and emotional investigation of the ways in which societies and governments create enemy images. By intercutting posters, political cartoons and propaganda films with interviews with a Vietnam veteran, psychologists, cartoonists, a mythologist, experts on warfare and racism, and people who feel threatened by enemies, Faces Of The Enemy creates a picture of the ways in which people become obsessed with concepts of enemies, thereby allowing con­ flicts to escalate to the point that they cannot be resolved without violence.

Script Photography

Editing Executive Producer Music Production Company Export Agents

Joelle Miquel, Jessica Forde with Philippe Laudenbach, Marie Riviere, Fabrice Luchini Eric Rohmer Sophie Maintigneux Maria-Luisa Garcia Frangoise Etchegaray Ronan Girre, Jean-Louis Valero CER/Films du Losange Artificial Eye, 211 Camden High Street, London NW1 7BT

Rohmer is one of the cornerstones of French cinema, inso­ far as our cinema faces the international scene at its best when affirming its specific identity: an opinion which the Golden Lion of the Venice Festival, given to Rohmer for The Green Ray, confirms with emphasis. Discreet and distant, Rohmer lives on the margins of the film business. Independent in spirit, for twenty-five years he has not changed: he makes exactly the films he wants to make. Returning to the short film, Rohmer today gives us great pleasure. We have not ceased to argue that standardisation does not necessarily mean progress in cinematic expression. Rohmer is not merely content to affirm this, he proves it simply by exercising his liberty as a film-maker. He explains why and how Four Adventures became four short films. By the evidence. Frangois Ode, BREF No.13

In four linked short films, Rohmer explores the growth of the relationship between the sophisticated Mirabelle and villager turned art student Reinette.

26

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Cork Opera Hous _•

•■ 3 October, 6 pm

r™

FRIEND Peter Wolle

death

Britain 1987 Colour 78 minutes

DOUGLAS INSURANCES

GENERAL BROKERS LIMITED

Leading Players

Bill Paterson, Tilda Swinton, Patrick Bauchau, Ruby Baker Photography Witold Stok Designer Gemma Jackson Editing Robert Hargreaves Producer Rebecca O'Brien Executive Producer Colin MacCabe Music Barrinton Pheloung Production Company British Film Institute Export Agents BFI Production, 29 Rathbone Street, London W1P1AG, England

Director's Statement: Science Fiction I am fascinated by science fiction. Friendship's Death was originally published as an SF story. Science fiction dominates the writing of our time far beyond the confines of the genre - J. G. Ballard, Jorge Luis Borges, William S. Burroughs, Italo Calvino, Ursula K. LeGuin, Stansilav Lem, Doris Lessing. In cinema, the achievement is much thinner. I admire 2001, Blade Runner, Mad Max 2 but there is still space for a more realistic and philosophical form of science fiction film. In Friendship's Death I wanted to graft the SF concepts of the robot and the extraterres­ trial on to a precise and authentic moment of history: Amman, September 1970. This would give me a framework in which to explore questions about the place of machines in human culture, the relation of reason and violence, the nature of evolution and the strangeness of the human body. Palestine Personally I support the right of Palestinians to selfdetermination. I sympathise with the purpose of the PLO to win a secure home for their people and end the tragic history of massacre and mourning they have suffered. But I did not want Friendship's Death to endorse any particular policy or line of action. I was more concerned with the tragedy that befell the Palestinians. As with all tragedies, it confronted those' oirectly involved with fundamental questions about life and death; basic ethical and political choices. I hope that, by dramatismg the tragedy through the reaction of outsiders. Friendship s Death can bring some of these challenges home to the rest of us.

Morris House, Douglas West, Cork, Ireland. Telephone (021) 362697/362124

lit Contact:

Peter Kirwan

Journalism Friendship's Death is also a^out journalism. In a way it can be seen as a sequel to Antonioni s. . which I wrote with Mark Peploe. I waQted/°^XP fr^m the

Phone: (021) 362697 or 362124

to give the sense of being trapped in a hotelroomwhUeevents

Insuring the continued success of the CORK FILM FESTIVAL

The Saga OfAnatahan.

27


Cork Opera House, Wednesday, 30 September b- jO pm

GARDENS OF STONE Francis Coppola USA 1987 Colour 111 minutes

Cork Opera House, Saturday, 26 September, 8J0 pm

A GATHERING OF OLD MEN Volker Schloendorff USA 1986 Colour 91 minutes

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Louis Gossett, Jnr., Richard Wodmark, Holly Hunter, Joe Seneca, Will Patton, Woody Strode Charles Fuller, after the novel by Ernest J. Gaines Edward Lachman Nancy Backer, Craig McKay

James Caan, Anjelica Huston, James Earl Jones, D. B. Sweeney, Dean Stockwell Ronald Bass Script Jordan Cronenweth, ASC Photography Barry Malkin Editing Executive Producers Stan Weston, Jay Emmett, Fred Roos Carmine Coppola Music Production Company Tri-Star Pictures, a Michael I. Levy Prodution Columbia-Cannon-Warner Export Agents Distributors Ltd., 135 Wardour Street, London W1V4AP

Leading Players

Set in 1968, Gardens Of Stone is a poetic drama which takes place at Fort Myer, Virginia, where top young recruits serve in The Old Guard, the regiment that has been the official US Army ceremonial unit since 1784. James Caan stars as Sergeant Clell Hazard, a decorated combat veteran who, due to bureaucratic red tape and war­ time politics, is assigned to duties at Arlington National Cemetery. Pro-Army but anti-Vietnam, he is desperate for a transfer to Fort Benning where his talents would be best used preparing troops for the unorthodox enemy they're about to face, an enemy he knows all too well. Anjelica Huston plays Washington Post reporter and peace activist Samantha Davis, who becomes Clell's lover. James Earl Jones is the wise veteran Sergeant-Major Goody Nelson, Clell's best friend. D. B. Sweeney is the determined young soldier Jackie Willow and Mary Stuart Masterson is his spirited girl-friend Rachel. A common theme running throughout Coppola's films is that of an intense personal relationship, often in the family setting. Gardens Of Stone is no exception. The film depicts the Army as a great family, rich in tradition. 'I very definitely liked the notion of finding family in what you might otherwise think is a regimented, male-dominated organization', explains Coppola. 'The Honor Guard seemed an unlikely place to find this dynamic and I felt it was a wonderful metaphor for what we were trying to say^

A Gathering Of Old Men drifts into existence across the cane-fields of Louisiana, one hot autumn day in the 70's. Eighteen old blackmen take a stand, for the first and maybe final time in their lives. It is the response of a community under perpetual siege, it is the culmination of four hundred years of political struggle.

Leading Players

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Script

Photography Editing Michael Deeley Executive Producer Ron Carter Music Production Company Consolidated/Jennie & Co./Zenith Productions Zenith Productions, Export Agents 8 Great Titchfield Street, London W1P7AA

A whiteman has been killed in the yard of a blackman's cabin, but as Mathu says, "There will be no lynching tonight", for as the Sheriff arrives, eighteen old men and one young white girl step forward. Their stand is for dignity, black or white, and it is for a right to roots in this land of Louisiana, which they need for emotional and ancestral attachment as well as a source of survival. It is a surprising story about the changing South and, despite its serious subject, often very funny.


Cork Opera House, Sunda

Cork Opera House Saturday, 26 S eptem b

A GIRL OF GO Liangjia Funii Huang Jianzhong China 1985 Colour 110 minutes

xMlLY

A GREAT WALL Peter Wang

USA/China 1985 Colour 102 minutes Part-subtitled

Subtitled

Leading Players

Cong Shan, Zhang Weixin, Wang Jiayi, Liang Yan, Zhang Jian, Ji Peijie, Ma Lin Script Li Kuanding Photography Yun Wenyao Editing Huang Pu Keren Executive Producer Liu Xuesheng Music Shi Wanchun Production Company Peking Film Studio Export Agents China Film Society, 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N3XX

Even Yellow Earth, with its striking use of myth and land­ scape, was no preparation for this Chinese eyebrow-raiser. Prefaced by a sequence tracking the feudal status of women, it soon turns into something far less polemic-a mystical tale of rural passions centred on an eighteen-year-old girl who undergoes an arranged marriage to a six-year-old boy. A Girl Of Good Family is all the more powerful for its use of symbolic rather than explicit images, the wild landscape of South-west China (all thundering waterfalls and craggy mountains) mirroring the social and sexual rituals being played out in the small community below. Caught between a 'husband' who looks on her as an elder sister and gossiping neighbours who treat her as an outsider, the young Xingxian (beautifully played by actress Cong Shan) has only her mother-in-law to turn to for comfort. Meanwhile, in tne world outside, China is in the throes of the 1949 communist

revolution. Stunningly shot in images of graceful, flowing beauty, t is is balladic cinema of the highest order. Derek Elley, LFF Programme

Leading Players

Wang Xiao, Li Qinqin, Xiu Jian, Sharon Iwai, Sheng Guanglan, Kelvin Han Yee, Hu Xiaoguang, Peter Wang Script Peter Wang, Shirley Sun Photography Peter Stein, Robert Primes Editing Grahame Weinbren Executive Producer Wu Yangchian, Zhu Youjun, E. N. Wen Music David Liang, Ge Ganru, Paul Mesches Production Company W & S Productions (New York)/ Nanhai Film Company (Beijing) Export Agents Mainline Pictures, 37 Museum Street, London WC1A 1LP

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Billed as the first American dramatic feature to be made in China, A Great Wall was produced by two Chinese-born expatriates and co-produced with China's only independent film company, Nanhai. The film is in large part a comedy of manners, the humour riding on the gently misfiring attempts on both sides to bridge the cultural gap. The ways of the West are tentatively tried on - Paul's fashions, Coca-Cola, a sprinkling of consumer durables - but along the way the exchange becomes curiously scrambled. Liu confidently names Luciano Pavarotti as America's most popular singer; the young people try to learn each other's language without ever managing to speak it, and attempts to borrow the other's style meet with ridicule or misunderstanding. The walls around Beijing may have been torn down but other walls, as the films's title suggests, are not so easily removed. China's unmentioned history and the visitors' own experience as emigres (Chinese to the Americans, American to the Chinese) sit quite tangibly between them. In his careful documenting of the daily lives of the Chinese hosts, the everyday streets, the classic courtyard of the Chaos' house (actually once the home of the revered actor Mei Lei Fang), Peter Wang suggests that history and the realities of one's lived existence are what ultimately count. The slightly odd, /tocAy-style ping pong tournament apart (in which Chinese self-control wins out against American volatility and physical beefiness), A Great Wall goes for questions rather than answers, prising them from the observed exchanges with some skill. It may not be the definitive film about contemporary China, but it is an acute and very welcome 'foot in the door'.

Verina Glaessner

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Triskel Arts Centre, Friday, 2 October, 11 am

HANDSWORTH SONGS John Akomfrah

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Cork Opera House, Thursday, 1 October, 4 pm

HOME OF THE BRAVE Laurie Anderson USA 1985 Colour 92 minutes

Britain 1986 Colour 61 minutes

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'Social Issues Prize', Anthropos LA; Pascoe MacFarlane Award; Grand Prize Kaleidoscope, International Film Festival, Stockholm; Paul Robeson Prize for Cinema, Ouagadougou. Black Audio Film Collective Script Sebastian Shah Photography Anna Liebschner, Hugh Williams Editing Lina Gopaul Executive Producer Trevor Matthison Music Production Company Black Audio Film Collective, 89 Ridley Road, London E8 2NH, England

Awards

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'There are no stories in the riots, only the ghosts of other stories'. This line from the extraordinarily poetic script of Handsworth Songs is at the heart not only of the film's meaning, but of its structure; or rather - and this is true of all successful films-the two are inseparable. The film makes no simple distinction between the 'superficial' and the 'real'; its images are very much felt as such - from archive footage of colonial labour to the TV picture of Thatcher's 'alien customs' speech - and on one level it is about the images it's made of, at once impenetrable and resonant. The familiar shots of burning cars, the giant headlines, newsphotos of 'looters' on the run - jostling those pictures of urban debris are the ghosts of other images, Fifties newsreel of Caribbean immigrants waving from the decks of ships, families with suitcases and the promise of work, images of hope and expectation whose very existence as old news gives them an added sense of lost innocence'.

Judith Williamson, New Statesman

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Laurie Anderson, Joy Askew, Adrian Belew, Richard Landry, Dolette McDonald, Janice Pendarvis, David Van Tieghem with William S. Burroughs Laurie Anderson Script John Lindley Photography Lisa Day Editing Elliott Abbott Executive Producer Laurie Anderson Music Production Company Talk Normal Productions Inc. Export Agents ICA Projects, 12 Carlton House Terrace, London SWIH 5AH, England

Leading Players

Laurie Anderson is a singer, storyteller, joker and philo­ sopher of the avant-garde. A performer who has long enjoyed cult status, Home Of The Brave shows her in full flight as cinematographer and electronics genius as well as in her more familiar roles. On one level, the film is the record of a concert in the Park Theatre, Union City, New Jersey, given in July 1985. But Anderson conceived the entire spectacle as an encounter between performance, sound and film. She describes the film as taking place in a kind of no-man's-land where sound, image and action fuse in a new sort of hybrid. 'Looking at the film now', she says, 'what appeals to me most are the details: shoes, fragments of animation pro­ jected, the fingers of a saxophonist flying over the keys'.

Derek Malcolm, writing in The Guardian, says:' ... .her elliptical comments on contemporary life, illustrated by intelligent lyrics, 'state-of-the-art' electronics and songs with a real bounce to them make most rock stars look des­ perately clumsy, and one can well understand David Byrne's admiration for her'. And watch out for William Burroughs as he tangoes/ tangles with Anderson.


Cork Opera House, Sa?

-ctober4pm

USA 1987 Colour 85 minutes

o GUYS CORK Packaging Photography Don Lenzer Editing Tom Haneke Executive Producer Walter Scheuer Production Company The Four Oaks Foundation, Inc., 635 Madison Avenue, New York City, NY 10022

A Hungry Feeling - The Life and Death of Brendan Beehan is an 85-minute 16 mm colour documentary biography of the Irish writer who died at the age of forty-one in 1963. The film traces Behan's formidable writing career and the distractions of his flamboyant public life as a raconteur and world public figure. His life is portrayed through remembrances of his brothers, his IRA colleagues, his publishing friend, and especially through his wife, Beatrice. The film makes ample use of rare documentary footage of Behan's public and private life, mixing film, television, and press conference interviews with hundreds of stills, and sound interviews taken from over thirty-three hours of privately owned tapes. Behan's works are liberally excerpted: scenes from The Borstal Boy, his prison memoir, are movingly read against footage from the English boys' prison. Liam Clancy, who narrates A Hungry Feeling,also introduces segments from The Quare Fellow, a 1960s movie of the Behan play, and The Hostage, especially staged for this production and filmed in front of a live audience in New York City, at The Irish Arts Center. JIhe film is filled with Irish music sung by Clancy and other participants, as well as scenes shot in Dublin, Carraroe, and New York City.

