JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
13-23rd February 2014
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THURSDAY 13 – SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY
CONTENTS
BOOKING INFORMATION PICK YOUR FILMS SCHEDULE DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD OPENING GALA: CALVARY FILM LISTINGS WORKSHOPS & EVENTS CLOSING GALA: THE STAG FILM INDEX
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY
BOOK NOW BOOK ONLINE AT JDIFF.COM CALL US ON 01 687 7974 POP INTO (A) FILMBASE (B) CINEWORLD (C) LIGHT HOUSE
DON’T MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY TO EXPERIENCE THE BEST OF CONTEMPORARY CINEMA! Box Office Details Filmbase Curved Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 Opening Hours from 21 Jan to 23 Feb Mon to Sat (10am–6pm) Sun 9, 16 & 23 Feb (12pm–6pm) Cineworld Parnell Street, Dublin 1 Opening Hours 8 to 12 Feb (2pm–6pm daily), 13 - 23 Feb (12pm–8.30pm daily) Light House Market Square, Smithfield, Dublin 7 Opening Hours 8 to 12 Feb (2pm–6pm daily), 13 - 23 Feb (12pm–8.30pm daily) Please note the festival is for over 18s only. JDIFF operates as a members club. Membership is included in the ticket price. Please note: the Jameson Cult Film Club is by invitation only. For full details of our ticketing terms and conditions and for additional information on the festival, check our website at jdiff.com. A €1 booking fee applies to all phone and online bookings.
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Ticket Prices Afternoon Screenings €7* Evening and Weekend Screenings €11 Special Presentations €11–15 Galas €18 * For screenings before 6pm Mon–Fri only Special Passes And Discounts Season Ticket €245 Industry Events Industry Events €10–€50 (see individual event listing) Free industry events must be booked through the box office, in person, or by phone. Multi-Purchase Discounts* Purchase 5 tickets for €50 Purchase 10 tickets for €90 * Individual screenings only. Excludes galas and special presentations. Must be purchased in one transaction. A 10% discount for Students, OAPs, those in receipt of disability benefits and the unwaged is available by booking tickets in person. Proof of eligibility must be provided. Tickets can be collected up to one hour before the screening in Filmbase, or at the relevant cinema 30 minutes before the screening. You will be required to present the booking confirmation email or the card you paid with to receive your tickets.
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THURSDAY 13 – SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
PICK YOUR FILMS OFFICIAL SELECTION: INTERNATIONAL
GALAS & SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS 20 Feet from Stardom A Long Way from Home Borgman Calvary (Opening Gala) Eliza Lynch: Queen of Paraguay Frost/Nixon Jaws No Limbs No Limits The Stag (Closing Gala) Surprise Film Tracks The Zero Theorem
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The 100 Year Old Man... A Long Way Down A Street in Palermo A Thousand Times Goodnight A Touch of Sin A World Not Ours Afternoon Delight Bad Hair Before the Winter Chill Big Sur Blue Ruin The Book Thief Cannibal Cas & Dylan Circles Club Sandwich Concrete Night Concussion The Congress The Double Dual Exhibition The Fake Finsterworld Gabrielle The Gambler Gare du Nord The Girl from the Wardrobe Goddess The Golden Dream The Grand Budapest Hotel The Grand Seduction Half of a Yellow Sun Hide Your Smiling Faces Ida International Shorts 1 & 2 It’s All So Quiet The Lady Assassin La Paz Lasting Locke Lovely Louise The Lunchbox The Major The Militant Miss Violence Mood Indigo Mother of George Mystery Road New World Nordvest
104 48 95 48 108 31 88 105 59 25 47 24 76 78 53 116 36 93 79 94 102 34 114 84 36 106 77 93 108 95 31 83 37 46 49 15 37 85 47 57 109 72 35 24 22 41 74 22 25 30 80
Our Sunhi The Past Pioneer The Priest’s Children Reaching for the Moon The Reunion The Rocket Roxanne Salvo Soldate Jeanette Standing Aside, Watching Starred Up Stranger by the Lake Those Happy Years Trap Street Two Lives Under the Skin The Unspeakable Act Violette Wakolda We Are The Best! The Wonders Yozgat Blues
103 56 110 117 30 87 117 118 81 92 49 85 41 76 92 45 80 79 105 54 87 50 40
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
OFFICIAL SELECTION: IRISH A Vision Come into the Gardens The Devil’s Pool The Food Guide to Love Gold The Inquiry JDIFF Shorts The Last Days on Mars Living in a Coded Land Love Eternal Out of Here Run & Jump Stay
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THURSDAY 13 – SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY
OUT OF THE PAST
78 38 59 55 107 102 23 57 77 72 109 107 40
Dawn of the Dead The Deer Hunter Fellini’s Roma Gun Crazy The Matchmaker Messiah Mode in France The Model Couple Mr Freedom Muhammad Ali, the Greatest Safety Last! The Swimmer The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?
REAL TO REEL
98 55 44 94 56 18 19 18 19 19 115 45 116 19
A Story of Children and Film Antarctica At Berkeley Autoluminescent Bad Brains Beyond the Edge – 3D Deceptive Practice Deconstructing Dad Design is One Family Band Good Ol’ Freda Haus Tugendhat Inequality for All Lawrence of Belgravia Looking for Light Los Wild Ones The Square Visitors Wrecking Crew
83 44 114 33 33 46 106 33 35 33 104 103 53 32 73 54 84 34 32
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THURSDAY 13 – SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THURSDAY 13TH FEB
FRIDAY 14TH FEB
SATURDAY 15TH FEB
INTERNATIONAL SHORTS 1 Light House 1 3pm
MESSIAH IFI 1 3.30pm
NO LIMBS NO LIMITS Odeon 2 11am
COME INTO THE GARDENS Light House 1 7pm
REACHING FOR THE MOON Light House 1 12pm
A LONG WAY FROM HOME Savoy 2 7.30pm
NEW WORLD Cineworld 8 12.45pm
STAY Cineworld 8 8pm
ANTARCTICA Cineworld 8, 2pm
A WORLD NOT OURS Cineworld 12 1.45pm
YOZGAT BLUES Light House 3 8.30pm
TWO LIVES Light House 1 3.30pm
MISS VIOLENCE Cineworld 12 8.30pm
THE SWIMMER Light House 3 4pm
STRANGER BY THE LAKE Light House 1 9pm
BEYOND THE EDGE 3D Cineworld 8, 4pm
INTERNATIONAL SHORTS 2 Light House 1 5pm CALVARY Savoy 1 7.30pm
MOTHER OF GEORGE Light House 3 4.20pm FROST/NIXON Cineworld 9 6.15pm JDIFF SHORTS Light House 1 6.30pm THE MILITANT Light House 3 6.30pm THE BOOK THIEF Cineworld 8 6.30pm BIG SUR Light House 1 9pm THE MAJOR Light House 3 9pm MYSTERY ROAD Cineworld 8 9pm
WRECKING CREW Light House 2 2pm THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL Cineworld 9, 2pm EXHIBITION Light House 1 2.15pm VISITORS Cineworld 8 3.30pm THE LUNCHBOX Cineworld 12 3.45pm DESIGN IS ONE Light House 3 4pm
MONDAY 17TH FEB
TRACKS Savoy 1, 11am
CIRCLES Light House 2 4pm
FELLINI’S ROMA Light House 1, 1pm DECONSTRUCTING DAD Light House 2 1.30pm
FAMILY BAND Light House 3 6pm HIDE YOUR SMILING FACES Cineworld 8, 6pm BLUE RUIN Light House 1 6.15pm
WAKOLDA Light House 1 6.15pm
THE DEER HUNTER Savoy 2 6.30pm THE MODEL COUPLE IFI 1 6.30pm BAD BRAINS Light House 2 6.30pm THE FOOD GUIDE TO LOVE Cineworld 9 8pm THE PAST Light House 1 8.15pm
LA PAZ Cineworld 12 6.15pm
THE MATCHMAKER Cineworld 12 8.30pm
A LONG WAY DOWN Cineworld 9 8pm
CONCRETE NIGHT Cineworld 8 5.30pm
IDA Light House 1 8.15pm
IT’S ALL SO QUIET Light House 3 6pm
A THOUSAND TIMES GOODNIGHT Cineworld 8 8.15pm
HALF OF A YELLOW SUN Cineworld 5 6.30pm
INEQUALITY FOR ALL Cineworld 8 6pm
LOS WILD ONES Cineworld 12 6.15pm
GABRIELLE Light House 1 4.45pm
LAWRENCE OF BELGRAVIA Cineworld 12 6pm
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SUNDAY 16TH FEB
LASTING Light House 2 9pm THE LAST DAYS ON MARS Cineworld 8 9pm
STANDING ASIDE, WATCHING Light House 3 8.30pm THE WONDERS Cineworld 12 8.30pm BOOK ONLINE AT JDIFF.COM
