When You’re Strange: A Film About The Doors

Mon 22 Feb / Screen 1 / 6.30pm

Director: Urszula Antoniak

2009 / Ireland/Netherlands / 85 minutes

Principal Cast: Stephen Rea, Lotte Verbeek

Urszula Antoniak’s impressive first feature, a sombre meditation on the nature of isolation, has already won several international awards, including the Golden Calf at the Nederlands Film Festival. Nothing Personal follows a young Dutch woman, Anne (Verbeek), through an achingly beautiful Connemara landscape. We know very little about her, but we know enough: she is an immigrant, she is broke and she doesn’t mind being alone.

She finds a house and revels in the comforts suddenly afforded to her; simple things like beds with sheets. It transpires that the house is home to Stephen Rea’s hermit-like widower, who offers her food in exchange for work. They both prefer solitude, but this itself bonds them, fostering a relationship.

Antoniak’s camera perfectly captures the tranquil beauty of Connemara, and this, along with the purity of the relationship at the film’s core make it something very personal indeed.

Rory Bonass, JDIFF

Mon 22 Feb / IFI 1 / 6.30pm

Director: Conor Horgan

2010 / Ireland / 52 minutes

Director Conor Horgan will be in attendance at this screening

One War

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

The Dancer and the Thief

Mon 22 Feb / Cineworld 17 / 6.30pm

Director: Tom DiCillo

2009 / USA / 87 minutes

Photo Courtesy of Elektra Records

Fans of the iconic Los Angeles band The Doors will find much to love in this time capsule, composed entirely of footage shot between the group’s formation in 1965 and mercurial frontman Jim Morrison’s untimely death in 1971. Tom DiCillo’s revealing documentary is a treasure trove of live performances, TV appearances, home movies, studio footage, and a never-before-seen independent film made by and starring Morrison.

DiCillo (Living In Oblivion, The Real Blonde), a veteran of independent cinema, avoids the cliché of nostalgic ‘talking head’ interviews, immersing us in the band’s rise from the clubs of Hollywood to America’s living rooms. With narration by Johnny Depp, When You’re Strange offers a rare glimpse of Morrison and bandmates John Densmore, Robby Krieger, and Ray Manzarek discovering their art and their place within a time of great political and cultural turbulence.

Los Angeles Film Festival

Mon 22 Feb / Light House / 6.30pm

Director: Vera Glagoleva / 2009 / Russia / 85 minutes

Principal Cast: Aleksandr Baluyev, Natalya Surkova, Michael Khmurov, Natalia Kudryashova Director Vera Glagoleva will be in attendance at this screening.

One War begins in May 1945 with the arrival of Maxim Prokhorov (Khmurov), a Major in the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, on a small island off the northern coast of the U.S.S.R. This is where a group of Russian women and their children have been exiled from their homes in German-occupied territories – the children are the result of relationships with the enemy. Following the surrender of the German army, Major Prokhorov has been ordered to remove the women and their children from the island. For most of the women, it’s a mystery as to what their evacuation will entail, or where they will be sent. The drama derives from the increasingly palpable tensions that develop between the women and their military overseers, as well as the men’s emotional conflicts between obeying their distasteful military orders and honoring their more humane sentiments.

Cineaste Magazine

This screening is supported by Langtons Hotel in Kilkenny.

Mon 22 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 8.30pm

Director: Fernando Trueba 2009 / Spain / 126 minutes

Principal Cast: Ricardo Darín, Abel Ayala, Miranda Bodenhofer, Ariadna Gil

Director Fernando Trueba will be in attendance at this screening

Oscar-winning filmmaker Fernando Trueba (Belle Epoque) adapts a novel by celebrated Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta for his first fiction film in seven years. Legendary bank robber Vergara (Dárin) is getting out of prison after five long years and is looking forward to a quiet, uneventful life together with his wife and son - whom oddly he hasn’t heard from in years. His resolve is tested when he meets Angel (Ayala), a young thief who insists the two join up to score the biggest heist of all time. Though tempted, he resists until he finds out that his beloved wife has gone off with a millionaire and his son wants to change his last name. Enter Victoria (Bodenhofer) a graceful and mysteriously mute dancer living in a conservatory. She captivates Vergara and Angel, drastically changing their lives.