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Guy & Co. (Distribution) Ltd. This division supplies a wide range of packing materials, paper, high-and-lowdensity plastic - in sheets, bags and reels.

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Print Guy & Co. Ltd. This division produces a wide range of lithographic print - labels, brochures, catalogues, encoded documents.

Self-adhesive Labels Guysal Ltd. This division is equipped with the most up-to-date machinery to produce a full range of Self-adhesive labels in full colour.

Phone or write: P.O. Box 74, Cornmarket Street, Cork Telephone (021) 273061 Telex 75019 Fax 271583

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TriskelArtsCentre/Hiuj^ayJ^wt?!!?^^

INVOCATION: MAYA DEREN

a Deren programme

Jo Ann Kaplan Britain 1987 Colour 53 minutes

meshes of the afternoon 1943 3 minutes The film is concerned with the interior experiences of an individual. It reproduces the way in which the sub-conscious will develop, interpret and elaborate an apparently simple and casual incident into a critical emotional experience.

AT LAND 1944 15 minutes "At Land is concerned with twentieth-century-minded time and space. It presents a relativistic universe in which the problem of the individual, as the sole continuous element, is to relate herself to a fluid, apparently incoherent, universe. In a sense a mythological voyage of the twentieth century"

J Photography Narration Editing Producer Sound Production Company Export Agents

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Adam Rodgers Helen Mirren Susan Manning Fiz Oliver Mandy Rose Arbour International Arts Council of Great Britain, 105 Picadilly, London W1V OAU

A STUDY OF CHOREOGRAPHY FOR THE CAMERA 1945 3 minutes "When I began making films, my first concern was to emancipate the camera from theatrical traditions in general, and especially in terms of spatial treatment. The central character of these films moved in a world of imagination in which, as in our day or night dreams, a person is first one place and then another without travelling between. It was choreography in space"

RITUAL IN TRANSFIXED TIME Maya Deren was before her time as a film-maker and a woman. Producing short poetic films, she was able to work at her full intellectual and artistic capacity at a time when few women could do so. Her personality was flamboyant and she led her life with an intensity and vision which is deeply inscribed in her films. A Russian-born American, she completed six films between 1943 and 1955. With the first of these, Meshes Of The After­ noon, she established an approach to film unparalleled since the collaboration of Dali and Bunuel or the cinema of Jean Cocteau. Through her films, writing and lecturing she had a seminal influence on the emerging American film avant-garde. Equally important were her organising and campaigning skills, including the setting up of the Creative Film Foundation in 1954, which gave the movement a sense of independence and self-support. In this film, the intensity of Maya Deren's spirit is evoked by those who knew and worked with her: film-makers Sasha (Alexander) Hammid, Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas; photographer Hella Hammid; film distributors Amos and Marcia Vogel, and Joseph Campbell, writer and teacher in the field of comparative mythology.

*

> I

Invocation will be accompanied by a screening of Maya Deren's films.

1946 16 minutes Ritual develops the idea of creating dance out of non-dancing elements. Save for a brief sequence, the actual movements are not themselves dance movements, but they are related to each other, according to a choreographic concept.

MEDITATION ON VIOLENCE 1948 15 minutes As the movements of Chinese boxing are a physical state­ ment of certain metaphysical concepts, so Meditations is, in filmic terms, itself a statement of these same concepts, employing the physical movements as only one of the visual means.

THE VERY EYE OF NIGHT 1959 15 minutes "It is ballet of night, entirely in the negative, in which the dancers are constellations which orbit and revolve in the night sky" AH quotations by Maya Deren.

32

I

i | I |


Cork Opera House, Tuc^29 September, 6 pm

THE KITCHEN TOTO Harry Hook

Britain 1987 Colour 95 minutes

Printers Printers and Stationers 41, Paul Street, Cork

i

Leading Players

Edwin Mahinda, Bob Peck, Phyllis Logan, Kirsten Hughes Script Harry Hook Photography Roger Deakins Editing Tom Priestley Executive Producer Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus Production Company The Cannon Group Inc. in association with British Screen and Film Four International, a Skreba Film Cannon Film Distributors (UK) Ltd., Export Agents 30 - 31 Golden Square, London W1A 4QX

Africa has become a vogue location for film-makers in recent years, but it is not the Africa of National Geographic Magazine or the 'zoo pics' that feature in The Kitchen Toto. These are outsiders' views of the continent, says Harry Hook, from which the most important element is missing the Africans themselves. This is a film about Africans, played by Africans, and the unit was careful throughout the filming to respect local traditions and superstitions in a a country where film­ making is still a comparative rarity. The story of The Kitchen Toto - 'toto' is the Swahili word for child — is set in Kenya at the beginning of the Fight for Independence. It tells of Mwangi, a twelve-year-old Kikuyu boy who witnesses the murder of his father, a Christian preacher who refuses to preach the ethics of the Mau-Mau to his congregation. Left with five children to feed, Mwangi's mother finds him a job in the home of John Graham, the local white police

chief who is searching for the murderers. At an age when most children would still be at school, Mwangi becomes a kitchen toto - a servant's servant forced to exist by his wits, and who ultimately becomes the unwilling pawn in a violent political conflict: trappe in the crossfire between his own people and the British.

Tel: (021) 277707

COUNTRY CLUB HOTEL Montenotte, Cork City Grade 'A' Bedrooms

Excellent Restaurant Luxury Loung Bars

!

For further details Telephone (021) 502922

3 33

■■


Cork Opera House, FridjyI2pctgberL8j0pnL

LETTERS FROM A DEAD MAN Pisma Myortvogo Cheloveka Constantin Lopouchansky

)

USSR 1986 89 minutes

Grahame J. McLean New Zealand

1986 Colour 92 minutes

Subtitled

Rolan Bykov, Vatslav Dvorzhetsky, Josiv Ryklin, Victor Mikhailov Vyacheslav Rybakov, Script Boris Strugatsky, Constantin Lopouchansky Photography Nikolai Popotsev Editing T. Poulinoi Music Alexander Zhurbin Production Company Studio Lenfilm (Leningrad) Export Agents Artificial Eye, 211 Camden High Street, London NW1 7BT, England Leading Players

Several people in a dilapidated basement read while acti­ vating a dynamo which will give light. One of them, a Nobel Prize winner for Science, is writing to his son, Eric, from whom he was separated at the time of the atomic explosion which blocked off the people in the museum where they now are. He is also taking care of his sick wife. He has gone into the town to look in vain for his son and while there dis­ covers the horrors of war. Outside, buildings are devastated, bodies are strewn everywhere. In the basement, six men ask themselves questions on the meaning of life and the eventual future of humanity. The explosion was an accident and the person responsible hanged himself soon afterwards. There is no indication whatsoever of the country in which the action takes place. Due to lack of space, it is necessary to sort out who will have access to the main shelter. When the survivors at last leave the museum for this shelter which is safer, the old scientist decides to remain with the children who have been seriously affected by the disaster. On Christmas evening they set up a Christmas tree. The old man dies. The children abandoned by all leave the shelter to cross vast icy plains, looking for what we do not know. 'The most compelling Soviet film for many years. Anyone looking for signs of new life in Russian cinema should beqin here'. Andrew Wilson, The Observer

34

the lie of the land

Roberta Wallach, Marshall Napier, Dean Moriarty Grahame J. McLean Script Warrick Attewell Photography Jamie Selkirk Editing Grahame J. McLean Executive Producer Dale Gold Music Production Company Filmcraft Productions Export Agents Safir Films Ltd., Townsend House,

Leading Players

22 - 25 Dean Street, London W1V 5AL, England

The feature drama The Lie Of The Land is set in New Zea­ land in 1923, five years after The Great War. It is a time when the European pioneers, having wrested the land from both the forces of nature and from its indigenous Maori people, are now settling in to dominate the country. Major Martin (Huddy) Hudson returns from the war in Europe to find work with a young widow, Alwyn, and her son, Henry, on a small valley farm. Before the war, Huddy had been a lawyer, and during it he had defended a young Maori corporal in a court-martial. Both the war itself and his experience of the young corporal's attitude to his homeland have disenchanted Huddy, and brought him to the valley. He finds the land is threatened, not only by the avarice of a | neighbouring land baron, Clifford, but also by the ‘makutu' - a curse - placed on it by a Maori chief Koro Mita who resents the intrusion of European settlers on tribal land. The makutu has already taken several lives. Now, Huddy realises that whether or not he believes in the makutu, he must recognize the effect it is having on Alwyn, on young Henry, and on Henry's uncle George who behaves like a man possessed by doom. As a romance develops between Huddy and Alwyn, another lite must fall before peace can settle on this strange and beautiful land.

I


Cork Opera H°Use, Tues^^zasgptggbe^pm

THE LITTLE ATTORNEY Der Kleine Staatsanwalt Hark Bohm

Germany 1986 Colour 96 minutes

Leading Players

I

living on the edge

Michael Grigsby Britain 1987 Colour 90 minutes

'•

Hark Bohm, Martin Luttge, Corinna Harfouch, Michael Gwisdek, Alexander Radszun Script Hark Bohm Photography Klaus Brix Executive Producer Jurgen Bottcher Music Jean Toots Thielemans, Herb Geller Production Company Hamburger Kino-Kompanie, Hark Bohm Filmproduktion KG, Hamburg Weltvertrieb im Filmverlag der Export Agents Autoren, Rambergstrasse 5, 8000 Munchen 40, W. Germany

Frank Rolfe, Joanne Casey, Chris Sumner, Theresa Skyrme Script Devised by John Furse, Michael Grigsby Producer John Furse Executive Producer Roger James Music Chris Sumner with additional material by Herman's Hermits, Mike Oldfield, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, etc. Production Company Central Independent Television pic. Central House, Broad Street, Birmingham B1 2JP, England

First Attorney Konig (47) runs in front of the car belonging to Kaiser (45), the newly appointed manager of a construc­ tion company. Kaiser ends up with a sizeable bump on the head. When they meet a second time. Attorney Konig puts Kaiser behind bars, causing a pain of a completely different nature for Kaiser. It was the calculated charm of the young woman, newly appointed as commissioner, that led the timid attorney to such an act of severity. He soon, however, finds a justifica­ tion for the tricks of this ambitious young official (in regards to her employment) and his own wiles. Behind the unwilling puppet Kaiser, they discover the master of the bogus million-dollar deal - Siegmann. Konig lays another snare. Siegmann reacts exactly as expected and delivers the final evidence. Kaiser is exoner­ ated, and Konig awaits his promotion. But in the P^sence of the young commissioner, Konig ™oment?" Y t this thread of the case slip through his ^2g®rs‘ L nf thp thread the little attorney is lost in the ,a^in criminal justice system and Kaiser pays the Dili.

Michael Grigsby, one of England's leading documentarists, has long championed the cause of the 'underdog' by giving them an opportunity to speak out, in their own words, against their oppression or exploitation. Living On The Edge presents a sense of the history of post-war Britain through the words of the contemporary characters, whereby the memories and views on their personal past, present and future are revealed. These opinions are counterpointed by the 'official' history of the period as presented in newsreels, television commercials, old propaganda material and popular music; vivid contrast which is lent more substance by the breadth of the pro­ tagonists' vision, further contrasting city and country, industry and agriculture, and the north and south divide. This complex but lucid collage structure which is the film's great strength, brings to mind the exciting editing techni­ ques of legendary documentarist Humphrey Jennings, whose work Grigsby has long admired; proof positive that in Living On The Edge British documentary film-making has not lost its sting. 'The most moving and frightening film of the week, and probably the month, too'. Derek Malcolm, The Guardian

Leading Players

I

35 *

11F

Hi

i


32nd Cork Film Festival Dates & Times FRIDAY, 25 September

SATURDAY, 26 September

rarnrrie CORK OPERA HOUSE

triskel ARTS CENTRE

8.30 pm OFFICIAL OPENING YEELEN, Mali, Souleymane Cisse AN INSIDE JOB, Ireland, Aidan Hickey

1.30 pm SHERMAN'S MARCH, USA, Ross McElwee SNOOKLES, USA 4 pm A GREAT WALL, China / USA, Peter Wang TRIBUTE, USA 6 pm RIDERS TO THE SEA, Ireland, Ronan O'Leary CELEBRATION OF LIGHT, Ireland, Louis Marcus 8.30 pm A GATHERING OF OLD MEN, USA, Volker Schloendorff ACADEMY LEADER VARIATIONS, USA

11 am

FACES OF THE ENEMY, USA AIN'T NO KING COMIN', USA 1.30 pm BOUNDARIES OF FILM-MAKING, Programme I LIVE WATER, USA LOU HARRISON: 'Cherish, G Consider, Create', USA •onserd 4 pm BUDAWANNY, Ireland

SUNDAY, 27 September

2 pm TOMMASO BLU, Germany, 11 am Florian Furtwangler CERRIDWEN'S GIFT, USA 1.30 pm 4 pm BROKEN NOSES, USA, Bruce Weber AND SHE WAS, USA 4 pm 6 pm FOUR ADVENTURES OF REINETTE AND MIRABELLE, France Eric Rohmer CADENCE 8.30 pm THE THEME, USSR, Gleb Panfilov ________ A LONDON STORY, Britain

WITNESS TO APARTHEID, USA BOOM BABIES, Ireland T. DAN SMITH, Britain RIGATONI, Ireland/Britain COAST TO COAST, Britain

MONDAY, 28 September

2 pm WILD MOUNTAINS, China, Yan Xueshu 11 am BLAST FURNACE IN AUTUMN, Germany 4 pm THE LIE OF THE LAND, New Zealand, 1.30 pm Grahame McLean 4 pm 6 pm WALLDRILLER, Hungary, Gyorgy Szomjas THE LOSS ADJUSTER, Britain 8.30 pm SQUARE DANCE, USA, Daniel Petrie LIVING WITH AIDS, USA • SAN FRANCISCO NIGHT •

BOUNDARIES OF FILM-MAKING, USA Programme II BREAKTHROUGH: A Portrait of Aristides Demetrios, USA DORIS CHASE, Programme I CLASH OF THE ASH, Ireland FRANKIE & JOHNNY, Ireland MADELAINE, Ireland

TUESDAY, 29 September

THE MALTESE FALCON John Huston Tribute 4 pm THE LITTLE ATTORNEY, Germany, Hark Bohm ROSA, THE POLICEMAN'S BEAUTIFUL WIFE Germany THE KITCHEN TOTO, Britain,

2 pm

6 pm 8.30 pm

Harry Hook CLOSED CIRCUIT, Britain BABETTE'S FEAST, Denmark,

Gabriel Axel INTRODUCING AGENT ORANGE,

USA

________________

-

11 am PARADISE CAMP, Australia, YANKEE SAMURAI, Israel DORIS CHASE, Programme II 1.30 4 pm pm THE PASSION OF REMEMBRANCE/ Britain ICED, Britain