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THURSDAY 13 – SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY
TUESDAY 18TH FEB
WEDNESDAY 19TH FEB
THURSDAY 20TH FEB
FRIDAY 21ST FEB
SATURDAY 22ND FEB
SUNDAY 23RD FEB
JAMESON CULT FILM CLUB: JAWS
MUHAMMAD ALI, THE GREATEST Light House 2 4pm
A STORY OF CHILDREN AND FILM Light House 3 4.30pm
SOLDATE JEANNETTE Light House 3 4pm
BORGMAN Savoy 1, 11am
20 FEET FROM STARDOM Savoy 1 11am
MR FREEDOM Light House 2 4pm MODE IN FRANCE Light House 2 6pm
THOSE HAPPY YEARS Cineworld 12 6pm
WHO ARE YOU, POLLY MAGGOO? IFI 1 6pm
CANNIBAL AUTOLUMINES’NT Cineworld 12 6pm THE DEVIL’S POOL IFI 1 6.15pm BEFORE THE WINTER CHILL Light House 1 6.15pm LOVELY LOUISE Cineworld 8 6.30pm LIFE FEELS GOOD Light House 1 8.30pm LOVE ETERNAL Cineworld 12 8.30pm LOOKING FOR LIGHT Light House 2 8.45pm MOOD INDIGO Cineworld 8 8.45pm
Light House 1 6.15pm GARE DU NORD Cineworld 8 6.15pm A VISION IFI 1 6.30pm LIVING IN A CODED LAND Light House 2 6.30pm CAS & DYLAN Cineworld 9 6.30pm THE UNSPEAKABLE ACT Cineworld 12 8.30pm
THE CONGRESS Light House 1 8.45pm UNDER THE SKIN Cineworld 9 8.45pm NORDVEST Light House 2 9pm SALVO Cineworld 8 9pm
THE SQUARE Cineworld 8 6.15pm THE GRAND SEDUCTION Light House 1 6.15pm FINSTERWORLD Light House 3 6.30pm THE LADY ASSASSIN Cineworld 12 6.30pm
ELIZA LYNCH Savoy 1 8pm STARRED UP Cineworld 8 8.30pm WE ARE THE BEST! Light House 1 9pm THE REUNION Light House 3 9pm AFTERNOON DELIGHT Cineworld 12 9pm
TRAP STREET Light House 3 6pm CONCUSSION Cineworld 8 6.15pm THE GIRL FROM THE WARDROBE Light House 1 6.30pm THE DOUBLE Cineworld 9 6.30pm GUN CRAZY Light House 3 8pm THE GOLDEN DREAM Light House 1 8.30pm A STREET IN PALERMO Cineworld 8 8.30pm THE ZERO THEOREM Cineworld 9 9pm
DAWN OF THE DEAD The Sugar Club 10pm
THE INQUIRY Light House 1 12.30pm DUAL Cineworld 8, 1pm
THE FAKE Light House 1 12.30pm
OUR SUNHI Light House 3, 2pm
AT BERKELEY Light House 2 1pm
HAUS TUGENDHAT Light House 1 2.45pm
SAFETY LAST! Savoy 1 2pm
THE 100-YEAROLD MAN… Cineworld 8, 3.15pm
THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG Light House 1 3pm
GOOD OL’ FREDA Cineworld 5 3.30pm BAD HAIR Light House 3. 4pm VIOLETTE Light House 1 5.30pm
CLUB SANDWICH Cineworld 8 3pm SURPRISE FILM Savoy 1 5pm
THE GAMBLER Light House 3, 6pm
THE PRIEST’S CHILDREN Light House 1 5pm
DECEPTIVE PRACTICE Cineworld 8, 6pm
THE ROCKET Light House 3 5pm
RUN & JUMP Cineworld 12 6.15pm
ROXANNE Cineworld 8 5pm
GOLD Savoy 2, 6.30pm
THE STAG Savoy 1 7.30pm
GODDESS Cineworld 9 6.30pm A TOUCH OF SIN Light House 1 8.15pm OUT OF HERE Light House 3 8.30pm LOCKE Cineworld 8 8.30pm PIONEER Cineworld 12 8.45pm
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THURSDAY 13 – SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
SPONSORS TITLE SPONSOR
INDUSTRY PARTNER
FUNDER
OFFICIAL AIRLINE PARTNER
OFFICIAL PARTNERS
OFFICIAL PRINT MEDIA PARTNER
OFFICIAL PRINT TRANSPORT PARTNER
OFFICIAL POST PRODUCTION PARTNER
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OFFICIAL CINEMA PARTNER
OFFICIAL VEHICLE PARTNER
OFFICIAL RADIO PARTNER
OFFICIAL FESTIVAL HUB
OFFICIAL HOTEL PARTNER
OFFICIAL ONLINE PARTNER
OFFICIAL FESTIVAL CLUB
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THURSDAY 13 – SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY
SUPPORTERS
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FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
BOOK ONLINE AT JDIFF.COM
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THURSDAY 13 – SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY
DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD WELCOME TO THE JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL WHICH, THIS YEAR, CELEBRATES ITS 12TH EDITION. After a strategic planning review, the festival embarks on an ambitious three-year plan which will establish screenwriting at the centre of our programming policy. This year’s event will explore the craft and dynamics of contemporary screenwriting and celebrate the work of both Irish and international practitioners. A new section – Write Here, Write Now – will present a series of public events and discussions for both the general public and aspiring writers. In this initial year we are delighted to welcome the acclaimed writer Peter Morgan (The Deal, The Queen, Frost/Nixon and Rush), who will discuss his career in a public interview and host a masterclass with Irish screenwriters. Another new initiative for 2014 is our Guest Curator slot: each year a different curator will be invited to join the festival director in the creation of the festival programme. The guest director will be encouraged to bring new ideas and overlooked films to Dublin. For this inaugural event we are delighted to welcome (award-winning director) Allison Anders and Tiffany Anders, who co-founded and programmed the Don’t Knock the Rock Festival in LA. They have put together a fascinating series of music films and will introduce their choices, as well as participating in a public event with their Irish counterparts. The season will form the core of a larger programme of documentary which represents the best of both Irish and international work.
As ever, the festival will welcome an exciting list of guests from around the world, including Terry Gilliam, Jean-Marc Barr, Richard Ayoade, James Fox, Claire Simon and Jason Priestley. Oscar-winner Richard Dreyfuss will attend a special screening of Jaws which we will screen as our Jameson Cult Film Club film. Our Film-maker in Focus will be acclaimed photographer and film-maker William Klein, who presents a season of his work. Klein is best known for his spectacular photographic portraits of international cities, but this season will introduce Irish audiences to the wonderfully witty film work of this multi-talented, Paris-based artist. For a film experience guaranteed to send you out of the cinema with a smile, may I suggest the restoration of Harold Lloyd’s 1923 masterpiece Safety Last! in the Savoy Cinema, introduced by Lloyd’s granddaughter Sue, with musical accompaniment by the maestro Neil Brand. In a word, unmissable! Finally, a huge thanks to all my colleagues, our festival sponsors and supporters, the brilliant filmmakers whose work we celebrate and, of course, our wonderful audiences. I hope you find much to enjoy in this year’s programme. Gráinne Humphreys Festival Director
2014 will be an exceptional year for Irish cinema and we kick off this year’s festival with a truly special film. John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary will spearhead the 24 Irish films we will be screening over the next 11 days. On the final day the uproarious new Irish comedy The Stag brings to a close a strong line-up of Irish work showcasing the huge talent that exists in Ireland, both in front of and behind the camera.
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THURSDAY 13 – SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY
CHAIRPERSON’S WELCOME IT IS MY GREAT PLEASURE TO WARMLY WELCOME YOU TO ANOTHER YEAR OF THIS WONDERFUL FILM FESTIVAL IN OUR CAPITAL CITY.
Our Director, Gráinne Humphreys, has programmed an enticing line-up of films, continuing to challenge, entertain and excite our audience. As ever, Gráinne has previewed many hundreds of films, in tens of locations, to ensure we have the best of Irish and world cinema at our festival.
The enormous effort in making our festival an annual success is shouldered by a committed and dedicated staff and a good-humoured squadron of volunteers. Led by Jackie Ryan, this team delivers at the highest level each year and the festival is a credit to them.