‘Part crime melodrama, part urban Western and part social conscience drama, with dashes of pulp and pastiche… A likable genre-bending tale of crime and love among the lost and marginalized of post-Pinochet Chile.’

Barry Byrne, Screen International

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How would we honestly react if we witnessed a miracle? That’s the question on Austrian writer-director Jessica Hausner’s lips as she casts a deeply ironic eye over the ties between commercialism and spiritual healing in this brilliant and satisfyingly illusive Francophone thinkpiece. It sees Testud’s paraplegic pilgrim looking to the divine for physical welfare and achieving unexpectedly lifechanging results. The subdued and slyly comic register of the performances and the gorgeous, deadpan shooting style (reminiscent of Kaurismäki) are the only tools Hausner gives us to decipher her tale, leaving you to decide whether modern religion is a sham or a saver of souls.

David Jenkins, Time Out

‘With pitch-perfect sincerity, filmmaker Jessica Hausner nestles Lourdes between religious satire and redemption story… As one woman ponders, “If God is not in charge, who is?”, to which a friend replies, “Do you think there’ll be a dessert?’

Sundance Film Festival Programme

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Lourdes

Mon 22 Feb / Cineworld 17 / 8.30pm

Director: Werner Herzog

2009 / US / 121 minutes

Principal Cast: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Fairuza Balk

Mon 22 Feb / Screen 1 / 8.30pm

Director: Jessica Hausner

2009 / Austria/France/Germany / 99 minutes

Principal Cast: Sylvie Testud, Leá Seydoux, Bruno Todeschini, Elina Löwensohn

Neither remake nor sequel to Abel Ferrara’s 1992 work, Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant is an anarchist film noir that seems, at times, almost as unhinged as its protagonist. Fuelled by Nicolas Cage’s delirious performance, its maniacal unpredictability reminds you just how tidy and dull most crime thrillers are these days.

For New Orleans cop McDonagh (Cage), the ordeal begins during Hurricane Katrina, when he injures his back committing a reckless act of decency. For his pains, McDonagh acquires a promotion and a drug habit, which combines with his gambling addiction and his fondness for the company of call-girl Frankie (Mendes) to make him a ripe target for an internal-affairs investigation.

Nutty as the movie sometimes is, its brutality and confusion are never played for laughs. It has a warped sincerity, and an energy that keeps going and going… To the break of dawn!

A. O. Scott, New York Times

Michael Dwyer championed Marco Tullio Giordana’s six-hour epic back in 2004; the viewing public were duly rewarded with a rarity; a film truly deserving, on every imaginable level, of the description ‘epic’. This masterly drama follows an Italian family, the Caratis, from the summer of 1966 to the spring of 2003. Their experiences are set against decades of turbulent change in Italy – the flooding of Florence in 1966, the terrorist activity and industrial unrest of the 1970s, the exposure of appalling scandals in the state mental institutions, Sicily’s struggle against the Mafia, the equivocal attitude of Italian politicians to corruption… And several key World Cup games for the national football team. The film’s triumph lies in the exemplary skill with which it deals with the intimate and personal, while simultaneously addressing themes of national identity, political upheaval and the inevitability of mortality. The Best of Youth remains a truly exhilarating cinema experience.

Rory Bonass, JDIFF

The Best of Youth

Tues 23 Feb / Screen 1 / 1.00pm

Director: Marco Tullio Giordana

2003 / Italy / 358 minutes

Principal Cast: Luigi Lo Cascio, Alessio Boni, Adriana Asti, Sonia Bergamasco

The Ape

Krister (Olle Sarri) wakes up on a bathroom floor, filthy and disoriented. He hurries out of the house and rushes off to work, frantically rearranging his day over his cellphone. What follows is a long day’s journey into an increasingly dark night, with each new revelation more shattering than the last…

It would be criminally unfair to both filmmaker and audience to divulge the plot of Jesper Ganslandt’s astonishing new feature. The film rests on unexpected turns and a pervasive, relentless sense of unease. Even the lead actor, who is featured in every scene, didn’t know what was going to happen from one scene to the next.