I


Dates & Times

CORK OPERA HOUSE

TRISKEL AiisS CENTRE WEDNESDAY, 30 September

2 pm 4 pm

6 pm

8.30 pm

FAT CITY John Huston Tribute ROBINSONADE, USSR, Nana Dzhordzhadze

DORIS CHASE, Programme 111 III BREAKING SILENCE, USA THE DIAMOND KING, USA 4 pm FRESCOES OF DIEGO RIVERA, USA ROBERT VICKREY: Lyrical Realist, USA RED GROOMS: Sunflower In A Hothouse, USA

11 am 1.30 pm

TRAVELLING NORTH, Australia, Carl Schultz MAKING WAVES, Britain GARDENS OF STONE, USA, Francis Coppola MUYBRIDGE REVISITED, Britain

THURSDAY, 1 October

2 pm

4 pm

6 pm

8.30 pm

PLUMBUM, USSR, Vadim Abdrachitov HELLO DAD, Britain HOME OF THE BRAVE, USA Laurie Anderson STRANGERS IN PARADISE, Britain PARTITION, Britain, Ken McMullen BERLIN BLUE, Germany A SUCCESSFUL MAN, Cuba, Humberto Solas

ARGENTINA: The Broken Silence, USA/Argentina CHELA, Sweden 1.30 pm INVOCATION: Maya Deren, Britain Programme of Maya Deren films 4 pm SHORELEAVE, Britain PIRATES, Britain A CLOSE SHAVE, Britain 11 am

TIME OF THE ANGELS, USA

FRIDAY, 2 October

2 pm

4 pm 6 pm

8.30 pm

.. }

SATURDAY, 3 October

2 pm

4 pm

6 pm

8.30 pm

WAITING FOR THE MOON, USA, 11 am Jill Godmilow THREE BEWILDERED PEOPLE IN 1.30 pm THE NIGHT, USA, Gregg Araki THE MAGIC TOYSHOP, Britain, David Wheatley HAIDARA, Britain 4 pm LETTERS FROM A DEAD MAN, USSR, Constantin Lopouchansky DOLPHINS, Britain

TO THE FOUR WINDS, Spain, Jose A. Zorrilla __ _______ THE CAGE, Poland A HUNGRY FEELING: The Life And Death Of Brendan Behan, USA, Xn Miller

HANDSWORTH SONGS, Britain NORTH, Britain MUM, HOW DO YOU SPELL GORBATROF?, Australia ERMINIA'S OPENING NIGHT, Australia HEADLABYRINTH, Germany TAKING THE STAGE, Britain INTERNATIONAL SWEETHEARTS OF RHYTHM, USA SHAG, USA

AUBREY WILLIAMS: The Mark Of The Hand, Britain ANIMATING ART, Britain 1.30 pm BOUNDARIES OF FILM-MAKING, USA Programmes I and 11 *P>" BUDAWANNY, Ireland 11am

FRIENDSHIP'S DEATH, Britain, Peter Wollen RAINBOW WAR, USA A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY, Britain,

Pat O'Connor CRASH, Britain

SUNDAY, 4 October

6 pm

A GIRL OF GOOD FAMILY, China,

ul 11 am

THEUPASSION OF JOAN OF ARC,

8.30 pm

France/Denmark, CarlDreyer with the RTE Concert Orchestra

1.30 pm 4 pm

CUBA IN THE SHADOW OF DOUBT, USA THE BELFAST EXPERIENCE, Ireland LIVING ON THE EDGE, Britain MAGDALENA VIRAGA, USA MAN OH MAN, USA

• GALA CLOSING • 37


Cork Opera House, Friday, 2 C

Triskel Arts Centre, Sunday, 4 October, 4 pm

THE MAGIC TOYSHOP

MAGDALENA VIRAGA

David Wheatley

Nina Menkes

2

>

Britain 1986 Colour 107 minutes

USA 1986 Colour 90 minutes

Awards

Leading Players Script Photography Editing Executive Producer Music Production Company

* j

Best Independent/Experimental Film, Los Angeles; Film Critics' Association Tinka Menkes, Claire Aguilar Nina Menkes Nina Menkes

Nina Menkes Nina Menkes Performed by Grupo Travieso Menkes Film Production, 8996 Keith Avenue, Los Angeles, Ca 90069, USA

'Magdalena Viraga is a boldly imaginative and rigorous experimental first feature in which writer/director/cinema­ tographer Nina Menkes evokes the spiritual evolution of a benumbed young prostitute (played by Tinka Menkes, the film-maker's sister) in starkly beautiful imagery and in passages from the poetry of Mary Daly, Gertrude Stein and Anne Sexton.

I 1

Menkes draws upon seedy, vivid East L. A. locales to suggest an unnamed Latin police state to create a most realistic and compelling atmosphere in which her heroine's inner life begins to awaken. Although Menkes' sensibility is strongly feminist, her con­ cern is with the oppression of the individual regardless of sex. Mirroring the prostitute's thoughts and emotions is her colleague and friend (Claire Aguilar). Magdalena Viraga is a vaultingly ambitious work in which Menkes shows that she can hold a scene as long as Antonioni can and get away with it. So personal and impassioned is Menkes that she skirts the pretentious without ever succumbing to it. Magdalena Viraga is a stunner'.

L. A. Times

38

Leading Players

Tom Bell, Patricia Kerrigan, Caroline Milmoe, Killian McKenna, Lorcan Cranitch

Script Photography

Angela Carter Ken Morgan

Editing Executive Producer Music Production Company Export Agents

Anthony Ham Steve Morrison Bill Connor Granada Television Palace Pictures, 16/17 Wardour Mews, London, England

"Though the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger I have arrowed, albeit belatedly, to the pinnacle of critical ■ and popular esteem, precious little of their inheritance has I passed on to the modern screen. Until now, The Magic 1 Toyshop once more converts the cinema to a palace of I dreams, not all of them pleasant. 1 The Magic Toyshop is adapted from a story by modern I fabulist Angela Carter, in this case her second novel J originally published in 1967. 1 Set in London in the mid 1950's, it draws out the symbol I themes of legend and fairytale as they have been identified 1 by Anthropology and Jungian psychology. Fantasy and I reality merge at every level; extraordinary special effects 1 make tangibly vivid the mind's flights of allusion and fancy, 1 leaving the rare afterglow of a film you'll ponder and relive 1 forages.

Yet the essential mood of The Magic Toyshop defies reductive interpretation; at heart, it cannot and should not be wholly explained away. It is a classic of imagination made celluloid" Mat Snow, 'Q' Magazine.

i


Triskel Arts Centre, Fri-.

er, 1.30pm Co?:

SSKf1° vou SPE“

A MCMrs

Australia 1986 Colour 46 minutes

Britain 1987 Colour 96 minutes

Pamela Williams

Pat O'Connor

COUNTRY

I-

Photography Editing Executive Producer Production Company

Export Agents

Andy Fraser Michael Balson Ron Saunders Film Australia, P.O. Box 46, Lindfield, New South Wales 2070, Australia Australian Film Commission, Victory House, 99-101 Regent Street, London W1

Mum, How Do You Spell Gorbatrof? follows Eamonn Burke, a red-haired, freckle-faced eleven-year-old on his campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Eamonn co-ordinates the messages of hundreds of Australian children who fear nuclear war, who are unwilling to wait for extinction and who believe strongly in the possibility of a peaceful world. Peace scroll under his arm, he sets out on his mission of peace for children everywhere. The film traces his efforts to enter the adult world of telephone calls, letter-writing and fund-raising in his quests to speak with Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, and with his own Prime Minister, Bob Hawke. A meeting with the Australian Foreign Affairs Minister is followed by an invitation to visit the Soviet Union from Mr. Gorbachev. On the point of departure, Eamonn is asked by a journalist why he feels the Russians and the Americans can be friends — he thinks for a moment and then replies, "The same reason you and I can be friends" Eamonn's message is simple, clear and direct: "If people have the capacity to make bombs, then they should have the capacity to take them apart again. There's so muc beauty in the world that it would be a shame to spoil it all .

Leading Players

Colin Firth, Natasha Richardson, Kenneth Branagh, Patrick Malahide Script Simon Gray Photography Kern MacMillan Editing John Victor Smith Executive Producers John Hambley, Johnny Goodman Production Company Film Four International in association with PFH Limited, a Euston Films production Export Agents Warner Bros., 135 Wardour Street, London W1V4AP

It is 1920. Two scarred survivors of the First World War come to the isolated Yorkshire village of Oxgodby. Their task is to excavate the past and in so doing they reclaim themselves. Birkin is to uncover a medieval wall painting in the local church and Moon is to discover and excavate a grave outside the churchyard. The two men from differing classes form a bond as they pursue their work through the idyllic summer days. Birkin has been deserted by his wife and Moon is revealed to be homosexual. Birkin is welcomed in the chapel community, but nurtures an unspoken love for Alice, the beautiful young wife of the inhospitable vicar Keach. Birkin realises he has uncovered a masterpiece - an unfinished picture of the Apocalypse showing a falling man with a crescent on his forehead. Moon finds his grave, which also contains a crescent. The mystery of the falling man is solved. Moon has uncovered his Saxon chapel, the true purpose of his mission. And Birkin returns to his wayward wife in London, a revitalised man.

39


Trjskel Arts Centre, Tuesday, 29 September, 11 am_.

:•;< Opera House, Thursday, 1 October, 6 pm

PARTITION

PARADISE CAMP

Ken McMullen Britain 1987 Colour/Black& White

Frank Heimans Australia 1986 Colour 56 minutes

I

■jw*!

I

z

__ - 1~ M

'fto & I X

i Awards

Script

Photography

Gold Award, International Film & TV Festival of New York, 1986 Paul Rea

Leading Players

Saeed Jaffrey, Shaheen Khan, Bhasker, Rishan Seth, Zia Mohyedin, Zohra Segal

Boris Janjic, Geoff Simpson, Butch Sawko

Script

Tariq Ali & Ken McMullen, from Toba Tek Singh' by Saadat Hasan Manto Nancy Schiesari

Executive Producer

Frank Heimans, Lee Burns Production Company Cinetel Productions Ltd., 71 Chandos Street, Crow's Nest, NSW, Australia, 2065 Export Agents Australian Film Commission ■

Of all Nazi crimes against humanity, the name Theresienstadt stands alone. This concentration camp in Czecho­ slovakia had no gas chambers, though its death toll was appalling enough. Its prisoners were not tattooed, though they were deeply scarred in far more subtle ways. Its stands alone because it becomes the so-called 'Model Jewish Community7, a macabre showpiece for the Red Cross and the world. It is the most monstrous lie of the war: the Nazis turn Theresienstadt into a smiling mask to distract the world from Auschwitz and the death camps. They even give it a special name: they call it the Paradise Camp. Paradise Camp is the story of the greatest Nazi hoax, seen through the eyes of survivors now living in Australia. They w6re forced to take part in the bizarre 'Great Beautification' and witnessed the making of a propagands film by which yie Nazis hoped to fool the world about their'Final Solution to the Jewish Problem'. alS° describe ,he emergence of a remarkable a Vict0,Y of the human sPirit- It is

brouahttn

the world

b

ed for the fi,rn in museums around

Photography Editing

Robert Hargreaves Tariq Ali, Darcus'Howe Production Company Bandung Productios Ltd., Block H, Carkers Lane, 53 /79 Highgate Road, London NW5 1TL Export Agents Channel Four Executive Producer

At the stroke of midnight 14/15 August, 1947, India became indepen­ dent. Yet the joy of freedom was marred by the partition of the country along religious lines. The same year, the sub-continent experienced a holocaust when Hindus and Muslims slaughtered each other as a prelude to mass migrations and the establish­ ment of new frontiers. Over a million people died. The partition of India traumatised an entire generation and provoked the Urdu short story writer, Saadat Hasan Manto to produce some of his most powerful short stories. One of these, Toba Tek Singh is a searing indictment of the religious division that had taken place. The story is set in the Lahore lunatic asylum, a couple of years after partition, when the respective governments of India and Pakistan decide that the inmates of lunatic asylums should be transferred - Hindu and Sikh lunatics in Pakistani asylums should be sent to India and Muslim lunatics in India should be moved to Pakistan. In this film adaptation, by Ken McMullen and Tariq Ali, the story is set a few months after partition. Civil servants plan the forced migration of Hindu and Sikh lunatics to asylums in India but, threatened with the disruption of their multi-religious com­ munity, the lunatics reject partition. None of them want to go. The asylum becomes a metaphorfor sanity in an irrational and insane world. McMullen's use of black and white film mixed with colour conveys a feel of India in the late 1940's. Using uncut takes-shots that move through different time zones and localities without interruption - he aims to 'make the audience come away with a mild sensation of a dream!


TriskelArts Centreju

:<i29September^m

THE PASSION OF REMEMBRANCE Maureen Blackwood, Isaac Julien Britain 1986 Colour 80 minutes

t i

plumbum or a dangerous

GAME

Vadim Abdrachitov USSR 1987 Colour 97 minutes

Subtitled

:'l

H ■ii

Leading Players

Script Photography Editing Executive Producer Music Production Company

A

Anni Domingo, Joseph Charles, Antonia Thomas, Carlton Chance, Jim Findley, Ram John Holder, Shiela Mitchell Maureen Blackwood, Isaac Julien Nina Kellgren, Steven Bernstein Nadine Marsh-Edwards Martine Attille Tony Remy for Surgery Management Sankofa Film/Video Collective, Unit K, 32-34 Cordon House Road, London NW5, England

The passion of the speakers, engaged momentarily in an anonymous landscape. The speakers meet for the first time or the last. They talk of how each other's past has shaped the present. The complexities of sharing destinies intricately linked are expressed through a dialogue with tension and longing. From the Fifties to the Eighties, the personal histories of the Baptiste household in which emotions, events—fragments of life and identities — suggest a totality and diversity of a black experience. A UK experience. A drama signalling historical instances, instances in which memories of generations overlap, sometimes igniting as they fuse with present realities.