This festival enjoys the unique and invaluable support of our title sponsor, Jameson. Now, in its twelfth year, our remarkable partnership with Jameson sets a gold standard for business-to-arts sponsorship in Ireland, and I look forward to developing and evolving this strong and fruitful relationship into the future.
I would particularly like to acknowledge and thank the Board of Directors, who govern and advise with a balance of experience, wisdom and common sense. The directors give unstintingly of their time and expertise, and the festival is indebted to them for their commitment.
I would also like to acknowledge the enduring support, since the outset of the festival, of two key State agencies: The Arts Council/An Comhairle Ealaíon and The Irish Film Board/Bord Scannán na hÉireann. Indeed, we are deeply grateful to all our sponsors and supporters.
Of course, it would all be in vain were it not for the festival audience, which turns out year upon year to attend this great event. We are enormously grateful for your loyalty and I wish you a wonderful festival. Gaby Smyth, Chairperson
JAMESON INTRODUCTION IT IS A GREAT JOY TO WELCOME YOU TO THE 12TH JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
2014 marks the 12th Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. We at Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard are very proud to be sponsors of this prestigious event, which contributes to showcasing Dublin as a cultural hotspot around the world. It moulds together the charming aspects of our home town Dublin – the heritage, the storytelling, the creativity and the sociability. We can think of no better time or place to share a glass of Jameson with friends, old and new! As part of this year’s festival, we are delighted that Oscarwinner Richard Dreyfuss will be joining us for a special Q&A session at the Jameson Cult Film Club screening of Jaws. It has proved to be a hugely popular event since its launch and cements Jameson’s association with film, delivering an unforgettable screening experience for all those who attend. Film as an art form has been close to the heart of the Jameson brand for a very long time. Jameson is involved with some of the most dynamic film festivals around the world, including the Jameson Empire
Awards in London. Internationally, we also work with other film projects like ‘Done in 60 Seconds’ which gives movie lovers the chance to retell their favourite film in 60 seconds. We are extremely proud to be supporting Jameson First Shot, a cooperation with Kevin Spacey and Trigger Street to give young, aspiring film-makers the chance to write and direct a short film for an international audience. Sometimes I get asked the question ‘why is everyone at Jameson so passionate about film?’ My answer is simple: it goes back to the heart and soul of the brand. The art of storytelling, in a pub, with friends, is still very much alive and one way for this heritage to be expressed is storytelling through film. Today, we are proud to have a globally successful brand, with Jameson nights like this happening everywhere, from Tokyo to São Paolo, but nothing beats gathering in Dublin! So I hope to see you over the festival and that you join me in raising a glass to the eternal art of storytelling. Sláinte! Anna Malmhake Chairman & CEO, Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard
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FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THURSDAY 13TH FEBRUARY
INTERNATIONAL SHORTS JDIFF presents two hand-picked selections of the best international shorts. PROGRAMME 1 Thurs 13 Feb / Light House 1 / 3pm / 75 minutes Directors: Various 2013 International
RHINO FULL THROTTLE (Germany) NASHORN IM GALOPP
THE NIGHTSHIFT BELONGS TO THE STARS (Italy)
SLOMO (US)
L’ASSENZA (UK)
Director: Erick Schmitt Writers: Stephan Muller Erik Schmitt. 15 minutes Bruno is making his way through the city, collecting patterns, spaces and surfaces.
Director: Edoardo Ponti Writer: Erri De Luca 24 minutes Matteo (Enrico Lo Verso), and Sonia (Nastassja Kinski) meet in a hospital on the eve of their respective open heart surgeries.
Director: Josh Izenberg. 16 minutes Depressed and frustrated with his life, Dr John Kitchin abandons his career as a neurologist and moves to Pacific Beach.
Writer-director: Jonathan Romney. 20 minutes A man becomes obsessed with his double in an Italian film. L’Assenza (The Absence) is about the fascination cinema exerts on us.
PROGRAMME 2 Thurs 13 Feb / Light House 1 / 5pm / 80 minutes Directors: Various 2013 International
SUMMER VACATION (Israel)
SPRINGTIME (US)
THE FLOGSTA ROAR (Sweden) FLOGSTAVRÅLET
WALKING THE DOGS (UK)
Writer-directors: Tal Granit, Sharon Maymon. 22 minutes Sea, sun, island, a family on vacation. And all Yuval wants is to get the heck out of there.
Writer-director: Erica Liu 13 minutes Xiao Zhu, an 86-year-old pork sung maker, quits her shop in rural Taiwan to head off to the big city in search of her ‘springtime’.
Writer-director: Johan Palmgren. 18 minutes The student campus Flogsta was built in Uppsala, Sweden in the 1970s. Ever since then, the Flogsta roar has happened every evening at 22.00. All year round.
Director: Jeremy Brock Writer: Helen Greaves 27 minutes A Buckingham Palace guard attending to Queen Elizabeth’s room takes her dogs for a walk and while he’s away an intruder breaks in for a chat.
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THURSDAY 13TH FEBRUARY
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
OPENING GALA
CALVARY Thurs 13 Feb / Savoy 1 / 7.30pm / 100 minutes Writer-director: John Michael McDonagh 2013 Ireland Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Dylan Moran, Aidan Gillen With special guests John Michael McDonagh, Brendan Gleeson and Kelly Reilly
Set against the magnificent Mayo landscape, John Michael McDonagh’s new film shares two key elements with his hugely successful debut The Guard: a leading man and a dark sense of humour. But Calvary is a complex story with many tones and textures, by turns a Dostoyevskian morality tale; a dissection of contemporary Irish society, a murder mystery (from the point of view of the victim) and a fascinating character study with a towering, careerbest performance by Brendan Gleeson (Volta Award recipient, 2008). Father James Lavelle (Gleeson) is the priest in a small Mayo parish. One day, while hearing confession, he is told that he is going to be murdered … in one week. It’s a week in which Father James struggles to understand his death sentence, searching for hope and faith amongst his motley collection of parishioners – a community of lost souls and, it seems, potential murder suspects. A stunning turn by Gleeson leads a wealth of Irish talent including Chris O’Dowd, Dylan Moran, Kelly Reilly and Pat Shortt. Shot by award-winning cinematographer Larry Smith (Only God Forgives), and featuring a haunting score by Mayo-born composer Patrick Cassidy, Calvary is a work of savage ferocity and a wonder to behold. Gráinne Humphreys
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY
FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY HIGHLIGHTS FROST/NIXON WITH PETER MORGAN 6.15pm Page 21 MOTHER OF GEORGE 4.20pm Page 22 BIG SUR WITH JEAN-MARC BARR 9pm Page 25
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FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
DELIRIOUS FICTIONS THE FILMS OF WILLIAM KLEIN William Klein’s career has spanned over 60 years. After studying painting with Léger in post-war Paris, he was spotted by American Vogue and returned to his birthplace, New York, where he established himself as an influential fashion photographer and street documentarian. He remains one of the giants of 20th-century photography. Klein attributes the opportunity to begin making films to his association with people like Chris Marker and Alain Resnais. Since the 1960s he has made many feature films, documentaries and commercials. Imaginative, influential, anarchic and controversial, his subjects cover areas as diverse as Algerian folklore, Eldridge Cleaver, Muhammad Ali, Little Richard, Hollywood, The French Open and the French fashion world. Through his use of critique and satire he creates an audacious mode that infuses his fictional films with an expressionistic and unorthodox style of parody and social burlesque. With the support of the French Embassy in Ireland James Armstrong Lecturer in Visual Culture, NCAD Photos courtesy William Klein
There will be a public interview with William Klein on Thurs 20 February after the screening of Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, hosted by James Armstrong.
MESSIAH
THE MODEL COUPLE
Fri 14 Feb / IFI 1 / 3.30pm / 135 minutes Writer-director: William Klein 1999 US
Mon 17 Feb / IFI 1 / 6.30pm / 101 minutes Writer-director: William Klein 1977 US Cast: André Dussolier, Anémone, Zouc
Klein visually interprets Handel’s Messiah – with its tale of Christ’s birth, crucifixion, and ascension – as performed by numerous international choruses including the Dallas Police Choir, the Sugarland Prison Choir, a drug rehab choir in Harlem and the Lavender Light Gay and Lesbian Interracial Choir. Klein’s impressionistic visualization takes the viewer (and listener) all over the world and includes women boxers at the Taj Mahal, Las Vegas; a Paris Christmas party for the homeless; a Danish woman in a Bastille tattoo parlour; a graphic lynching in Liberia; a Spanish production of the crucifixion play and the Ministers of Muscle preaching the gospel across America. This is a deeply poetic and disturbing portrait of the dysfunctional family of man, told through a moving montage of the sacred and the profane. 18
The third of William Klein’s ‘delirious fictions’ (the others being Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? and Mr Freedom) prefigures the reality show. In all three films the television set is a motif through which the characters watch themselves and are watched and manipulated by others. The growing presence of celebrity culture, media surveillance and televisual hyperreality seems to dominate Klein’s fictional worlds. In The Model Couple, the French Ministry of the Future chooses two of the most average men and women to inhabit a prototype living space for the ideal ‘City of the Future’. Two psychosociologists subject the couple to various behavioural and emotional tests that are broadcast to the television audience. As the audience loses interest, the experiment descends into farce.