Cairo Time

Jameson Gala

Tues 23 Feb / Light House / 7.00pm

Director: Ruba Nadda

2009 / Canada / 88 minutes

Principal Cast: Patricia Clarkson, Alexander Siddig, Elena Anaya, Tom McCamus

Tues 23 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 4.00pm

Director Jesper Ganslandt 2009/ Sweden / 81 minutes

Principal Cast: Olle Sarri, Francoise Joyce, Niclas Gillis, Sean Pietrulewicz

Brand New Life

In his insistence that we follow a character we would normally dismiss, Ganslandt confirms that he is an artist to be reckoned with. He may in fact be the most daring of the filmmakers to emerge from Sweden in the last decade.

Outliving Dracula: Le Fanu’s Carmilla

Tues 23 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 6.00pm

Director: Ounie Lecomte

2009 / France/South Korea / 92 minutes

Principal Cast: Kim Sae-ron, Park Do-yeon, Ko An-sung

Director Ounie Lecomte will be in attendance at this screening

Striking a perfect balance between the vague, distant memories of childhood and the accuracy of a rigorous script, Ounie Lecomte’s directorial debut is a remarkable film. Lecomte’s warm approach to directing envelops this bare, ascetic story of an abandoned youth with sincerity as genuine as it is devastatingly moving.

A brand new pair of shoes shines on the feet of nine-year-old Jinhee (Sae-ron). Little does she know that those shoes are destined to walk her into a new life: the next day Jinhee will be taken to an orphanage and unceremoniously abandoned there in the hope somebody will adopt her.

A Brand New Life is endowed with striking intensity and effortless sincerity. From her luminous happiness in the beginning, to the disbelief and overwhelming sadness of her days at the orphanage, Kim’s stern little figure will dwell in the audience’s consciousness for a long time.

Giovanna Fulvi, Toronto International Film Festival Programme

World Premiere

Tues 23 Feb / IFI 1 / 6.30pm

Directors: Fergus Daly and Katherine Waugh 2010 / Ireland / 88 minutes

Directors Fergus Daly and Katherine Waugh will be in attendance at this screening

Irish writer J.S. Le Fanu’s creation, the female vampire Carmilla, has established a fascinating lineage through filmic adaptations, arguably inspiring a more radical and transgressive creative wellspring than her literary successor Dracula. Made under the Arts Council’s Reel Art Initiative, Fergus Daly and Katherine Waugh’s engrossing new film explores the radical influence of Carmilla on generations of filmmakers - from Carl Dreyer’s extraordinary Vampyr to Roger Vadim’s Blood and Roses, from the Gothic kitsch of Hammer through to films produced within a visual art context.

Featuring interviews with leading film scholars and artists influenced by Le Fanu, this film seeks to redefine his critical importance as an Irish writer whose ghostly traces remain profound and enigmatic.

Gráinne Humphreys, JDIFF

Cairo Time delves into the emotionally fraught territory of the fleeting affair. In a tremendous performance, Patricia Clarkson plays Juliette, a magazine editor. Vaguely dissatisfied with her job, Juliette follows her Canadian diplomat husband, Mark (McCamus), to Cairo. When she arrives, however, she learns that he’s been held up in the Palestinian territories due to escalating tensions in the region.

Enter Tareq (Siddig), an old friend of Mark’s who becomes Juliette’s companion and guide, introducing her to various Egyptian customs. The city’s grandeur comes alive as he leads her through the beguiling streets of Cairo. While they wander side by side, Juliette senses an alluring kindness and charm in Tareq, and he is equally taken with her. As she waits for word on her husband’s imminent arrival, the two struggle to control their obvious mutual attraction.

Directing her own screenplay, Ruba Nadda manages to avoid the stereotypical pitfalls such an undertaking could have easily delivered. And Clarkson so owns her role that it’s difficult to imagine another actor having taken it on. Like a sensuous vacation, Cairo Time’s sweet melancholia will linger long after the final credits roll.