Leading Players

Anton Androssov, Elena Dmitrieva, Elena Yakovleva, Alexander Feklistov, Alexander Pashutin, Vladimir Steklov Script Alexander Mindadze Photography George Rerberg Executive Producer Mosfilm Studio Music Vladimir Dashkevich Production Company Mosfilm Studios Export Agents Sovexportfilm, 18 Kensington Palace Gardens, London W8

Teenaged Ruslan Chutko, nicknamed 'Plumbum', lives with his parents in a small town and goes to school where he shows brilliant results. His parents are proud of their son, unaware that he lives another secret life, full of dangers. When a boy of the same age takes Ruslan's cassette recorder by force, he decides to become a crime-fighter, to become strong both physically and morally. He tries his best to join the city's criminal operations detachment, and to win the confidence of its commander, 'The Grey Haired'. Conscious of the danger that good and evil could so easily change places in Ruslan's immature soul, the Commander is reluctant to have anything to do with the boy. But nothing can stop Ruslan. He penetrates into the den of a gang of professional criminals, helping the crime detachment to capture them; he uncovers the hiding-places of tramps, participates in an operation against poachers. Plumbum's motives are enigmatic. Is he carried away with a desire to fight evil ? Or is it that self-affirmation and his desire to stand out from his peers, drives him into an increasingly more bizarre identity? Whatever his motives, this schoolboy who tries to become a 'superman' of the detective world finds himself entangled in a dangerous game. Will the absurd, tragic death of his girlfriend Sonya make him sober?

i

.I

I


Cork Opera House, Saturday, 26 September, 6 pm

RIDERS TO THE SEA Ronan O'Leary

Cork Opera House, Wednesday, 30 September, 4 pm

ROBINSONADE OR MY ENGLISH GRANDFATHER Robinzonada - Hi Hoy Angliyskiy Deduchka Nana Dzhordzhadze

Ireland 1987 Colour 46 minutes

USSR 1987 Colour

77 minutes

Subtitled

I

Leading Players

Geraldine Page, Amanda Plummer, Barry McGovern, Sachi Parker, Micheal 6 Briain, Joan O'Hara

Script Photography Editing Executive Producers Producers Art Director Production Design Music Production Company

The play by J. M. Synge Wolfgang Suschftzky

Nicholas Gastor Darragh Owens, Martin Mulchrone Ronan O'Leary, Richard Hornak Josie McAvin Wendy Shea

Ian Llande, Michael Hewer Adjuntar Ltd., 23 Upper Mount Street, Dublin 2

Synge's great one-act tragedy tells of the primal struggle between an old woman and the sea, the sea that has robbed her of the lives of her sons. It is a struggle in which the dark, pagan forces of Nature and the Supernatural conspire against the human's spirit's stub­ born will to endure.

Camera D'Or, Cannes 1987 Zhanri Lolachvili, Ninel Tshankvetadze, Guram Pirtshalava Irakliy Kvirikadze Script Levan Paatachvili Photography Editing Euri Lolachvili Executive Producer Gruzya Film Music Henri Lolachvili Production Company Gruzya Film Export Agents Sovexportfilm, 18 Kensington Palace Gardens, London W8 Awards Leading Players

Christopher Hughes is English. He is stationed in Georgia as a telegraphist when a revolution breaks out. Nestor Nioradze, the head of the community, clashes with Hughes. Booted out by the villagers, Hughes refuses to leave. This that ixmy King 'JCUiyu George lldS has iiiio is io 1920. i Protesting i uicoui ly uiai bought and paid for 'three metres of English soil' around*^ each telegraph post, Hughes proceeds to settle down at j the foot of one of them, accompanied by his beloved Anne, sister to Nestor.

In time the two men become reconciled, but one morning both Nestor and Christopher are mysteriously shot down. Many years later, Anne finds out who the murderer is, and kills him.

I

i

42

I


Cork Opera House, Satin

V

SElgZHber, 1.30pm

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SHERMAN S MARCH Ross McElwee

USA 1986 Colour 155 minutes

Daniel Petrie USA 1987 Colour 112 minutes

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Photography Script

Ross McElwee Ross McElwee

Production Company Ross McElwee Export Agents First Run Features, 153 Waverly Place, New York, NY 10014, USA

Sherman's March was supposed to be a documentary investigating what traces were left of General Sherman's scorched-earth incursion through Georgia during the American Civil War. That's what film-maker Ross McElwee got his grant for. However, his girl-friend left him just before shooting was to start, and he headed off for home in North Carolina to recuperate, taking his camera and sound equipment with him. Encouraged by his sister, he soon realised that his camera was an ideal 'conversation piece', and a neat way of picking up women. Thus starts McElwee McElwee's ot s own march through the Southern States, his camera always on his shoulder, on a wry and comically dead-pan search for love, or at least something that lasts longer than two weeks Quirky, funny and fascinating. For an inadvertent documen­ tary it is an amazingly rich work. An absurdist portrait of the South that any novelist might envy. McElwee is a comic film-maker with the rare ability to turn personal obsession into a delightfully rueful and resonant American odyssey.

David Ansen, Newsweek

Leading Players

Jason Robards, Jane Alexander, Winona Ryder, Rob Lowe Script Alan Hines Photography Jacek Laskus Editing Bruce Green Executive Producers Charles Haid, Jane Alexander Music Bruce Broughton Production Company Island Pictures in association with NBC Productions Export Agents Enterprise Pictures Limited, 113 Wardour Street, London W1V3TD

Set in the Texas Wastelands, on a barely functioning 'scratch' farm, and on the big city's urban fringes, the film tells of a young girl's poignant search for an answer to that fundamental question, 'Who am I ?' The spirited Gemma lives with her grandfather, 'Pop', on an egg farm in the country. Now on the edge of woman­ hood and pierced by the absence of a mother and father she has never seen, Gemma finds solace in church work and good deeds. She easily believes that all people are created as equals, and that one should treat others as one would have them treat oneself. The unexpected return of her mother, and Gemma's sub­ sequent flight to the skyscrapers and lights of the city of Fort Worth, mark the beginning of a new and traumatic phase in Gemma's life. Life in the city is both more and less than the vulnerable young girl had expected; she finds love of an innocent kind, and she comes face to face with the bitter dreams of those whom life will continually and relentlessly confound and disappoint. Gemma, and her mother indeed, will find peace of a kind when the young girl returns to her grandfather, and when he and the girl's mother, after many years, begin, quietly and civilly, to talk to each other again.

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Cork Opera House, Thursday, 1 October, 8.30 pm

A SUCCESSFUL MAN ? I

Un Hombre De Exito Humberto Solas Cuba 1987 Colour 116 minutes

Subtitled

BALLYMALOE AT THE

CRAWFORD GALLERY CAFE EMMET PLACE, CORK Open Monday - Saturday 10.30 a.m. -5.00 p.m. For Coffee, Tea and Homemade Cakes Lunch 12-2.30 p.m. Pre-Theatre Dinner from 6.30 p.m. on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We are situated next to the Opera House

Cesar Evora Raquel Revuelta, Daisy Granados, Mabel Roche, Rubens de Falco Script Juan Iglesias, Humberto Solas Photography Livio Delgado Editing Nelson Rodriguez Executive Producer Humberto Hernandez Music Luigi Nono Production Company I.C.A.I.C. Export Agents I.C.A.I.C., Calle 23, No. 1155 Vedado, La Habana, Cuba

Leading Players

* J

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Havana, 1930. Javier, thirsting for power, consumed with ambition, fuels his rise with his unquestioned powers of seduction. His brother, Dario, unlike him, is an idealist whose middle­ class origins do not curb his longing for revolution. Rivals in love, they fight over their mother and a young woman who, although in love with Dario, will end up marrying Javier.

□ YOU ARE ALWAYS WELC01V AT

5 tri

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The Merciej Bookshoi ‘4 BRIDGE STREP CORK and University College Cork I Telephone: 50402

gWMMBfe

'the book specialists'

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Javier sacrifices everything to his ambition: family, wife, friends. His world is coming apart, and he will end up alone. Often brutal and shocking, the contradictions between the appetites of the brothers point up the internal tensions which were to tear Cuban society apart. In its evocation of a period and of the strange impulses which drive two brothers in very different directions, the film is one of the most important to have emerged in recent years in Latin American cinema.

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Telephone 274415 for reservations.


Triskel Arts Centra

--^_27 September, 1.30 pm

:I

Lc? •.?< 2? September, 8.30 pm

T DAN SMITH The Members of Amber Films Britain 1987 Colour 85 minutes

SHE THEME Tema Gleb Panfilov USSR 1979 Colour 98 minutes

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Subtitled

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f Leading Players

i I . Screenplay Photography Editing

Executive Producer

T Dan Smith, Jack Johnston, Ken Sketheway, Dennis Skinner and George Vickers as themselves. Art Davies, Dave Hill, Christopher Northey, Amber Styles Steve Trafford Peter Roberts Ellin Hare Amber Films

Ray Stubbs Music Production Company Amber Films in association with BFI and Channel Four Television with support from ACTT Amber Films/BFI Production, Export Agents 29 Rathbone Street, London WIPIAG, England

T Dan Smith was a working-class lad who rose to become a dynamic and visionary politician based in Newcastle during the Sixties. In 1971, he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment. As public relations man for the infamous architect, John Poulson, who won building contracts by bribing City Coun­ cillors, Smith was trapped in a web of corruption that

I

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proved his undoing. Self-seeking crook or Establishment scapegoat? Victim of the system or sharp political operator ? All these questions, and more, are explored by TDan Smith, whose interrogative, self-reflexive framework allows it to do a great deal more than simply recount the course of its subject's life. Based in Newcastle and founded in 1968, Amber Films now has an international reputation for the powerful articulation

Golden Bear, Berlin Film Festival 1987 Mikhail Ul'janov, Inna Curikova, Leading Players Stanislav Ljubsin, Evgenij Vesnik Gleb Panfilov, Aleksandr Cervinskij Script Leonid Kalasnikov Photography Vadim Bibergan Music Production Company Mosfilm-Studio Export Agents Poseidon Films, 113 Wardour Street, London W1

Awards

The belokamennaja Rus, or the 'white stony Russia' of the seventies. The successful, popular playwright Kim Esenin travels together with a colleague who is also a writer, and a young woman to the old provincial Russian town of Susdal. Here, far away from the hustle and bustle of Moscow, in a house belonging to a woman teacher with a passion for literature, Esenin wants to dramatise The Song Of Igor, a national heroic epic. During the first evening meal he meets Sasa Nikolaeva, who points out to him in a heated discussion that he has long since sacrificed his former creativity to fame and privileges, and that his egotism threatens to destroy both himself and his relationship with his family and friends. Kim Esenin is fascinated by Sasa's emotion and humanity and learns that she is doing research on the life and work of a local, unknown poet. He falls passionately in love with Sasa. He observes how she is forced to part from her lover, a writer with no chance of getting published. Having worked as a gravedigger, her lover finally gives up and decides to

emigrate to Israel.

of working-class values and ideals.

45

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Cork Opera House, Saturday^c obar,2pm

Cork Opera House, Friday, 2 OctobeG4pm

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THREE BEWILDERED PEOPLE Wdttli^directed, produced, edited and photographed by

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1

92 minutes

Black & White

Lauaxeta Jose A. Zorrilla Spain 1987 Colour 90 minutes

Gregg Araki USA 1987

TO THE FOUR WINDS

Subtitled

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Bronze Leopard, Critics' Prize, Youth Prize, Locarno 1987 Darcy Marta, Mark Howell, Leading Players John Lacques Production Company Production Pictures Ltd., 740 S. Detroit Street No. 1, Los Angeles, Ca 90036, USA

Awards

ii j

'Three Bewildered People In The Night is a no-budget, anti-Hollywood, 92-minute, 16 mm, black and white feature about angst, despair and coffee-shops in the modern world. Shot on the run with ultra-fast 4x-stock on the streets of lost angeles, the film is dominated by a raw, gritty aesthetic in keeping with its dark, uncompromising themes. It's the first full-length endeavour of desperate pictures ltd, a fledgling, very independent company born in 1984 when its founder/writer/director, gregg araki, graduated from the MFAprogram at USCinema. A sort of Stranger Than Paradise meets My Beautiful Laundrette with some Masculine/Feminine thrown in for good measure, the entire picture takes place at night, exploring the dislocating bisexual triangle which transpires amidst 3 insecure artist-friends in their 20's: David, an alienated gay performance-artist; his best friend, Alicia, an avantgarde video-maker; and Craig, Alicia's spiritually adrift boyfriend. Rendered in a stark minimalist style, the movie traces the interconnected lives of this confused trio as they struggle with their creative frustrations, emotional dilemmas and absurd existences in a Hostile Meaningless Universe. In short, a neurotic Good Time is guaranteed for all'

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Gregg Araki

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Xabier Elornaga, Anne Louise Lambert, Jean Claude Bouillaud, Peter Leeper, Antonio Passy, Ramon Barea, Ramon, Aguirre Jose A. Zorrilla, Script Arantxa Urretavizcaya, Xabier Elorriaga Jose Garcia Galisteo Photography Pablo Gonzalez del Amo Editing Angel Amigo Producer Carmelo Bernaola Music Production Company Igeldo Zine Produkzioak S.A., San Sebastian, Spain

Leading Players

Spring 1937. When their attack on Madrid is turned back, the rebel army of General Franco decides to open a second front in the north. In Bilbao, the autonomous Basque government of President Aguirre, composed of Basque nationalists, leftist republicans, socialists and communists, has managed to mobilise 41,000 , badly-armed men to face the conventional troops of General Mola, who have the support of Italian armoured units and] the 'Condor Legion', the expeditionary airforce sent by Hitlgp Cut off from the rest of republican Spain, with the port of Bilbao blockaded, the Basque country prepares to withstand the siege. The offensive of the Francoist troops against the Bilbao front is as effective as it is brutal. To kill the morale of the civilian volunteers defending Bilbao with the weapons of reason and personal conviction more than anything else, the 'Condor Legion' bombs the village of Guernica. It is history's first systematic, massive bombing of a civilian target. Major Urkiaga sees in the flaming ruins of Guernica not only the destruction of a peaceful village but also the dashing of his own most private personal aspirations. The flames of Guernica serve as well to put an end to building a democratic Basque country, of which the decimated village is the ancient symbol.


Cork Opera House, Sunday, 27 September, 2 pm

11

Opera H<SHaWednesday, 30 September, 6 pm

tomasso blu

™ sSLING N0F>™

Tomasso Blu Florian Furtwangler West Germany 1986 Colour 90 minutes Subtitled

Australia 1986 Colour 96 minutes

Leading Players

Alessandro Haber, Antonella Porfido, Marisa Eugeni

Leading Players

Script

Tommaso Di Ciaula, Peter Kammerer, Florian Furtwangler

Photography

James Jacobs Editing Heidi Handorf Executive Producer Peter Kammerer Music Peer Raben Production Company Florian Furtwangler Productions Export Agents

Metropolis Film World Sales, Josefstrasse 106,8031 Zurich, Switzerland

Tommaso is a compulsive womaniser. He has a wife and children and can't understand why, despite his powerful erotic fantasies, he can't seem to have a proper relationship with the objects of his desire. He is, however, not a villain and rightly finds his factory job and circumscribed world demeaning. The film is the story of his passionate revolt against urbanisation, industrialisation and the dying of the light. The setting is the impoverished region of Bari at the foot of Italy, and Tommaso's odyssey, based upon Tommaso Di Ciaula's more than slightly autobiographical best-seller ’____ Italian Tuta Blu,____________ is directedannot by but by Florian furtwangler, nephew of the great German conductor, whose intensity of expression he seems to share. The whole film, beautifully shot by James Jacobs, is held together by a remarkably controlled performance from Alessandro Haber, who paints the rebellion of a naive and far from faultless worker with urgent accuracy. This is a subversive, argumentative, emotional film which s i Preserves a formidable calm and sense of purpose, it comes from the heart, and hits you in the guts.