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY
MODE IN FRANCE
MR FREEDOM
Tues 18 Feb / Light House 2 / 6pm / 84 minutes Director: William Klein 1984 US
Tues 18 Feb / Light House 2 / 4pm / 97 minutes Writer-director: William Klein 1969 US Cast: John Abbey, Delphine Seyrig, Donald Pleasance
Klein returns to the fashion world after an extended hiatus with this free-form documentary. In twelve distinct tableaux, intended to showcase the work of the emerging couturiers of the 80s (including Jean-Paul Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld and Agnès B), Klein alternates between comedy, ballet, dramatisation, and pseudodocumentary. Anticipating the advent of Fashion TV, Klein juxtaposes segments and styles, beginning with an abbreviated history of women’s fashion, then cutting to footage of French pre-schoolers playing dress-up, Grace Jones performing a play in a g-string, and peep show booths doubling as confessionals for runway models. A humorous and analytical view of the French fashion scene, Mode in France is essential viewing for those interested in fashion and cinematic form.
Although he says that he has turned his back on America, Klein has continued to mine the American cultural cache. Mr Freedom was made in France during the heightened anti-Americanism of the 1960s. Banned by the French government and critically dismissed upon release, the film stands as a visionary popculture polemic attacking the US foreign policy of the time while deconstructing American ideology. Once again, Klein anticipates the rise of the superhero genre in film, subverting it with a pastiche of puppets, outrageous costumes, over-the-top theatrical sets, buffoonery and largerthan-life comic book representations and conventions. Excessive, kitschy and lots of fun.
MUHAMMAD ALI, THE GREATEST
WHO ARE YOU, POLLY MAGGOO?
Wed 19 Feb / Light House 2 / 4pm / 110 minutes Director: William Klein 1974 US
Thurs 20 Feb / IFI 1 / 6pm / 97 minutes Writer-director: William Klein 1966 US Cast: Dorothy McGowan, Jean Rochefort, Sami Frey
Klein’s masterwork evolved from his 1964-5 documentary Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee; a portrait of the young boxer Cassius Clay during his two fights with Sonny Liston. Ten years later and shot in colour, Muhammad Ali, the Greatest concludes with the legendary ‘Rumble in the Jungle’. Klein guides the camera lens through cultural and political moments that comment not only on the iconic personality of Ali, but on what that personality meant as a symbol of African American resistance in White America. The anarchic and inflammatory persona of the champ is manifested in a drama class in Harlem where the students are producing improvisations about Ali (then Cassius Clay) and in an interview with his mentor Malcolm X, filmed shortly before his assassination. The film is not merely a representation of one of the most important sports figures of the 20th century, but an entire sociopolitical landscape reflected by and mediated through the film’s auteur. BOOK ONLINE AT JDIFF.COM
William Klein worked for Vogue for over a decade. The fashion industry is a central motif in many of his films, although he claims to despise it. In this, his first feature film, he creates an art house parody positioned somewhere between the mockumentary and the moralistic fairytale. Vogue cover girl Dorothy McGowan stars as the Brooklyn-born supermodel Polly Maggoo. The quintessential ‘It-girl’, she is being followed by a French television crew and has become the objet du désir for reporter Gregoire (Jean Rochefort). Shot in high-contrast black-and-white cinematography and edited in a frenetic style, the film holds a mirror to celebrity and fashion. A cornucopia of technical styles and hyperactive art direction, Polly Maggoo remains one of William Klein’s best-known films. James Armstrong 19
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VOLTA PRESENTATION
On 20 December 1909, with help from friends in Trieste, James Joyce opened the Cinematograph Volta Cinema on Mary Street in Dublin. Nearly a century later, in 2007, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival established the Volta Award to recognise individuals who have made a significant contribution to the world of cinema. The Volta Awards have drawn some of the biggest names in film to our shores, including actors like Al Pacino and Martin Sheen, directors such as François Ozon and Paolo Sorrentino, and a host of famous industry names. Last year’s prestigious recipients were composer Ennio Morricone, actor-director Danny DeVito, actor Tim Roth, director CostaGavras and writer-director Joss Whedon. We are delighted to welcome Peter Morgan to Dublin for the presentation of his 2014 Volta Award and a special screening of Frost/Nixon.
receiving nominations in five categories at the 2013 Olivier Awards. His previous play, the Olivier and Tony Awardnominated Frost/Nixon, received critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic before being adapted into the Academy Award®-nominated film of the same name. Morgan’s many film credits include the award-winning The Last King of Scotland, which won the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; The Damned United; and Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, which starred Matt Damon. Morgan’s upcoming credits include the Hugh Hefner biopic Playboy, which is in development with Warner Bros. Pictures; and the television movie Christopher Jefferies, to be directed by Roger Mitchell. Morgan’s extensive television credits include the BAFTA Award-winning The Deal; The Special Relationship, which is the first part of Morgan’s Tony Blair trilogy; and the multi-award-winning Longford.
Peter Morgan is an international awardwinning writer for stage, screen and film. In addition to receiving Oscar®, Golden Globe and BAFTA Award nominations for his screenplays for Stephen Frears’ The Queen, Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon and, most recently, Howard’s Rush, Morgan has won a host of international awards. His most recent play, The Audience, which starred Mirren, was a West End smash hit,
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VOLTA PRESENTATION
‘a movie laced with tension, stinging wit and potent human drama’ Rolling Stone
FROST/NIXON Fri 14 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 6.15pm / 104 minutes Director: Ron Howard 2008 US Writer: Peter Morgan Cast: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon Nominated for five Academy Awards® including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay
Neither the title nor the subject matter prepares you for the pure fun of Frost/Nixon. Ron Howard’s movie is based on Peter Morgan’s play, which was based on the 1977 television interviews between British journalist David Frost and the disgraced former president Richard Nixon. You expect something dry, historical and probably contrived. But you get a delicious contest of wits, brilliant acting and a surprisingly gripping narrative. The premise of Morgan’s play is that Frost and Nixon desperately needed each other when they sat for a series of in-depth interviews three years after Nixon’s resignation. Frost was deemed a lightweight and bet his career (and his own money) on a blockbuster television special. Nixon wanted rehabilitation, and gambled that Frost would lob him softballs. As Nixon, Frank Langella is perfection. The character is generated from the inside out, not predicated on surface imitation or caricature. The writing is so good, the acting so powerful, that the film goes well beyond the courtroom drama into the territory of the classic history play. It is drama at a level one doesn’t often get in the movies. Philip Kennicott The Washington Post There will be a public interview with Peter Morgan after the screening
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MOTHER OF GEORGE This visually sumptuous drama finds a young Nigerian-American woman struggling to reconcile a new life and marriage in New York with the traditions of her homeland.
‘visually splendid’ The New York Times
Fri 14 Feb / Light House 3 / 4.20pm / 106 minutes Director: Andrew Dosunmu 2013 US Writer: Darci Picoult Cast: Danai Gurira, Isaach De Bankolé, Yaya Alafia
Acclaimed photographer-turned-director Andrew Dosunmu’s film opens with a heady rush of the sights and sounds of a vibrant, traditional Yoruba wedding. Ayodele (Isaach De Bankolé) and Adenike (The Walking Dead’s Danai Gurira) are being married, and only after the ceremony is it apparent that the event is taking place not in Nigeria, but in Brooklyn. A recent immigrant, Adenike soon discovers her new life is still dictated by the ways of her homeland, where wives are expected to conceive children, specifically boys, without delay. Months pass and, much to the chagrin of her domineering mother-in-law, Adenike doesn’t get pregnant. As the pressure mounts she makes a desperate decision, one that might save her marriage or tear it apart. Mother of George is a remarkable achievement for Dosunmu. Darci Picoult’s script is rich with detail and life, beautifully captured in award-winning cinematographer Bradford Young’s images. Together, the three have crafted an emotional, immersive experience that is a marvel from start to end. Philadelphia Film Festival
THE MILITANT EL LUGAR DEL HIJO Manuel Nieto Zas’ ironically-titled The Militant filters its reflection on political stagnation through a single, remarkable central character. The result is a powerful and thought-provoking film. The film is set in 2002, when Uruguay was undergoing strikes and the universities had effectively closed down. 25-year-old Ariel Cruz, played by non-professional Felipe Dieste, is called away from a students’ union meeting to learn that his father has died. Ariel heads for his home town of Salto for the funeral. He meets his father’s partner Selva (Rossana Cabrera), gets involved with the local students’ union, and finds a little romantic interest with Nadia (Leonor Courtoisie).