Derek Malcolm

Script Photography Editing Executive Producer Production Company

Export Agents

Leo McKern, Julia Blake, Graham Kennedy, Henri Szeps, Michele Fawdon, Diane Craig, Andrea Moor, Drew Forsythe, John Gregg David Williamson Julian Penney Henry Dangar Ben Gannon A View Films production, a CEL Film Distribution release CEL, Communications & Entertainment Ltd., 185 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

Travelling North already looks set to be a major contender in the 1987 Australian Film Awards, especially in the acting stakes. This superbly crafted adaptation of David Williamson's popular stage play makes few concessions to the youth audience, but as a mature, frequently funny and ultimately most moving story Of old age and retirement, it doubtless will be dubbed Australia's On Golden Pond. Australian-born Leo McKern, in his first Australian film, gives a remarkable performance as the crotchety, yet endearing, Frank. His humanity shines through, and he delivers David Williamson's frequently witty dialogue with considerable style. It's a hugely enjoyable portrayal. As Frances, Julia Blake positively glows; she plays a patient, loving woman with a determination of her own, ano it's a rich characterisation. Michele Fawdon is suitably horrid as Blake's older daughter, while Henri Szeps, as the the small­ town doctor, also creates a fully-rounded character. As the chatty neighbour, Graham Kennedy proves again he's one of Australians best character actors, with an ability to show the loneliness and pain beneath the apparently brash and shallow exterior. Credit for the entire production must go to director Carl Schultz, best known for Careful He Might Hear You (1983). Schultz came late to Travelling North (originally to have been directed by Michael Blakemore, who handled most of the principal casting), but he has handled his chores with distinction, giving the film fluidity and pace that belies its stage origins. His use of visual metaphors (such as a strange fern which closes in on itself when touched by humans) is assured. Producer Ben Gannon has put together a top-class production, with fine lensing by Julian Penney, clever production design by Owen Paterson, very tight editing by Henry Dangar and a fine choice of classical music excerpts. It all makes for a touchino film . . • . there will be few dry eyes by the end. It's a good start to the year for Australian cinema. David Stratton, Variety, 21 January, 1987

47


„ h^nera House, MondayJ8 September^pm

CorkOpera^l^H^-^^^-——----------

WAITING FOR THE MOON ? J

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Jill Godmilow

Fa Ifuro Gyorgy Szomjas

USA 1986 Colour 90 minutes

Hungary 1985 Colour 96 minutes

Linda Hunt, Linda Bassett, Andrew McCarthy, Bruce McGill, Bernadette Lafont, Jacques Boudet Mark Magill, from a story by Script Magill and Jill Godmilow Andre Neau Photography Lindsay Law Executive Producer Production Company New Front Films, AB Films, Laboratory for Icon and Idiom

Leading Players

Leading Players

5

Export Agents

Geogre Pilzer, 10 Rue Washington, 7500 Paris

Waiting For The Moon is a fresh and provocative portrait of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas during a time which tested the depth and parameters of their love and trust. Neither straight biography nor totally contrived, it presents us with a 'possible' Stein and Toklas, enmeshed in a series of fictional, yet entirely possible, relationships. Gertrude is ill, perhaps fatally so, but she doesn't tell Alice. Alice, however, suspects the truth but respecting Gertrude's integrity, acquiesces as though all were well. Over the course of three months their relationship oscillates between resentment, love, compassion and anger. Amidst all this, other characters come and go: Hemingway, Picasso, Appolinaire. The literate, episodic script is immersed in the wit and wisdom of Gertrude Stein. Waiting For The Moon is an original film, rich and atmospheric, exemplary in its treat­ ment of real and fictitious events. Above all it is solidified by the remarkable performance of Academy Award-winninq actress Linda Hunt as Alice.

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Tony Safford, Sundance Institute

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THE WALL DRILLER

Subtitled

Script Photography

Editing Executive Producer Music Production Company Export Agents

Janos Ban, Renata Szatler, Agi Szirtes, Peter Andorai, Denes Ujlaky Ibolya Fekete, Ferenc Grunwalsky, Gyorgy Szomjas Ferenc Grunwalsky

Anna Korniss

Hunnia Studio Janos Karacsony Hunnia Studio Hungarofilm, Bathory Utca 10, 1054 Budapest V, Hungary

Private enterprise can be bad for your back in Hungary. In: Gyorgy Szomjas' surreal comedy our hero's desire to earn j an extra forint with his power-drill becomes hopelessly! side-tracked by his obsession with the Venus next door. Szomjas' hero is an everyday inhabitant of a concrete housing estate who cannot quite cope with reality. One day he throws up his job, buys a power-drill and goes inter business boring holes in neighbours' walls. When the beautiful Eva invites him in one day things start to go seriously wrong: is she really the hooker in that pornographic photo-album everyone is talking about? As in his previous Light Physical Injuries, Szomjas keeps the audience on its toes with a barrage of effects to parallel the black comedy. And for Magyar connoisseurs there is a truly malicious performance from Peter Andorai as a caretaker in a purple tracksuit. Derek Elley, LFF Programme


ggrfrOgera House, Monday

’■ember^^pm --

27 Septemhoi

WILD MOUNTAhMS Ye Shan

fcSS TO APARTHEID

yan Xueshu

Sharon Sb0Per, Director/Producer

USA 1986 Colour 56 minutes

China 1985 Colour 100 minutes

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1

Awards

Golden Rooster Awards, China 1986

Leading Players

>fae Hong, Xin Ming, Du Yuan, Xu Shouli

Script

Yan Xueshu, Zhu Zi Mi Jiaqing

Photography

Music Xu Youfu Production Company Xi'an Film Studio

Export Agents

I

Chinese Film Society, 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3XY, England

It was no surprise that this gently ironic comedy of sexual manners scooped nearly every major prize at China's Golden Rooster Awards this summer. Taking its cue from an earthy novel by Jia Ping'ao, Wild Mountains exploits the new economic pragmatism sweeping the country for a tale of some allegorical partner-swapping in northern Shaanxi. This is the flip-side of films like Yellow Earth and Life, both set in the same tough, rolling landscape. Here two couples eke out a precarious living on the hillsides: a contented idler and his nagging spouse, and a demobbed soldier with some ambitious business ideas but an over-cautious wife. Gradually the entrepreneur in each family recognises the other, and the ground is set for some discreet hankypanky. Played with great style by all four leads, Wild Mountains cuts a scythe through several taboos in mainland Chinese cinema with hardly a whisper. Derek Elley, London Film Festival

I

Awards

1987 Academy Award Nomination, Best Documentary, New York City Global Film Festival 1987, 1987 Cine Golden Eagle Script Peter Kinoy Photography Peter Tischauser Editing Lawrence Solomon Sound Stephen Musgrave Production Company Developing News Inc. Export Agents Cine, 1201 Sixteenth Street, NW, Washington DC 20036, USA

Witness To Apartheid, the award-winning documentary filmed in South Africa during the 1985 State of emergency, is still banned in South Africa. Witness To Apartheid has received worldwide acclaim because it is the first documentary film to expose the systematic detention and torture of black children by the South African police and soldiers. Producer/director Sharon Sopher and her film crew, all South Africans, were detained and taken into custody by forty armed soldiers while filming witnesses in Soweto. The British broadcast of Witness by Channel Four Television in April 1986, resulted in the first official admission by the South African government that it is, in fact, detaining and torturing children specifically. One of the film's witnesses, Dr. Fabian Ribeiro (the black doctor seen treating patients who have been beaten and tortured) was assassinated by two masked gunmen at his home in Mamelodi Township on 1 December, 1986. The licence number of one of the vehicles eyewitnesses saw at the murder scene was traced to the security police chief in Pretoria. One of the eyewitnesses to Dr. Ribeiro's murder was also recently killed by gunmen. Other witnesses presenting compelling testimony of police violence in the township include Archbishop Desmond Tutu an undertaker who buried thirty-four children in less than three months, and black children as young as eleven who had been tortured. The tragic story told by Witness To Aoartheid - the targetting of black children by the apartheid system - is a story that was not being told despite all the media attention given to South Africa.

49

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Triskel Arts Centre, Tuesday, 29 Septembe . I

YANKEE SAMURAI Katriel Schory Israel 1985 Colour 50 minutes Part subtitled

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COMPAN

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*

few Script Editing Executive Producers Production Company Export Agents

* 3

* s. Katriel Schory Naomi Press-Aviram Ludi Boeken, Ben Elkerbout Belbo Film Productions BV in association with Telemedia Ltd. Belbo Film Productions BV, 26 Ruppin Street, Tel Aviv, Israel

After the attack on Pearl Harbour, in a wave of xenophobia, the entire Japanese-American community was removed to internment camps on the orders of President Roosevelt. Six months later, out of the camps, emerged the JapaneseAmerican combat team, a volunteer outfit which to be distinguished by the war's end as the most decorated American Army unit of World War II. Fighting Fascism in Europe and bitter prejudice at home, the combat team had perhaps its proudest and saddest moment when, in a battle in the Vosges Mountains to rescue 240 Texans, the so-called 'lost battalion', the JapaneseAmericans suffered 800 casualties. A lifelong bond exists between these soldiers and the citizens of the French town Bruyeres, delivered from the Nazis by the the men they call the 'gentlemen soldiers'. The film centres around the unveiling of a monument to the combat team in a nostalgic re-union between liberators and liberated. Shot in California and Europe, the film includes never-before-seen archival footage. None of the difficult questions are fudged in a masterly and incisive examination of a time that still raises ugly and uncomfortable questions.

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Grant-aided by the Arts Council

Best Wishes to the 32nd Cork Film Festival IVERNIA THEATRE TEL. (021) 272703

a

RESTAURANT

Monday 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday 9 a.m.to 10 p.m. Last Orders

JACQUELINE and EITHNE BARRY

9 Phoenix Street, (near GPO), Cork, Ireland Telephone (021) 277387

South Mall

Phoenix Street

fl

Oliver Plunkett Street

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50


academy leade 20 Directors

-ONS

USA/Switzerland / Poland /China 1987 Colour 6 minutes 30 second

AMD SHE Jim Blashfield USA

1987

Colour

3m-r

I UH

Awards Produced & Edited Production Company

Special Jury Prize for Animated Short, Cannes 1987 David Ehrlich RR 1, Box 50, Randolph, Vt 05060, USA

Twenty animators from four countries express their inter­ national friendship and love of animation in an unique collaboration - a series of animated variations on the standard academy leader.

AIN'T NO KING COMIN' Tia J. T. Lemke USA 1986

Colour

Visual Designers Editing Producer Original Music Animators

Production Company

Jim Blashfield, Don Merkt, David Byrne Paul Diener Melissa Marsland, Jim Blashfield Talking Heads Jim Blashfield, Don Merkt, Laura Di Trapini, Tom Arndt Blashfield & Associates, c/o Cine, 1201 Sixteenth Street, NW, Washington DC 20036

Director Jim Blashfield's stated interest is in 'taking something that's real and making it still be pretty real - but not quite.' The method of work employed for this animation set to the music of Talking Heads' And She kVas is fascinating: Blashfield assembled a team and set to taking photographs of objects, xeroxing them, cutting them out and making them move. 'A woman levitates, and looks down on the wide, turning world.'

24 minutes 30 seconds

ANIMATING ART Imogen Sutton Britain

1987

Colour

38 minutes

Iif >.

Awards

Leading Players

Photography Editing Producer Production Company

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Best Picture, 44th Annual NYU Film Festival; First Place, Mobil Awards Film Festival, M.O.M.A., 1986; First Place, Short Film section, USA Film Festival, 1987 Tony Gonzalez, Roy Innocenti, Eve Marlowe Edmund Cheung Tia J. T. Lemke Tia J. T. Lemke Tia J. T. Lemke, 173 Bleeker Street, 18 New York, N.Y. 10012, USA

’ a fine drama, warmly observed and family triangle on the and hjs the New New York York Lower Lower East Si streets. The participants: a Latina, her macho . htfu| the nval - a long-absent father. The s °ry is thoughtful, construction tight, the acting oc-^nallyb^au

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fof Photography Editing Producer Production Company

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H. J. Brown, Nick Beeks-Sanders Stefan Ronowicz Imogen Sutton Imogen Sutton Productions Ltd., The Studio, 96 Haverstock Hill, London NW3 2BB

Walt Disney's legendary animator, Art Babbitt, at the age of eighty is still animating and teaching. Creator of such classic characters as Goofy, and the wicked Queen from Snow White, Babbitt is a fascinating character whose gift for the medium is as fresh and striking today as it was during Disney s Golden Age. With excerpts from Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Fantasia and the award-winning Country Cousin, the fikn also includes previously unseen footage shot by Babbitt himself which Pr®.;Hpe Xcenes of Disney at studio parties and of the 1941 Hollywood“nTmattrs' strike led at Disney's by Babbitt.

51

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\ I,-

Photography Editing Producer Production Company

RESTAURANT WINE BAR

John Campbell John Campbell, Manfred Hattendorf Michael Saunders Bryson House, 28 Bedford Street, Belfast BT2 7FE

TRADITIONAL PIZZAS FRESH HAND-MADE PASTAS GRILLS FISH OMELETTES FULL WINE LIST

Inspired by such masterpieces of the silent era as Berlin Symphony Of A Great City and A Propos De Nice, a group of young Belfast people and a German film enthusiast set out to provide a twenty-four-hour portrait of life in a much-writtenabout city. In public places and private homes, in factories and in workshops and in Friday night entertainment they 'found an original place with a unique flavour'.

BERLIN BLUE Hartmut Jahn, Peter Wensierski West Germany 1987 Colour

SPECIAL ORDER SERVICE

—, v

ZllTlO V

14 minutes

book tokens,

CARDS AND GIFT WRAP

(Collins jBoofesfjop Carey's Lane, Cork Telephone (021) 271346 | TO OMOC

< THt COUJNS

] tytsr ******

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nation with “The reading of all good books is like a conversation the finest men ofpast centuries” - Rene Descartes (1596-1650:

Photography Producer Production Company

Carlos Bustamante Pantafilm Pantafilm, Jahn-Wensierski GmbH, Seeling Strasse 14,1000 Berlin 19

'"There is no book so bad but there is something good In It"

- Miguel Cervantes (1547-1616). “When I get a little money, I buy books; and ifany is left

/ buy food and clothes”. — Erasmus (1465 - 1536). This experimental short film looks at the Berlin Wall as an artistical screen for visual projection. The film features work from internationally-known artists such as Thierry Noir, Vera Schrankl, Christophe Bouchet, Arthur Kuggeleyn and Joachim Lodek. And after a while the Berlin Wall turns upside down ....