Fri 14 Feb / Light House 3 / 6.30pm / 121 minutes Writer-director: Manolo Nieto 2013 Uruguay Cast: Felipe Dieste, Rossana Cabrera, Leonor Courtoisie
Frustrated by the inability of the protesting students to do anything except go round in verbal circles, smoke weed and have parties, Ariel joins a hunger strike by protesting meat packers, which for the first time exposes him to the sharp end of economic hardship. It’s a comic, fish-out-of-water setup, but far more urgent themes are bubbling under the surface as Ariel ambles in apparent bafflement from one awkward situation to the next. Jonathan Holland The Hollywood Reporter
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JDIFF SHORTS Fri 14 Feb / Light House 1 / 6.30pm / 99 minutes Directors: Various 2013 Ireland JDIFF presents another hand-picked selection of the best Irish shorts.
Programmers: David Mullane, Kevin O’Farrell and Liam Ryan
BREAKFAST WINE
ATROPHY
RÚBAÍ
Director: Ian Fitzgibbon Writer: Kevin Barry 11 minutes They say it takes just three alcoholics to keep a small bar running in a country town, but what if you’ve only got two?
Director: Mairtín de Barra Writer: Matthew Roche 13 minutes Atrophy examines the sacrifices made in the name of development and the effect they have. A tale of old versus new, loss, friendship and an old farmer and his dog…
Director: Louise Ni Fhiannachta Writer: Anton Beag Ó Colla 11 minutes The First Holy Communion is fast approaching but, as an atheist, eight-yearold Rúbaí refuses to be a part of it.
MORNING
UISCE BEATHA
THE LEDGE END OF PHIL (FROM ACCOUNTING)
Director: Cathy Brady Writers: Cathy Brady, Sarah Woolner 20 minutes Mary wakes up on the sofa with a banging headache. Her morning routine is broken by a persistent reporter.
Director: Shaun O’Connor Writer: Tadhg Hickey 8 minutes Set in 1912, Uisce Beatha is the true story of Tom, a young man who leaves his home in rural Ireland to cross the ocean on the ill-fated Titanic.
Writer-director: Paul Ó Muiris 6 minutes Stuck outside looking in, Phil is forced to face the world he’s been ignoring. Now he must take a leap of faith or be trapped forever.
MECHANIC
4 BHANRÍON (4 Queens)
‘WHAT IS A SHORT FILM?’ PANEL DISCUSSION Fri 14 Feb /Red Room Light House / 5pm / €10 Irish short film-makers join two of the world’s leading short film programmers, Sharon Badal (Tribeca Film Festival) and Kathleen McInnis (Palm Springs International Film Festival), to discuss short film as an art and an industry.
Writer-directors: Tom Sullivan, Feidlim Cannon 15 minutes A mechanic at the end of his tether finds solace in old age…
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Director: Vittoria Colonna Writers: Vittoria Colonna, Eoin Rogers 15 minutes 4 Bhanríon (4 Queens) is a black comedy about four elderly sisters who play a game of poker to decide who will take care of their elderly mother.
JDIFF IRISH SHORTS RECEPTION See page 69 for details.
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THE BOOK THIEF A stellar cast including Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson brings to life the tale of a young girl who discovers that stories have extraordinary power to sustain the human spirit. Based on Markus Zusak’s best-selling novel, the film gives new talent Sophie Nélisse (Monsieur Lazhar, JDIFF 2012) the opportunity to shine in the lead role.
‘If there can be such a thing as a sweet, reflective fable about death and the Holocaust, The Book Thief is it’ Rolling Stone
Fri 14 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 6.30pm / 125 minutes Director: Brian Percival 2013 US Writer: Michael Petroni Cast: Sophie Nélisse, Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson
In 1938, near Munich, Rosa and Hans Hubermann take in nine-year-old Liesel. Kind Hans bonds with his foster daughter through their shared love of words as he teaches her to read her first book. Into this sphere of warmth and safety, amid the turmoil of Nazi Germany, comes Max, the Jewish son of Hans’ World War I comrade. Confined to the basement, Max asks Liesel each day to describe the outside world, encouraging her to make words her own as she grows into a young woman and a storyteller. This beautiful film is full of contrasts, balancing the innocent joys of childhood against the horrendous realities of a world at war. Mill Valley Film Festival
Winner, Audience Favourite Award, Mill Valley Film Festival
THE MAJOR MAYOR Writer-director Yuri Bykov’s The Major is a tense, handheld police thriller filled with scores of dirty cops, scenes of abrupt violence and a relentless, overriding sense of nastiness.
‘electric’ Variety
Fri 14 Feb / Light House 3 / 9pm / 99 minutes Writer-director: Yuri Bykov 2013 Russia Cast: Yuri Bykov, Denis Shvedov, Irina Nizina Winner, Best Feature Film & Best Director, Shanghai International Film Festival
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Set within a single 24-hour period, the action kicks off with commander Sergey Sobolev (Denis Shvedov) racing his SUV across icy country roads to join his wife, who’s giving birth at a clinic. Along the way, his car skids into a 7-year-old boy, killing him instantly. But rather than calling an ambulance, Sobolev takes the kid’s wailing mother Irina (Irina Nizina) hostage and phones a fellow officer, Pasha (Ilya Isaev), to clean up the mess. What follows is one very long day of unethical policing, as Sobolev and Pasha try to cover up the accident in order to save the ‘integrity’ of their department. Filmed with lots of gritty, over-the-shoulder camerawork, The Major is a well-paced and directed affair. The performances are keyed up all the way through, with Nizina particularly explosive as the tormented mum and Isaev slick and scary as the ruthless, ball-busting Pasha. Jordan Mintzer The Hollywood Reporter
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FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY
BIG SUR Jean-Marc Barr is a middle-aged, alcoholic Jack Kerouac trying to outrun his demons in Michael Polish’s deft adaptation of the writer’s 1962 novel. Five years after On the Road made Kerouac the reluctant face of the Beat Generation, he returns to San Francisco to reunite with old friends like Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Anthony Edwards), Michael McClure (Balthazar Getty) and Neal Cassady (Josh Lucas) and to attempt to get sober in an isolated Big Sur cabin.
‘a fragile, gorgeous-looking flicker of a film’ Screen International
Fri 14 Feb / Light House 1 / 9pm / 81 minutes Writer-director: Michael Polish 2013 US Cast: Jean-Marc Barr, Kate Bosworth, Josh Lucas
Barr is terrific both in performance and in voice-over and he is surrounded by exceptionally well-cast support. Lucas’ Cassady in particular is a revelation, perfectly embodying the physicality, speed-rapping charm and sexual charisma Kerouac describes. Polish’s seventh collaboration with cinematographer M David Mullen yields spectacular results both in the paradise on earth that is Big Sur and in San Francisco in only the third screen adaptation of one of Kerouac’s books and one that proves that the writer’s dense, language-driven novels can, indeed, be gloriously cinematic. Pam Grady San Francisco International Film Festival With special guest Jean-Marc Barr
MYSTERY ROAD An Aboriginal police detective is caught in a web of lies and deception in this brooding thriller from acclaimed Australian director Ivan Sen. Sen – who also wrote, shot, edited, and scored Mystery Road – has crafted one of the most distinctive Australian films in recent memory.