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body"

Books for everyone, including: FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS CHILDREN'S AND ADULT READING j NEW BOOKS AND BUDGET BOOKS J LEABHAIR GAEILGE AR P/OL__ —-j


blast furnace in autumw Ralf Grape West Germany 1986 Colour

3 minutes

£ O

imperial HOTEL South Mall, Cork Awards

Signatories' Award, Oberhausen, 1986; Acclaiming Reference, 3rd Short Film Festival, Berlin, 1986; Gold Special Jury Award, 8th Houston International Film Festival Florian Haarmann Ralf Grape's Movie Machine, Dresdener Strasse 41,46 Dortmund 1, West Germany

Producer Production Company

Telephone 274040 (10 lines) Telegrams Imperial Cork' Telex 75126

The subject-matter of the film is the decline of coal-mines in the Ruhr district. It derives its fascination from the stunning manner in which the apparent 'trickery' of its method, the mixture of model-shooting and documentary, is transparently displayed.

BOOM BABIES Siobhan Twomey Ireland

1986

Colour

34 minutes

Our New

CUCUDS BAR and GRILL Complex is now open

Leading Players Photography Editing Producer Production Company

I

Aisling T6ibin, Andrew Connolly Nick O'Neill Amanda Sutton Jimmy Duggan, Siobhan Twomey

rtyu1 about the conflic,ir,a ■!ves andf ^SaeO's^AiK 'is? sbong-wilied.

Qive her a job. She spends her time ob^s>

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Continued success to the CORK FILM FESTIVAL

y b|ock (Unemployed, he

of

Aisling takes to driving through the deserted c ty at

Sss^te»:sssSfJS»’"~

lasted t0 the

53

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JECAGE/KL

CADENCE

Olaf Olszewski

Jan Wouter van Reijen Netherlands 1986 Colour

A

Poland

Black & White

1986

5 minutes

15 minutes

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,.^i Producer

Photography Goert Giltaij Producer Suzanne van Voorst Production Company Yuca Film, Plantage Middenlaan 20, Postbus 1379, NL-1000 BJ, Amsterdam

Olaf Olszewski, ul. Sawy 11/64, 20 -632 Lublin, Poland

A rat gnaws at the bar of a cage. Frantic, but patient.

A fifteen-minute long impression of a block of flats some­ where in the Netherlands. The eponymous cadence is reflected in the sequence of images and sounds: form and content. The result is a surprising insight into our everyday environment.

1

CELEBRATION OF LIGHT k 7he

Louis Marcus

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Ireland 1986

Colour

23 minutes

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“ DINNER

IS SERVED ”

£3 CONCESSION on all bottles of wine on production of Film Festival Membership. 54

Photography Sound Producer Production Company

Robert Monks Liam Saurin, Pat Gibbons Louis Marcus Louis Marcus Film & Video, 12 Fortfield Drive, Dublin 6, Ireland

The tradition of Waterford glass-making is over 200 years old. Glass is still blown by mouth there, and cut by hand in a tradition of craftsmanship that still flourishes. Marcus' film is a tribute to the skills of the workers who have made Waterford Glass an internationally-famous product.


I

CERRIDWEIWS GIFT Directed, produced and animated by

Rose Bond USA

1987

★ Colour

★★

9 minutes

The Star-Studded Metropole

I

Narrator Music Production Company

Fiona Ritchie Micheal 0 Domhnaill Rose Bond, 4380 86th Avenue, SW, Portland OR 97225 USA

A dramatic rendering of an ancient Celtic myth, the film vividly recounts the tale of how the Welsh people received the gift of poetry and prophecy. The film's heroine, Cerridwen, is a wise woman and brewer of the cauldron of inspiration. The film tells the story of Cerridwen's plans to bestow a gift on her son, and the twist of fate which results in the wrong person receiving the gift.

A CLOSE SHAVE Ray Kilby

Britain

1987

Colour, Black & White

33 minutes

Excellent cuisine in Lee view restaurant.

★ Superb friendly staff. ★ Convenient to city centre and Cork Opera House.

★ Super value weekend breaks £49 per person sharing. ★ All rooms with private bathroom, television and video channel.

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★ Free indoor lock up car park

I

★ Five minute walk from train and bus terminals. Jazz ui the Met Tavern. Leading Players

Robert Lockheart, Amanda Wray, Jacey Salles, Chris Demetriou, Gordon McHarg photography Julian Glaser •diting Nicola Gerry foducer Ray Kilby Folgate Films Ltd., Studio 317, foduction Company Cable Street Studios, Thames House, Cable Street, London E1 9Ht> ’hby is a nurse who works in a Private hospital for^i^urbed Jhgjnen. He has aspirations to being a writer. which he

'e the life of one of his patients.

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MacCurtain Street, Cork. Tel: 508122. 55


CLOSED CIRCUIT Nicholas Granby Britain

1987

Colour

11 minutes

Comprehensive Travel Service Holiday and Business Travel

Leading Players

Photography Producers Production Company

Keith Allen, Cheryl Prime, Moray Watson, Lionel Taylor Nick Beeks-Sanders Saskia Sutton, Nicholas Granby Nicholas Granby Productions in association with British Screen and Film Four International, 60 Charlotte Street, London W1V 2AX

Security-man Smith spends all his time watching the screens of a closed-circuit video security system. By chance, Smith finds that he can operate the camera remote-control to go into a close-up on the company safe's combination lock. He thus succeeds in obtaining all the numbers of the combination, and successfully robs the safe of a large amount of cash. However, unknown to him, all his actions are recorded by a closed-circuit camera, cleverly concealed in the ceiling of his control room and connected to a monitor in another room in the building.

John Stewart 1987

Heffernans Travel PEMBROKE HOUSE, PEMBROKE STREET, CORK Telephone (021) 271081

Before and after the Show FRANKIE'S is the place to go

CRASH England

Travel Agents for the Cork Film Festival

Black & White

10 minutes

FBods, Vi'ines & Cocktails GRAND PARADE CORK Tel: (021) 273999

Leading Players

Photography Editing Producer Production Company

Niamh Mahon, Darren Fury Nikki McCay, Tim Jones (Narrator) John Stewart John Stewart, Carol Lemon Carol Lemon Persistent Vision Productions, 277 Archway Road, London N6 5AA, England

In the immediate aftermath of a car-crash, Maggie finds she can move nothing but the muscles of her face. Maggie sees the dead body of her travelling companion Sandra, but is astonished when a passerby suddenly helps Sandra from the wrecked car. And when the horrified passerby takes off his jacket and slowly covers Maggie's face, she comes to a terrible realization ....

56

Selection of Hot Lunches. Bar Food available alljWJ


the DIAMOND Kent Moorhead USA 1986 Colour

Leading Players

28 n •. ■• tes

LUNCHES Monday-Friday 12.30-2.30

Dana Mills, LaneTrippe, Edith Crutcher Jason Mount Kent Moorhead, Rod Moorhead John Thomas Bill Creed Kent Moorhead, Rod Moorhead Brit Warner, Wain Bradley Diamond King Productions, 305 Washington Ext., Oxford, Ms 38655, USA

Screenwriters Photography Editing Producers Music Production Company

Neal, a twelve-year-old Downs Syndrome child, has a father who considers him a disgrace and a mother who finds him an embar­ rassment. Only Leslie, his friend, accepts Neal on his own terms and together they create a private world of adventure, with jungles and tigers and diamond fields where outlaw children take refuge when they get into trouble. However, when they run away to the nearby zoo, their imaginary adventures suddenly become real.

ERMINIA'S OPENING NIGHT AND OTHER STORIES Duncan Sinclair Australia 1987

Colour

FOR

BEFORE & AFTER SHOW DRINKS

I

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She's Gotta Have It 11

22 minutes

I

Well that's what she said, so what could I do only take her to lunch at TheCarvery in the

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arm of In9 Players

>0raphy Queers Auction Company

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Gosia Dobrowolaka, Basil Clarke, Warren Coleman, Scott Bartie Jane Castle Duncan Sinclair Robert Reynolds, Duncan Sinclair Australian Rim, Television and Radio School, 8 West Street, North Sydney, NSW 2060

about itself, film fiction, dreams versus reality, fame and music. lerandanold «the form of a double bill in which a young opera singer fy to realize their dreams.

Grand Parade Hotel. After home-made soup, fresh seafood platter followed by lemon cheese-cake (Jack, the Head Chef carved some succulent roast beef for myself) she started to talk to me again. I guess I'll have to keep taking her to lunch there. Well it sure beats a silent BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. Who was she? Oh! MADONNA.

57

I


>:tESCOES OF DIEGO RIVfciiA

FRANKIE & JOHNNY

Michael Camerini

Liam O'Neill

USA

Ireland

Colour

1987

Colour

1986

35 minutes

20 minutes

i

Dermod Moore, Andrew Connolly, Bill MacMahon, Deirdre Kelly, Paul Lane, Rachel Burrowes Robert Belton Des Irvine Liam O'Neill Liam O'Neill, 40 Parnell Square, Dublin 1

Leading Players

Photography Editing Producer Production Company

Frankie and Johnny are friends. Frankie works in a Pet’Sh0PJohnny is between situations. Life goes on until Johnny takes up employment of dubious legality. To help his friend, Frankie becomes involved, and their lives are changed forever.

Photography Editing Producer Production Company

Dirk Bakker, Gary Becker Paul Marcus Michael Camerini Michael Camerini for Founders Society, Detroit Institute of Arts, c / o Cine, _ 1201 Sixteenth St., NW, Washington DC 20036

footage of the artist at work and at play.

HEADLABYRINTH I

Udo Gorisch West Germany 1987 Black & White

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24 SULLIVANS QUAY CORK

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Tel. 021 317660

RESTAURANT LUNCHES & EVENING MEALS Teas, Coffee & Snacks • Wine Licence

Leading Players

Joachim-Paul Rob, Ute Janssen, Schirin Schulz-Jarek, Atik Noorzai, Ralph Walter Photography Ralph Gellwitzki Editing Udo Gorisch Producer Take It Films Production Company Take It Films, Lindenstrasse 66, 4000 Dusseldorf, West Germany A man wanders aimlessly through the corridors of his mind LTf rih°n^d by hlS lma9inin9s- Terror overcomes him as he searches for a way-out which will prove to be non-existent. 58

F

BOOKSHOP New & Secondhand Books, Magazines, etc.

NATURAL FOOD STORE Whole Foods, Fresh Fruit & Organic Vegetables, Local Dairy Produce, etc.

OPEN

RESTAURANT: 12 to 6, Monday, Tuesday & Saturday, J to 9, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday CAFE: 12 to 9, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday UNWAGco DISCOUNT - A WORKERS'CO-OP.


ICED Craig McCall 1986

Britain

Co.

15 minutes

12 minutes

1 Leading Players

I

Photography Editor Producer Production Company

Richard Ryan, Peter Silverleaf, Lesley Casey, Sam Smart Cameron Whitlie Tom Peirce Tom Peirce Bournemouth & Poole College of Art & Design, Wallisdown Road, Poole, Dorset BH12 5HH, England

Atale set on ice, an old story told in a stylised manner. The visions and thoughts of an ice-hockey player and gang member, shedding the delusions of adolescence.

INTERNATIONAL SWEETHEARTS OF RHYTHM

Leading Players Photography Editing Producer Production Company

Myriam Moutillet, Michael Toppings Stephane Ricard Christian Fluet Michel Ouellette Agent Orange Inc., 1178 pl. Phillips No. 204, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

1959. At night. A young man pursues a woman he has seen at the swimming-pool. He follows her to an aquarium; in the dark passages, fish and amphibians in large glass tanks. Later, in the downtown area, he enters an apartment building, takes the elevator, rings at a door. The blonde woman he has been following opens the door. The young man is a salesman, he is demonstrating a new defoliant.

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Greta Schiller, Andrea Wiess USA

1986

Colour, Black & White

30 minutes

I

PEMBROKE STREET, CORK. Telephone: (021)276575

fl

restaurant and nightclub

’’otography Siting toducer *Port Agents

Ronald K. Grey Allan Berliner Greta Schiller Cinema of Women, 31 Clerkenwell Close, London EC1R OAT

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'Sweethearts were an unique, mult'.'rac’^,Tbe^?(^jred\he with a sound and personality alltheir (^ws before fewest extensively, braving the s®gr®9 , clubland where iding for Washington DC, then into Harl up after the •'nes stretched around the block. The ba . the troops, |Which they had spent touring Europe ent sweet memory lingers on.

59

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STORY

A

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live water Victoria Lewis USA Colour 1987

Sally Potter 1986 Britain

Colour

15 minutes

18 minutes

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Photography

Christopher Li

Sound Recordist

David Sperling

Producer Production Company

Frankin Simeone Cymru Films, 1370 Sanchez, San Francisco, Ca 94131, USA

Live Water is an informative look at the phenomenon of water­ divining or 'dowsing' and the people who practise it. The film sets up a confrontation between scientists who are vehemently opposed to the idea of 'dowsing' and 'water witches' who continue to nonchalantly produce the evidence against the odds. The edge is often humorous.

LIVING WITH AIDS Tina DiFeliciantonio USA

1985/86

Awards

Photography Editing Producer Production Company

Colour

24 minutes

Best Documentary Short, Palo Alto Film Festival; The Top Prize, Oberhausen Film Festival; Best Student Documentary, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences; Student Academy Award, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Frances Reid Tina DiFeliciantonio Tina DiFeliciantonio Tina DiFeliciantonio 128 Linda Street, San Francisco, Ca 94110, USA

Leading Players Photography Editing Producer Production Company

Jacky Lansley, Lol Coxhill, George Yiassoumi Belinda Parsons Budge Tremlett Nancy Vandenbergh Sally Potter in association with the British Film Institute and Channel Four Television, 29 Rathbone Street, London W1, England

While Britain decides who are its political allies, Europe or the United States, three characters decide to take action. They do so in the manner of a technicolour musical comedy set against famous London locations

THE LOSS ADJUSTER Mole Hill Britain

1987

Leading Players Photography Editing Producer Production Company

Colour

11 minutes

Roger Sloman, Matthew Scurfield, Arthur Hewlett, Nicholas Pritchard, Natalie Forbes, Joanna Dickens Ian Wilson Paul Edmunds Julain Roberts Creative Film Makers Ltd. in association with British Screen and Film Four International, 60 Charlotte Street, London W1P 2AX

llar-9e dress factorY-The owner dies in the fire. The loss adjuster is thainaurance company to investigate the heavy insurance claim.

support. The film documents°he last SJT? pr.aTct,cal and emotional

an^the audiPn?A iIiSt‘?SUran2e cla,mu,s resolved in Guinevere's favour, anS i'ndeeYof the 9U"' °'

60


L0U HARRISON: 'Cherish, Conserve, Consider, Create' £rjc Marin, Director/Producer/Editor USA 1986 Colour 28 minutes

l! II

making waves

Jenny Wilkes

Britain

1987

Leading Players

I

11 minutes

i

Awards

I-

Colour

Photography Music Production Company

Bronze Apple, National Educational Film Festival; Cine Eagle 1987; Focus Award 1987 Eric Marin with Kevin White Lou Harrison Eric Marin, 2315 Grant Street No. 7, Berkeley, Ca 94703, USA

The film impressionistically presents the life and music of American composer and instrument-builder Lou Harrison.Film­ maker Eric Marin blends the styles of the impressionistic film with the more traditional interview documentary to highlight Harrison's long and prolific career and his explorations in the area of 'new music'. Interwoven are excerpts of music, voice­ overs and on-camera statements by Harrison, John Cage, Virgil Thomson and Harrison's longstanding collaborator, Bill Colvig.