‘impressively crafted, immensely satisfying’ Variety
Fri 14 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 9pm / 121 minutes Writer-director: Ivan Sen 2013 Australia Cast: Aaron Pedersen, Hugo Weaving, Ryan Kwanten
Upon returning to his remote outback hometown, Jay Swan, played to square-jawed perfection by Aaron Pedersen, finds himself on the outside. He’s derided and dismissed by his white colleagues on the police force, as well as his Aboriginal community, which views him with suspicion. When a young girl is found dead in a drainage ditch, Swan is assigned to the case, although it’s quickly apparent that no one expects him to solve anything. Nonetheless, Swan doggedly digs for answers, gradually uncovering the dark secrets of his dusty, sunblanched town. While the visual stylings of Sen’s film recall classic Westerns, the tone is pure 1970s neo-noir, where lone men like Swan fight for answers in a morally ambiguous landscape and redemption carries a heavy price. Philadelphia Film Festival With the support of the Australian Embassy Dublin
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SATURDAY 15TH FEBRUARY HIGHLIGHTS SCREEN TEST: FROM PAGE TO SCREEN 2pm Page 66 A LONG WAY FROM HOME WITH JAMES FOX & BRENDA FRICKER 7.30pm Page 39 STRANGER BY THE LAKE WITH ALAIN GUIRAUDIE 9pm Page 41
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SPECIAL PRESENTATION
NO LIMBS NO LIMITS Sat 15 Feb / Odeon 2 / 11am / 70 minutes Director: Steven O’Riordan 2013 Ireland
In a challenging time for the Irish people it’s hard to think of many facing more difficulties than Joanne O’Riordan. She is one of a handful of people in the world born with no arms and no legs as a result of a rare syndrome called ‘Total Amelia’. This intimate family portrait, directed by her brother Steven, documents a life lived without limbs but, more than that, it’s a warm character study of a singular individual. As Joanne bravely faces her battles, we realise it’s not her disability that makes her unique but her spirit and heart. The film follows Joanne’s journey from her home in County Cork to address the United Nations in New York where she throws down a gauntlet to the most influential women in technology: build me a robot. The touchingly candid interviews with her parents and moving use of old home movies show the incredible things that ordinary people can achieve when motivated by love. The girl who refuses to believe anything is impossible invites us to do the same. Kate McEvoy With special guests Joanne and Steven O’Riordan
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REACHING FOR THE MOON FLORES RARAS Bruno Barreto (Dona Flor and her Two Husbands) brings to life 1950s Rio in this beautifully drawn tale of poet Elizabeth Bishop and her love affair with architect Lota de Macedo Soares, the designer of Rio’s famed Flamengo Park. Based on the bestselling Brazilian novel Rare and Commonplace Flowers, the film follows Bishop as a creative block prompts her to accept the invitation of a college friend to stay with her and her partner, Lota, on a sprawling country estate. Bishop is a fish out of water in her new lush and bohemian setting, until the instant chemistry between her and Lota boils over.
‘Pires is a vibrant and charismatic force of nature’ Screen International
Sat 15 Feb / Light House 1 / 12pm / 118 minutes Director: Bruno Barreto 2013 Brazil Writers: Matthew Chapman, Julie Sayres, Carolina Kotscho Cast: Glória Pires, Miranda Otto, Tracy Middendorf
Miranda Otto gives an elegant and nuanced performance as Bishop, while Glória Pires provides a counterbalance with the Dionysian Lota. Bishop’s closet alcoholism thickens the drama, but when she returns to New York and the military coup d’état forces change in Brazil, the relationship also faces a downswing. This engaging and classical love story is an intimate snapshot of the search for inspiration and the lives of two remarkable artists. Genna Terranova Tribeca Film Festival
NEW WORLD SIN-SE-GAE Any film that opens with a snitch being force-fed a cement smoothie deserves some latitude to make its case, and the South Korean crime drama New World is no exception. Set in the scheming heart of a powerful crime syndicate, this stylish saga from Park Hoon-jung conjures a world where hardly anyone is who he seems. Our fragile anchor is Ja-sung (Lee Jung-jae), an impassive undercover cop who has spent eight years infiltrating the syndicate and rising through its ranks. Now, with the death of the chairman and a succession war looming, Ja-sung’s handler, Captain Kang (Choi Min-sik) sees an opportunity to destroy the organization from within. If only Ja-sung can remember where his loyalties lie.
Sat 15 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 12.45pm / 134 minutes Writer-director: Park Hoon-jung 2013 South Korea Cast: Lee Jung-jae, Choi Min-sik, Hwang Jung-min With the support of the Embassy of Korea Dublin and the Korea Foundation
Cloaked in the politesse of the boardroom and the golf course, New World is both less bloody and more thoughtful than most of its genre, the shifting-alliances plot becoming more engrossing as it progresses. When not caressing razor-sharp lapels, Chung Chung-hoon’s gleaming cinematography captures the cold threat of airports and clubhouses, his precision unfazed by an elevator jammed with bloodied bodies. Jeanette Catsoulis The New York Times
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A WORLD NOT OURS ALAM LAYSA LANA Director Mahdi Fleifel’s first documentary feature is a uniquely engaging and personal project. Drawing on a family history of video-taping, Fleifel offers an intimate glimpse into the Ain el-Helweh refugee camp in Lebanon – a settlement of less than a square mile that’s home to over 70,000 people and has existed for over 60 years. Dubai-born and London-based writer, director and cinematographer Fleifel spent his formative years in the camp in the 1980s, before his family settled in Denmark. For years he’s been returning and keeping a video diary, and in A World Not Ours he provides a frank yet affectionate portrait of the community.
‘flips storytelling and Mideast-Arab clichés on their heads’ Variety
Sat 15 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 1.45pm / 93 minutes Writer-director: Mahdi Fleifel 2012 Lebanon/UK/Denmark/UAE Winner, Best Film in the International Competition, Edinburgh International Film Festival Winner, Peace Film Award, Berlin Film Festival Winner, Best Documentary, Abu Dhabi Film Festival
Fleifel’s conversations with the camp residents provide an unfiltered take on Palestinian grievances with Israel, Lebanon and their own political leaders. Elsewhere he explores how residents use the World Cup to articulate their own ideas of home, community, victory and hope. Engaging and accessible, with a quirky, upbeat soundtrack, Fleifel’s personal journey offers a fresh and inviting point of entry to a thorny political history. Seattle International Film Festival
THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL From his audacious debut Bottle Rocket to the sparkling Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson has created a singular body of work and stands aloof within the pantheon of contemporary American cinema. He creates fabulist family dramas filled with labyrinthine plots, outrageously ornate production design and casts that only Woody Allen can dream of, and his latest film The Grand Budapest Hotel is another bespoke masterpiece. Ralph Fiennes plays Gustave H, the legendary concierge of the titular hotel, and newcomer Tony Revolori plays Zero Moustafa, his young friend and sidekick. Together they become embroiled in a plot revolving around a priceless Renaissance painting and a family fortune.
Sat 15 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 2pm / 100 minutes Writer-director: Wes Anderson 2013 US Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Ralph Fiennes, Léa Seydoux
Set between the wars, against the backdrop of a dramatically changing continent, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a sumptuous Anderson extravaganza. Aided by such regulars as Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, designer Adam Stockhausen and composer Alexandre Desplat, his latest cinematic amuse bouche is rich in detail and epic in scale, suffused with the detached dry wit that is Anderson’s trademark. Gráinne Humphreys
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GUEST CURATORS: ALLISON & TIFFANY ANDERS Another new initiative for 2014 is our Guest Curator season, in which an individual is invited by the festival director to join them in creating the festival programme. The guest director serves as a key collaborator, bringing new ideas and sometimes overlooked films to Dublin. We are delighted to welcome the acclaimed American film director Allison Anders who alongside co-programmer Tiffany Anders founded and programmed the Don’t Knock the Rock Festival in LA. They have put together a fascinating series of music films and will introduce their choices, as well as participating in a public event with their Irish counterparts. The season will form the core of a larger programme of documentary which represents the best of both Irish and international work.
ALLISON ANDERS Allison Anders is an award-winning film and television writer and director and Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Her films include Sugar Town, nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards, Gas Food Lodging and Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life). Throughout her career she has been recognized for her achievements and received various awards and prizes, including a New York Film Critics Circle Award, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. With her daughter Tiffany Anders she co-founded the Don’t Knock the Rock Film and Music Festival in Los Angeles. Her recent TV film Ring of Fire, on the life of country singer June Carter Cash, was nominated for four Emmys including Best Director.
WRECKING CREW
TIFFANY ANDERS ‘Tiffany Anders grew up with a lust for music, seeking out bands and attending live shows at a very early age. Her enthusiasm eventually led her to a recording career of her own, cutting her 2001 solo debut album, Funny Cry Happy Gift, which was produced by PJ Harvey and released to critical acclaim. As a music supervisor she’s worked on such films as Gregg Araki’s Kaboom, James Ponsoldt’s Smashed, Ry Russo Young’s Nobody Walks and Drake Doremus’ Like Crazy and Breathe In. She is currently the host of a weekly radio show Listen Listen on Luxuriamusic.com which features an eclectic array of underground music.’ Sheryl Farber
LAWRENCE OF BELGRAVIA
‘Arguably the greatest pop star Britain never had’ The Guardian Sat 15 Feb / Light House 2 / 2pm / 95 minutes Director: Denny Tedesco 2008 US
Sat 15 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 6pm / 86 minutes Director: Paul Kelly 2011 UK
A new documentary tells the story of the Wrecking Crew, a collective of Los Angeles musicians who played on hits by the Righteous Brothers, the Beach Boys, the Byrds and many others. Directed by Denny Tedesco, son of the late guitarist Tommy Tedesco, The Wrecking Crew features interviews with Brian Wilson, Cher, Roger McGuinn, and famed Crew members like bassist Carol Kaye and drummer Hal Blaine. “These guys were chameleons,” Tedesco says. “They went from Phil Spector to Nancy Sinatra to the Beach Boys. They always had to sound like somebody else.”
For the first time, fans of dreamy ’80s UK indie pop can finally know the true story of Lawrence, the enigmatic bandleader of brilliant cult outfits Felt, Denim and Go-Kart Mozart.
Rolling Stone
‘At the start, the eponymous subject looks into the camera and asks: “Are you ready, Paul?” It’s a question never truly answered, as director Paul Kelly indeed may not have been ready to embark on a film which ended up taking eight years. But Kelly chooses not to focus on Lawrence’s ups and downs. Instead, he mounts a deeply personal investigation into what makes Lawrence tick. A funny, sad, insightful and refreshingly honest meditation on the mythology of rock and pop.’ Nicholas Abrahams, The Quietus With special guest Paul Kelly
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DECONSTRUCTING DAD
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FAMILY BAND: THE COWSILLS STORY
‘essential viewing’ Time Out New York Sun 16 Feb / Light House 2 / 1.30pm / 98 minutes Director: Stan Warnow 2012 US
Sun 16 Feb / Light House 3 / 6pm / 90 minutes Directors: Bill Filipiak, Louise Palanker 2011 US
Winner, Gold Medal Award, Park City Film Music Festival Winner, Best Documentary Feature Award, Atlantic City Film Festival
With their first Top 40 hit ‘The Rain, The Park and Other Things’, The Cowsills may well have been the first Sunshine Pop band. They are the real-life inspiration behind TV’s The Partridge Family, but The Cowsills’ lives were no sitcom. Darkness lurks beneath the lilting harmonies and optimistic, innocent melodies; their story is raw, honest, tragic, beautiful – and the music sublime. Amazing footage of the band, photographs and interviews with the Cowsills today all serve to create a moving portrait of the family as they share their lives, love of music and the dichotomy of their public persona versus their private struggles.
This personal documentary is a comprehensive exploration of the life of musician/inventor/visionary Raymond Scott. Swing music, electronica, music for films, Warner Brothers animation, records, TV and radio – Raymond Scott created all this and much more. Presented from the unique perspective of Stan Warnow, his film-maker son, the film is also a personal quest to unravel the timeless fabric of love, connection and rejection that are a part of every parent-child relationship. With special guest Stan Warnow
With special guest Louise Palanker
BAD BRAINS: A BAND IN DC
AUTOLUMINESCENT
Mon 17 Feb / Light House 2 / 6.30pm / 104 minutes Directors: Mandy Stein, Ben Logan 2012 US
Tues 18 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 6pm / 110 minutes Directors: Richard Lowenstein, Lynn-Maree Milburn 2011 Australia
‘As Henry Rollins states early on in Bad Brains: Band in DC, a definitive documentary on the legendary hardcore band is long overdue. “Legendary” is even understating it a bit, as Bad Brains helped to invent what we know as American hardcore, taking inspiration from the Sex Pistols and The Damned, melding it with their own funk and soul-inspired musicality, a “positive attitude message”, and an electric performance style to birth a beast all their own. As a history of Bad Brains and an archive of their incredible performances in the early ’80s, this film is a treasure chest of gems.’ Katie Walsh, Indiewire
From myth to legend, Rowland Howard (member of dark rock masters The Birthday Party, Crime & The City Solution and These Immortal Souls) appeared on the early Melbourne punk scene like a phantom out of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. A beautifully gaunt, gothic aristocrat, Rowland was impeccable, with obscure tastes and a unique, distinctive guitar attack that shot him directly into the imagination of a generation. Beginning in the wild days of Australian 70s pub rock with Nick Cave, the film delves into the promising beginnings, the overseas ventures, the falling out with friends and lovers, and the late career renaissance before illness claimed Howard too soon in 2009. Music blogger Nialler9 will host a discussion on music documentaries with film-makers including Allison and Tiffany Anders on Sunday 16 February. See page 63.
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EXHIBITION Joanna Hogg’s Archipelago (JDIFF 2011) was about a well-to-do English family on a miserable holiday in the Scilly Isles: her new film shifts its focus to the capital. Exhibition is set almost entirely between the walls and windows of a modernist dream house in a leafy Victorian enclave. Living inside it are a couple played by two first-time actors: Viv Albertine, a former guitarist from the punk band The Slits, and the conceptual artist Liam Gillick.
‘an impressively mature and crafted work’ The Hollywood Reporter
Sat 15 Feb / Light House 1 / 2.15pm / 101 minutes Writer-director: Joanna Hogg 2013 UK Cast: Viv Albertine, Liam Gillick, Tom Hiddleston
Their initials are D and H and both are artists who work from home. But something in their past has left both of them unquiet. It becomes clear that D is agoraphobic, and she stands behind the Venetian blinds in her underwear, toying with the idea of being observed at her most vulnerable. She is planning a performance art event, and Albertine deftly sketches her arc from inhibition to exhibition, leaving no sliver of her soul unbared. Hogg’s film is alive with anxiety, with scenes that rattle your nerves like stones in a tin. This is confident, uncompromising work, with a ghostliness that plays on your mind for days, and it cements Hogg’s place at the forefront of new British cinema. Robbie Collin The Telegraph
VISITORS Famous for the Qatsi trilogy of Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, names taken from the Hopi language, director Godfrey Reggio has made another exquisite visual poem in Visitors, his first film in over a decade. If the Qatsi trilogy reflected on ideas of balance, transformation, and war, Visitors asks a very different question: who and what is a visitor when we look around ourselves on this planet? Using this idea as a metaphysical departure for his visual reverie, Reggio takes us on a unique voyage into the mysteries and wonders of the universe.
‘another dialogue-free juxtaposition of visceral imagery, time-lapse photography and mesmerizing Philip Glass music’ Variety
Sat 15 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 3.30pm / 87 minutes Director: Godfrey Reggio 2013 US
Shot in dazzling black and white and projected in highest-resolution 4K, the film proves once again that Reggio is a visual genius, open to the magic of experience, masterly at editing his images into a work that calls upon its audiences to find their own meaning in the piece. More akin to music than narrative storytelling, Visitors creates moods and tones, allowing each of us to explore potential connections and associations. At times we enter an almost dreamlike state – notably with Reggio’s meditation on human hands, as expressive as faces, interacting with technological tools that have been removed from the frame. The effect is mesmerizing, and Philip Glass’s score is a perfect complement. Piers Handling Toronto International Film Festival
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THE LUNCHBOX Irrfan Khan (Life of Pi, Slumdog Millionaire) stars alongside the radiant Nimrat Kaur in Ritesh Batra’s delightful feature debut in which a mistaken lunchbox delivery paves the way for an unlikely romance. In Mumbai, more than 5,000 dabbawallas – lunchbox couriers – navigate chaotic streets to deliver lunches, lovingly prepared by housewives, to working men across the city.
‘A wistful, elegant love story’ Screen International
Sat 15 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 3.45pm / 104 minutes Director: Ritesh Batra 2013 India/Germany/France/US Cast: Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Ila (Kaur) is a housewife living in a middle-class neighbourhood with a husband who ignores her. Saajan (Khan) is a beaten-down widower about to retire from his number-crunching job. After Ila realizes that Saajan is receiving the meals meant for her husband, the two begin sending each other letters through the lunchbox. What starts as an innocent exchange about Ila’s cooking gently develops into something more. The Lunchbox paints a nuanced portrait of life in contemporary Mumbai, effortlessly weaving themes of gender values, social class and generational differences into its love story. Batra’s beautifully penned characters and gentle, precise direction simply envelope you. Toronto International Film Festival
DESIGN IS ONE: LELLA AND MASSIMO VIGNELLI One of the first and most dominant power couples of the design world is Lella and Massimo Vignelli, the influential creators of graphics, products, furniture, interiors, and jewellery for more than six decades. Lella and Massimo each have distinct creative voices and mediums, yet together both represent the same name and brand: Vignelli. Today in their 80s, the two’s CV includes a long list of iconic clients – Ford, Bloomingdale’s, the New York City subway. Now comes a career-capping documentary by Kathy Brew and Roberto Guerra, Design Is One.