Enda McCallion 1987

Producer

Production Company

Some retired ladies are going on a coach trip and are surprised when the newcomer to their group arrives with a man. He is introduced as her son, but the ladies find this hard to believe as he never leaves her side for a moment. Doris is particularly curious and takes the opportunity to get to know him better one night. But here the story takesan unexpected turn. The holiday ends as he is whisked off early in the morning by his mother, leaving Doris to explain herself to the ladies in the coach on their way home.

MAN OH MAN

MADELAINE Ireland

Photography Editor

Sheila Hancock, Kenneth Cranham, Lila Kaye, Maggie Holland, Pat Keen, Terry John, Joyce Irvine, Neil McGrath Kenneth MacMillan William Diver, from a short story by Clare Boylan Some Retired Ladies On A Tour Ann Wingate Production Pool in association with British Screen and Film Four International, 60 Charlotte Street, London W1V 2AX

Colour

17 minutes

J. Clements USA 1987 Colour

18 minutes

*

Leading Players Photography Producer Production Company

Charlie Roberts, Maura Kealy, Pat Nolan, Michelle Houlden Robert Belton Enda McCallion The Robozo Brothers, Ros-na-Ri, Ballmacarry, Buncrana, Co. Donegal, Ireland

An old man stands knee-deep in the sea. From the blue hessian sack he holds, he pulls out a spotted dress and spreads it on the water. It is a ceremony of sorts. Walking by the wash, he comes across a dead seagull. He puts the carcase in his sack. Suddenly he stops. Ahead lies a sodden dress he had earlier released. The tide has returned it. He feeds it into his sack and hurries home. The spotted dress hangs on a line by the window. Flashback: the old man and his lover on the beach, she in a spotted dress.

Photography Kinciad Jones Producer J. Clements Production Company High Tide Productions, 207 O'Keefe, Menlo Park, Ca 94025, USA J. Clements is a feminist film-maker who has grown, in her own words, 'increasingly frustrated with the anger, blame and resentment that has so easily been placed onto men'. Politically and personally, she felt that the time had come to try to understand the lives of men in the light of the cultural conditioning which is so harmful to their lives and well-being. Hence, this film.


MUYBRIDGE REVISITED George Snow Director/Animator Britain 1986

Colour

5 minutes

Triskel Cafe TRISKELARTS CENTRE

Production Company British Film Institute in association with Channel Four Television, 29 Rathbone Street, London WIP1AG, England

Film Festival Food OPEN ALL HOURS

Muybridge Revisited consists of the re-animation of Muybridge loops cut with experimental videographics of the people and buildings of Fulham in London.

Telephone 272022 Ext 4

NORTH Maxim Ford Britain

1986

Colour

37 minutes

LOAFERS BAR I

Photography Editing Producer Production Company

Maxim Ford Alan Mackay Bob Davis Trade Films Ltd., 36 Bottle Bank, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear, NE8 2AR, England

Once the rivers of north-east England were arteries of the British Empire, their banks teeming with its industry. Now they drain a still and dying landscape. Brute surgery, operated in distant boardrooms and exchanges, only hastens decline. New infusions of lifeblood capital - latterly from the Far East - don't begin to stem the industrial haemorrhage. A once vigorous labour movement appears enfeebled. North is a highly visual essay set to a specially composed musical score. A range of images —familiar and unfamiliar, often innovatively filmed using time-lapse, double-exposure and slow-motion techniques - combine in a colourful montage to present an overview of the region's history and ~eve'°Pment and to explore its contemporary contradictions and paradoxes.

ki

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PIRATES Julian Richards Wales

1987

Colour

38 minutes

RED GROOMS: Sunflower In A Hothouse Thomas L. Neff USA

I*

Awards

Special Jury Commendation, Munich Film Festival William Vaughan, Ross Foley, Simon Foy, Graeme Gordon, Russell Nash Ian Richards Julian Richards Bournemouth & Poole College of Art & Design Bournemouth & Poole College of Art & Design, Wallindown Road, Poole, Dorset, England

Leading Players

Photography Editing Producer

Production Company

1986

Colour

21 minutes

Photography

Steve Sinclair

Editing

Barry Rubinow

Producer

Louise Lequire Cine, 1201 Sixteenth Street, NW, Washington DC 20036, USA (202) 785-1136

Production Company

Clayton is 'The Rebel', tough and street-wise, a teenage hero but an adult reject; Alun is The Brains', a college boy, shy and naive; Liam is The Bodybuilder*, strong-willed and confident. When all three find themselves working for a small-time crook, the story takes an unexpected and hilarious twist.

Red Grooms is a prolific artist who combines traditional painting and sculpture elements into a form he calls 'Picto-sculpturama'. This film, the first in-depth study of Groom's work, melts reality with Groom's pieces, set to an original jazz score.

RAINBOW WAR

RIG ATONI

Bob Rogers USA 1986 i

'I

Colour

Directed, produced, edited and photographed by

20 minutes

Finbarr O'Riordan Ireland/Britain

1987

Colour

9 minutes

J

Awards Screenwriters

Photography Editing Music Production Company Export Agents

Best of Festival, Houston International Film Festival Mark Nowadnick, Alan Monro, Andy Gaskill, Bob Rogers Reed Smoot

Marshall Harvey

Production Company

Silver Falls Films, 3 Pretoria Road, Plaistow, London E13

A freestyle narrative recounting the tale of one morning in the life of a young Dublin rock musician living in London.

David Spear Bob Rogers & Company Cine, 1201 Sixteenth Street, NW, Washington DC, 20036, USA

Three imaginary kingdoms, one red, one blue, and one gold, fight a war using paint. The film examines what happens when techno­

logy brings culture into competition. 63 '■i


SHARKY'S PARTY

SHAG Buck Brinson USA 1985

16 mm

32 minutes

Colour

Greg Woodland Australia 1985

Colour

29 minutes

lcoME

I

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-ZScript Photography Editing Executive Producer Sound Production Company

I

Export Agents

Rick Sebak Buck Brinson Elaine Cooper Rick Seback Joe Bowie Co-Production of South Carolina Educational Television, and The South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation & Tourism Cine, 1201 Sixteenth Street, NW, Washington DC 20036, USA

A film about a social'dance, like the jitterbug, called the 'shag', which people in the south-eastern U.S. still do. Using historic clips and photographs, and new footage of the dance, the film­ makers show the history of the dance, explain its ties to the Carolina beaches, and show why the 'shag' has been named South Carolina's official State Dance.

SHORE LEAVE 1987

Photography Editing Producer Production Company

David Argue, Jo Kennedy, Rainee Skinner, Kim Deacon, Wayne Jarratt, David Sandford Stephen Dobson Sara Bennett Peter Lawless Lawless Enterprises, 9 Edward Street, East Balmain, N.S.W. 2081, Australia

After six months in a mental hospital, Sharky returns home to a party where he is the supposed guest of honour. After a brief welcome home, Sharky is abandoned by his friends, tangles with the dealer Leif over unfinished business, loses a new-found girl­ friend, falls victim to a heroin overdose .... butthen there is the nurse, Regina, who rescues Sharky and waltzes him off into the night. Will our hero find love, sex and happiness with Regina ? We can only speculate ....

SNOOKLES Juliet Stroud

Allen Irvine Britain

Leading Players

Colour

38 minutes

USA 1987 Colour 3 minutes

Producer Juliet Stroud Production Company Juliet Stroud, c/o Cine, 1201 Sixteenth Street, NW, Washington DC 20036 A heartwarming animation. Inspired by a little songbird, a baby dragon bursts into song. A film to fire the imagination.

Leading Players

Photography Editing Producer Production Company

Phil Daniels, Joanne Whalley, Bryan Pringle, Eddie Tudor-Pole Sean Van Hales Simon Bealey Alex Usborne National Film and TV School, Beaconsfield, Bucks, England

a beaUCt^rbdursCtran:en^tS^udb 64

by hisMyra,


ROBERT VICKREY: Lyrical Realist Richard Camp USA

1986

Colour

28 minutes

16 mm

H

Photography Editing Producers ^Production Company

Richard Camp Peter Odabashian Richard Camp, Philip Eliasoph, Scott Vickery Cine, 1201 Sixteenth Street, NW, Washington DC 20036, USA (202) 785-1136

A portrait of the celebrated egg-tempera painter, Robert Vickery. His unique works reveal an enchanted realm of children, nuns and office workers wandering through the labyrinths of contem­ porary society. Filmed on location in the artist's Cape Cod studio and in his favourite Manhattan neighbourhoods.

ROSA, THE POLICEMAN'S BEAUTIFUL WIFE | Rosa, die schone Schutzmannsfrau L Dagmar Brendecke ■West Germany

1986

Colour

12 minutes

DOWN BY LAW nov 5/6: GINGER & FRED nov 12/13

TENUE DE SOIREE

nov 19/20 BRAZIL^ nov 26/27

DEATH IN A FRENCH GARDEN ■ "tar -

dec 3/4 [ TURTLE DIARY

dec 10/11J

TROUBLE IN MIND dec 17/18 |

MY LIFE AS A DOG

Thurs & Fri nights 8p.m.

Admission: £2/£1.50(uwgd);

Club Membership: ing Players

43tography ing iucer Auction Company

Adriana Aitaras, Hans Martin Stier, Frank Rediet Hans Rombach Dagmar Brendecke, Karin Viesel Dagmar Brendecke Dagmar Brendecke Xantener Strasse 18,1000 Berlin 15

kf'fete,,s the storY of one night: a woman, two men and •s with outer appearances and emotions. An expressionistic gro £ ' Jen ln the year 1913 by Mynona, is connected with a visual story from

£1 for 12 months

TRISKEL ARTS CENTRE TOBIN Street

off South Main St

SEASON TICKET(8films) £12. £9(uwgd)

Dagmar Brendecke

65


tribute

TAKING THE STAGE Noeleen Grattan Rritain

Colour

1987

Photography Editing Executive Producer Production Company Export Agents

William Farley Black & White USA 1986

31 minutes

Denis Cullum Nick Adams Noeleen Grattan, Nick Adams Futuretrack Films Cinema of Women, 31 Clerkenwell Close, London EC1R OAT

Taking The Stage, a documentary about women in music, starts with young women learning to play instruments and then explores the experiences of a selection of women musicians from diverse areas of popular music. The excitement of live concert footage is set against backstage reflections on both positive and problematic aspects of being women in music. The film ends on a hopeful note of inspiration for women to get up and 'take the staged

Awards Producer Production Company

7 minutes

Sinking Creek Award Winner William Farley William Farley Film Group, 2600Tenth Street, Suite 415, Berkeley, Ca 94710, USA

Tribute is an affirmative view of life and death. The images are almost without exception from the 1950's: a ship launching, a woman dancing, a tree falling - impersonal subjects which are nonetheless icons and metaphors for our most personal thoughts. Emerging from darkness, the images propel ustowads remembrance of purity and conflict - the essence of our collective experience of being alive.

TIME OF THE ANGELS Faith Hubley USA 1987

Colour

10 minutes

deLacy J loose 74 OLIVER PLUNKETT STREET CORK, IRELAND Telephone (021)270074

MARY KATE WOMBLES 73 OLIVER PLUNKETT STREET, CORK Telephone 270074 Producer Music Animation Production Company

Faith Hubley William Russo Hubley, George Hubley, William Littlejohn The Hubley Studio, c/o Cine, 1201 Sixteenth Street, NW, ' Washington DC 20036, USA

view of the life of today's Mexican children.

M

iaaores,anda

(next door to de-Lacy House)

Cork s Newest and Smartest Restaurant Delicious Top Quality Food served by our Pleasant Staff at a Reasonable Price OPENS AT 10.00 for MORNING COFFEE nnr M*2™ ^.00-3.00 p.m. L EXTENSIVE MENU, A LA CARTE MENU EACH EVENING

Open all day every day and ’till late every weekend 66

d.'


From

The Royal Cob

t Art

Four Animations

HELLO DAD

dolphins A lyrical study of dolphins in motion

A pop music video animated to the track 'Hello Dad - I'm In Jail' by Was Not Was

h .

Animation 1 Running Time [ Music Rostrum Camera

Ian Andrew 4 minutes Brian Eno, Harold Budd Isabelle Perrichon

STRANGERS IN PARADISE I Adam and Eve find themselves confronted by the 20th century's shopping-centre mentality

Animation Running Time ; Sound

Animation Running Time Music

Christoph Simon 1 minute 30 seconds Was Not Was

HAIDARA The sun is in Cancer, the moon is in Pisces, out of water all life comes Animation Running Time Music Rostrum Camera Editing

Christoph Simon 4 minutes Jali Musa Jawara Isabelle Perrichon Klaus Witting

Andy Stavely 8 minutes Alan Smyth

67

i


Cinema and Ireland By Kevin Rockett and Luke Gibbons Variety theatre owner, Dan Lowrey, brought cinema to Ireland in April 1896 when he screened a few short films in what is now Dublin's Olympia Theatre. Cork, though, had to wait until Lowrey opened his Variety Theatre there a year later. Film shows were a great success in both loca­ tions and shortly thereafter every town in the country was introduced to moving pictures. It was not until 1910, though, that sustained fiction film production in Ireland began. During the following decade fiction films by native and foreign film-makers gave Ireland its most productive and interesting period of film-making until the 1970's and 1980's.

The American company Kalem made a wide range of Irish films in Kerry from 1910 onwards. These films include historical dramas such as Rory O'More (1911) and Ireland The Oppressed (1911) and adaptations of three of Dion Boucicault's plays, Arrah-na-Pogue (1911), The Colleen Bawn (1911) and The Shaughraun (1912). During 1916-20 the most important native film company of the silent period, the Film Company of Ireland, also made a compre­ hensive selection of Irish films including feature-length versions of Charles Kickham's Knocknagow (1918) and William Carleton's lV/7/y Reilly And His Colleen Bawn (1920).

These films are of interest not just in their own right but because of the close relationship between the film-makers and the evolving nationalist movement. As a result these film-makers were often in conflict with the British authori­ ties over the content of their historical films in particular. In these films contemporary political battles were indirectly addressed in a manner sympathetic to the nationalist cause. Sometimes this support was direct as in, for example, the production of a film to advertise the republican loan bond campaign in 1919. It was directed by John MacDonagh (whose brother Thomas was executed after the 1916 Rising) and featured Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith. It had unorthodox distribution when IRA Volunteers arrived at cinemas with the film in one hand a gun in the other and ordered the projectionist to substitute the loan bond film for the film being shown. Before the authorities were alerted the Volunteers would have disappeared with the film. One of the reasons that the conservative leadership of the Free State Government in the 1920's almost completely ignored native film-making may have been because of this association of film with radical nationalism. Few films were made in Ireland in the 1920's: the one notable exception was the first War of Independence feature, Irish Destiny (1926). Set in 1921, it featured a reconstruction of the burning of Dublin's Customs House, Ireland's first special effects spectacle. In Irish Destiny a love story is set against the background of the war between the IRA and the Black and Tans. The Government's belated response was to approve the TiTk ng u°f a tourist/landscape silent short, Ireland. Although approved in 1926, it was not completed until uwlro nrS ater’ Such ,on9 de,ays by ,rish governments nol ev intbheC«01?e a-n a'l't0°-familiar feature of Irish film an aid toS ?? dTdes'Film was P" ™a ri ly seen as devp?nn ; ? ? LC devel°Pment if film-making was to ?ndus?£ Thi! an1- '* Yh°Uld be treated as just another 1930’s within thP nCV became firmly established in the

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technicaTskUlsvver^available'to^^ke^eatures'fo^distribution abroad, the Department of Industry and Commerce under Sean Lemass reasoned, then it was necessary to bring in foreign expertise and foreign capital to help develop an Irish film industry. If the State could help secure this capital with loans or grants then it ought to. It was, of course, an early still-primitive version of the policy most clearly identified with Lemass after he became Taoiseach in 1959. By then he had achieved his film policy's main, if not sole, objective. Having failed in 1946 and 1947 to gain Cabinet approval to invest in a film studio he finally succeeded when in 1958 Ardmore Studios was opened with the aid of a grant and a loan from the State. Lemass left no one in any doubt about his view of the function of the studios when he officially opened Ardmore. It would make films for export, he declared, a theme the newspaper head­ lines echoed.

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During the following twenty-five years under both private and State ownership this industrial, export-orientated policy proved its limitation even if the cultural value of film is ignored. As had been amply demonstrated as early as the 1930's economically peripheral countries such as Ireland could not compete directly with the capital intensive American and British film industries. Indeed, even Britain failed ignominiously in trying to break into the U.S. mass film market in the 1930's and 1940's, a lesson ignored by Irish policy-makers. Additionally, Ardmore Studios opened at a time when the use of studios was declining worldwide and, as Louis Marcus put it in 1967, the Studios were 'irrelevant' to the development of Irish film-making and a distinctive Irish film culture. Film-makers such as Louis Marcus had been struggling to make films in Ireland in spite of this national policy not just in the 1960's but since the 1930's. Drama-documentaries and documentaries sponsored by Government Departments and semi-State agencies as part of information campaigns provided the irregular and poorly-financed film work for native film-makers. Even when the critically acclaimed Gael Linn-produced War of Independence actuality films Mise Eire (1959) and Saoirse? (1961) were screened throughout the country it did not alter the State policy of favouring 'international' commercial features. It took another twenty years of struggle before native film­ makers won a statutory Irish Film Board with a policy favouring indigenous film-making. As the film-makers themselves had so amply demonstrated in the 1980's, once given even the meagre resources available to the Film Board not only could they make films of special interest to Irish and foreign audiences but they could raise three times the amounts of money available to the Board from private investors and television.

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It is not for such forgotten titles as Ambush In Leopard Street or A Guy Called Caesar, two films made at Ardmore, for which Irish film-making in the early 1960's is remembered, but for Mise tire and Saoirse ? By contrast, the first half of the 1980's will be remembered for such films as Anne Devlin, Pigs, The Woman Who Married Clark Gable and Eat The Peach, amongst others, all of which were aided by the Film Board. It will not be remembered for such films as the largely British-produced The Fantasist (1986). But these are the types of films which may only be made in Ireland in the future now that the Film Board is being wound up after six productive years. We only have to look back on how Ireland has been most prominently represented in world cinema to remind our­ selves that the predominant screen images of Ireland and the Irish were not made by Irish but by British and American film producers. Due to the Irish State's failure to provide for a native film industry popular representations of Ireland on the screen have, with some notable exceptions, been left to the predominantly commercial designs of

these foreign film companies. In this regard, Ireland's peripheral status has not simply hampered the possibilities for a native film industry but, in its absence, has also made possible a set of cinematic representations which have tended to sustain a sense of cultural inferiority. For whether it be rural backwardness or a marked proclivity for violence, the film-producing nations of the metro­ politan centre have been able to find in Ireland a set of characteristics which stand in contrast to the assumed virtues of their own particular culture.

A study of British and, to a lesser extent, American films, for example, indicates how a recurring image of the Irish as inexplicably violent has lodged itself within the cine­ matic imagination. This is most marked when the attempt to elevate 'the Troubles' to the higher plane of'the human condition' only succeeded in projecting an image of the Irish as a people trapped by Fate, Destiny, or, indeed, by the mythic 'Irish character'.

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It is, of course, not just stereotyped accounts of Irish history or Northern Ireland which produces this negative, backward image of Ireland. Landscape and the natural world in general is used to neutralise representations of Ireland as a social, political and economic community. For foreign film-makers, if not for Irish ones in general, 'Irishness' is not located in the modern, industrial world but in natural scenery and a mythic view of the West of Ireland.

While contemporary Irish writers, for the most part, have moved on (or turned their back on) the preoccupations of the literary revival, visual culture is still constrained by the romantic legacy of the Celtic Twilight. Much of the energy of recent Irish cinema has come from an attempt to challenge these views of Ireland as a rural paradise. In some cases this has meant focussing on hitherto neglected areas of Irish society such as urban decay (Joe Comerford's Down The Corner, Cathal Black's Pigs) or the pervasive role of

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uiic Church in regulating sexual morality and - (Kieran Hickey's Criminal Conversation, Cathal Diack's Our Boys, Tommy McArdle's The Kinkisha, Robert Wynne-Simmons' The Outcasts}. In other cases, it has meant burrowing back into the core of that romantic mythology, confronting the disabling images of the past head on. The work of Joe Comerford (Traveller), Bob Quinn (Caoineadh Airt Ui Laoire, Atlantean, Budawanny), Thaddeus O'Sullivan (On A Paving Stone Mounted) and particularly Pat Murphy's Maeve and Anne Devlin, seeks to challenge dominant stereotypes of Ireland from within, exposing the complex association between landscape, violence, community, sexual identity and the past.

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CINEMA IN IRELAND, by Kevin Rockett, Luke Gibbons and John Hill, will be launched at the Cork Film Festival on Friday, 2nd October, 1987. Published by Croom Helm, the book is divided into two parts. Part One, History, Politics And Irish Cinema is by Kevin Rockett; Part Two, consists of Images Of Violence by John Hill, and Romanticism, Realism And Irish Cinema by Luke Gibbons. The book 'repre­ sents a major breakthrough in the Irish cultural debate^ one reviewer observed. Another stated that 'not only does it become the standard work on Irish cinema; no serious student of 'British Cinema' can afford to ignore it'.

In recent years, the influence of popular culture itself has been worked into Irish cinema, and films such as The Woman Who Married Clark Gable (Thaddeus O'Sullivan) and Eat The Peach (Peter Ormrod) testify to the grip exercised by Hollywood and the Anglo-American culture industry on the Irish imagination. Unfortunately, the recent abolition of the Film Board seems designed to perpetuate this tendency to adopt our self-image from outside sources. Events like the revitalised Cork Film Festival, the establishment of a critical base for Irish film culture, and, above all, the efforts of the film-makers themselves demonstrate that whatever the short-sighted policies of the Government, an indigenous Irish film industry is here to stay. Kevin Rockett, Luke Gibbons

CINEMA AND IRELAND Kevin Rockett, Luke Gibbons &John Hill The first comprehensive study of the cinema in Ireland and Ireland on film

★ A complete history of native Irish film making from the silent period to the 1980s. ★ Thought-provoking examination of politics and the Irish cinema. ★ Penetrating analysis of foreign and native images of Ireland ana the Irish on the cinema screen.

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This exciting volume has already been welcomed by authorities in the field:

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. .

“A major breakthrough in the Irish cultural debate ... The overall impact is one of tremendous intellectual excitement. ” Richard Kearney, Editor of The Irish Mind

“Not only does it become the standard work on Irish cinema: no serious student of‘British Cinema ’(however defined) can afford to ignore it. ” Charles Barr, Author of The Ealing Studios S'A™t42lS, 288 «« ‘"uslrJted Published: October 1987 70

Other Irish Studies titles from Croom Helm: THE IRISH IN THE VICTORIAN CITY Edited by Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley “Closely argued and scholarly, the collection is nevertheless accessible and lucid... an important book. New Society £25.00 0-7099-3333-9 320 pages

AND IRISH AUSTRALIA: Studies in Cultural and Political History Edited by Oliver MacDonagh and W.F. Mandle f35.00 0-7099-4617-1 304 pages


Acknowledge The Directors would iikr : ..hank the following individuals and organisations tor their support of the 32nd Cork Film Festival, and for their assistance in providing films. Nigel Algar, British Film Institute Gerry Crofton, Columbia-Cannon-Warner (Dublin) Helen Dobrensky, F.I.A.P.F. peter Flood, Channel Four Television Gary Hamilton, Selena Crowley, Liz Wilson, Australian Film Commission Barbara Hathaway, National Film & Television School Jill Henderson, The British Council John Hogarth, Anne Boyle, Alasdair Nicholson Enterprise Pictures Steve Perrin, Columbia-Cannon-Warner (London) John R. Donohoe, Columbia-Cannon-Warner (London) Angie Mulhall, The Arts Council of Great Britain Vassily Pletyukhin, Sovexportfilm (London) M. Schalikov, Goskino Dmitri Molodtsov, Embassy of the USSR (Dublin) Liz Reddish, BFI Production Division Kenneth Rive, London Cannon Films George Pilzer

Daniel Battsek, Palace Pictures Lissy Bellaiche, Danish Film Institute Katlin Vidor, Hungarofilm Eileen McNulty, Cinema of Women Daniel Guerlin, Futura Film Tony Safford, Sundance Institute Tony Bloom, Mainline Pictures Bob Quinn, Cinegael Ian Andrew, Royal College of Art Laurence Safir, Safir Films Doris Chase Robert Beeson, Artificial Eye

We would particularly like to thank John McEvoy of Radio Telefis Eireann for his invaluable assistance.

Radio Telefis Eireann: Bob Collins Liam Miller Bill Harpur Noel Ryan Michael Casey Gareth Hudson

Karen Holmes, Film Arts Foundation S. R. Tamahane, CINE Fliss Coombs, Zenith Suzie Wong, China Film Society, London Bill Stephens, Bridget Pedgrift, Film Four International Danilo Diaz ICAIC (Havana) M. Jacques Leglou, Les Films du Volcan John Ranelagh, Channel FourTelevision K Francine Brucher, Metropolis Film Peder Bach, Odense Symfoniorkester I Gunther Wullf Boger Doyle Joe Johnston, Ron Reafs, United States Information Service l Paddy Gaggin, Cork Film Services | Filmbase I Irish Film Institure It Muiris MacConghail, Michael Algar, Grace Carley, Rosemary Delaney, Bord Scannan na hEireann k. Peter Murray, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery The Management & Staff of Cork Opera House | Maggie Lattuca, Montreal Film Festival L Marian Massoni, New York Film Festival . Archie Tate, ICA Projects Amber Films

FESTIVAL CLUB The Festival Club has always been a central part of the celebrations during the Film Festival. The venue this year is MAGUIRES in Paul Street, conveniently situated between Triskel and the Opera House. It's the place to go to meet the stars, directors, visitors and your friends. Bar extension, of course, until 1.30 a.m. each night except Saturdays.

All Festival-goers are welcome, and admission is free to Season Ticket holders.

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Index Page

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51 Academy Leader Variations 51 Ain't No King Cornin' 51 And She Was 51 Animating Art 20 Argentina: The Broken Silence 20 Aubrey Williams: The Mark Of The Hand 21 Babette's Feast 52 Belfast Experience, The 52 Berlin Blue 53 Blast Furnace In Autumn 53 Boom Babies 17 Boundaries Of Film-Making 21 Breaking Silence Breakthrough: A Portrait Of Aristides Demetrios 22 Broken Noses 22 Budawanny 23 Cadence 54 Cage, The 54 Celebration Of Light 54 Cerridwen's Gift 55 Chela 23 Clash Of The Ash 24 Close Shave, A 55 Closed Circuit 56 Coast To Coast 24 Crash 56 Cuba - In The Shadow Of Doubt 25 Diamond King, The 57 Dolphins 67 Doris Chase, Focus On 13 Erminia's Opening Night 57 Faces Of The Enemy 26 Four Adventures Of Reinette And Mirabelle 26 Frankie And Johnny 58 Frescoes Of Diego Rivera 58 Friendship's Death 27 Gardens Of Stone 28 Gathering Of Old Men, A 28 Girl Of Good Family, A 29 Great Wall, A 29 Haidara 67 Handsworth Songs 30 Headlabyrinth 58 Hello Dad 67 Home Of The Brave 30 Hungry Feeling, A 31 Iced 57 Inside Job, An 9 International Sweethearts Of Rhythm 57 Introducing Agent Orange 57 Invocation: Maya Deren 32 Kitchen Toto, The 33 Letters From A Dead Man 34

Page Lie Of The Land, The 34 Little Attorney, The 35 Live Water 60 Living On The Edge 35 Living With AIDS 60 London Story, A 60 Loss Adjuster, The 60 Lou Harrison: 'Cherish, Conserve, Consider, Create' 61 Madelaine 61 Magdalena Viraga 38 Magic Toyshop, The 38 Making Waves 61 Man Oh Man 61 Mum, How Do You Spell Gorbatrof? 39 Month In The Country, A 39 Muybridge Revisited 62 North 62 Paradise Camp 40 Partition 40 Passion Of Joan Of Arc, The 11 Passion Of Remembrance, The 41 Pirates 63 Plumbum or A Dangerous Game 41 Rainbow War 63 Red Grooms: Sunflower In A Hothouse 63 Riders To The Sea 42 Rigatoni 63 Robert Vickrey: Lyrical Realist 65 Robinsonade or My English Grandfather 42 Rosa, The Policeman's Beautiful Wife 65 Shag 64 Sharky's Party 64 Sherman's March 43 Shoreleave 64 Snookles 64 Strangers In Paradise 67 Square Dance 43 Successful Man, A 44 T Dan Smith 45 Taking The Stage 66 Theme, The 45 Three Bewildered People In The Night 46 Time Of The Angels 66 To The Four Winds 46 Tomasso Blu 47 Travelling North 47 Tribute 66 Waiting For The Moon 48 Walldriller, The 48 Wild Mountains 49 Witness To Apartheid 49 Yankee Samurai 50 Yeelen / Brightness 9


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-DISCOTHEQUE-BAR-RESTAURANTConcession prices to Film Festival Ticket Holders Open 7 nights. Monday - Wednesday (incl) women free admission until 11.30 p;m.

16, OLIVER PLUNKETT STREET, CORK. ph. 270870


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CIFF Programme 1987 by Cork International Film Festival - Issuu