‘For a design fan of any pedigree, Design is One is not to be missed’ Dwell
Sat 15 Feb / Light House 3 / 4pm / 86 minutes Directors: Roberto Guerra, Courtney Harmel 2012 US
Design Is One, a title that pinpoints where the Vignelli’s individual lives converge, is an illuminating tribute and biography. There are the requisite testaments with analysis by a cast that includes Richard Meier, Peter Eisenman, Milton Glaser, Paola Antonelli and others. Yet the most interesting talking heads are the Vignellis themselves, who reveal the temperaments and tension that have kept their partnership operating for so long. But despite their dogmas, their humanity is on display here as well. So are some juicy anecdotes.
Photo: John Madere Steven Heller The Atlantic
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GABRIELLE Louise Archambault’s smart and refreshing debut feature Familia marked the arrival of an extraordinary new talent in Canadian film. Gabrielle is a stunning, tender film about a developmentally challenged young woman’s quest for independence and sexual freedom.
‘Delightful newcomer Gabrielle Marion-Rivard, who actually has Williams syndrome and plays a semi-autobiographical role, is a natural’ The Hollywood Reporter
Sat 15 Feb / Light House 1 / 4.45pm / 104 minutes Writer-director: Louise Archambault 2013 Canada Cast: Gabrielle Marion-Rivard, Alexandre Landry, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin Winner, Audience Award, Locarno Film Festival
Living in a group home, musically talented Gabrielle (Gabrielle Marion-Rivard) has found love in Martin (Alexandre Landry), a fellow member in a choir for developmentally disabled adults. Gabrielle and Martin want to explore their feelings for one another physically, but are not allowed. Convinced that living alone will allow her to have the intimate relationship she so desperately craves, Gabrielle tries valiantly to prove she can be independent. As she did with Familia, Archambault displays her ability to distil the emotional currents of families at a crossroads. At the core of this film is the heartfelt performance by Marion-Rivard (who has Williams Syndrome in real life). Produced by the team behind Incendies and Monsieur Lazhar, Gabrielle is a captivating film about tolerance and finding happiness, but, above all, it is a story of love. Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo Toronto International Film festival
CONCRETE NIGHT BETONIYÖ Stunning to look at and chilling at its core, Concrete Night is a tale of innocence lost. Made by a Finnish director, Pirjo Honkasalo, at work since the 60s, it could easily be mistaken for the debut of an edgy but emotionally restrained new talent. Johannes Brotherus plays Simo, a fresh-faced teen whose eyes haven’t yet been hardened by the tough environment he inhabits. Raised by a single and unreliable-seeming mother (Anneli Karppinen), he and brother Ilkka (Jari Virman) are hiding out in their Helsinki flat. Ilkka’s going to jail on Monday and mum wants Simo to keep him company while she goes out on the town. Over the course of the evening the two go out for drinks, split up, and have encounters with half-strangers that go badly for both young men.
Sat 15 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 5.30pm / 96 minutes Director: Pirjo Honkasalo 2013 Denmark/Finland/Sweden Writers: Pirjo Honkasalo, Pirkko Saisio Cast: Johannes Brotherus, Jari Virman, Juhan Ulfsak
Peter Flinckenberg’s black-and-white photography is as dramatic as the script is restrained, full of creeping shadows and cracked glass. When the story finally enters daylight hours, after a night of impulsive bad decisions, Helsinki is so thick with hazy steam it might as well be underwater. John DeFore The Hollywood Reporter
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IT’S ALL SO QUIET BOVEN IS HET STIL Bachelor dairy farmer, Henk (Jeroen Willems) divides his time between working with his cows and caring for his bedridden father, whom he treats with far less affection than the sheep he keeps as pets. When we first meet him, he’s roughly relocating his dad from a room downstairs to a bedroom at the top of the house, with a view to redecorating and cleaning away the past. But slowly we come to realise that Henk is a man utterly trapped in isolation by a past that constantly hovers on the tip of his tongue, the words bitten back and silently swallowed.
‘a poignant reflection on solitude, homosexual repression and aging’ The Hollywood Reporter
Sat 15 Feb / Light House 3 / 6pm / 93 minutes Writer-director: Nanouk Leopold 2013 Netherlands Cast: Jeroen Willems, Henri Garcin, Wim Opbrouck
With meticulous attention to detail, Dutch director, Nanouk Leopold takes her time to tell Henk’s story, presenting a life and a cinematic landscape that are as bleak as they are lyrical. Her ability to keep the viewer riveted as she slowly drip-feeds nuggets of information to reveal the crux of Henk’s stunted sexuality, shows an artist in complete control of her material. Men come and go, offering love to the inaccessible farmer, but it is only the dying old man upstairs who can ultimately set him free. Brian Finnegan
HALF OF A YELLOW SUN An epic and striking adaptation of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Orange Prize-winning novel, the beautifully staged Half Of A Yellow Sun is an often gripping tale that follows two women during the dramas of Nigeria’s independence.
‘Newton [is] at the top of her game’ Variety
Sat 15 Feb / Cineworld 5 / 6.30pm / 106 minutes Writer-director: Biyi Bandele 2013 Nigeria/UK Cast: Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anika Noni Rose
Driven by powerful and moving performances from Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years A Slave), Thandie Newton (The Pursuit of Happyness) and Anika Noni Rose (Dreamgirls), the film, directed and adapted by Nigerian playwright Biyi Bandele, follows sisters Olanna (Newton) and Kainene (Rose), daughters of a well-to-do businessman who follow very different paths. Olanna falls in love with Odenigbo (Ejiofor), a revolutionary, while Kainene enters into a romance with a white British writer (Joseph Mawle). As civil war spreads, the sisters flee to Nigeria’s southeastern region where the short-lived Republic of Biafra is formed. Thandie Newton has the showier role as the passionate and elegant Olanna, and her vibrancy adds much to the part, while Anika Noni Rose is wonderfully sarcastic and stylish as Kainene, a driven woman who has to deal with her own bout of heartache. Mark Adams Screen International
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COME INTO THE GARDENS There is one way in and one way out of St Teresa’s Gardens, a flat complex in Dublin’s south inner city, a community that missed out on the large-scale regeneration it was promised, being left instead with a ghost town. Maud Hendricks, working as a collaborative artist within the community, creates a series of film portraits of local people against the background of an estate on the brink of demolition. This is no ordinary documentary film but rather a piece of work where the boundaries of the theatrical and the real are tested. We hear the voices of the residents, although their identity is never revealed. Orchards, picnics, foxes, names of children who played there, lawnmowers in motion, wall painters, a beauty contest, a game called ‘love hate’, stories of recovery, finches and other feathered friends, boxing, balconies, front doors, friendly faces old and young and much more grace the screen, revealing a closely knit community that will soon be scattered across Dublin.
Sat 15 Feb / Light House 1 / 7pm / 35 minutes Director: Maud Hendricks 2013 Ireland
Barrie Dowdall Documentary film-maker With special guests Morgan Cooke and Maud Hendricks
IN CINEMAS APRIL 11 A UK - IRISH CO-PRODUCTION © 2013 QWERTY MARS MOVIE LIMITED AND THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE
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AMERICAN AIRLINES GALA
‘BAFTA-laureate Fox and Oscar-winner Fricker provide a delightful study in chalk-cheese companionship’ The Hollywood Reporter
A LONG WAY FROM HOME Sat 15 Feb / Savoy 2 / 7.30pm / 80 minutes Writer-director: Virginia Gilbert 2013 UK/France Cast: James Fox, Natalie Dormer, Brenda Fricker
If the central couple in Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy had grown old together they might have wound up as Joseph and Brenda in A Long Way From Home. Writer-director Virginia Gilbert has adapted her own short story into a film that gives James Fox his most substantial role in years. After fifty years together, Joseph (Fox) and Brenda (Brenda Fricker) have retired to southern France. They have become the old couple in a restaurant who have nothing left to say to one another. Brenda seems frail and increasingly forgetful but Joseph is still full of vitality. When they meet young holiday couple Suzanne (Natalie Dormer) and Mark (Paul Nicholls), Joseph is instantly smitten and pursues her to the point of foolishness. Fox is very adept at conveying the subtle shift of moods in a man wearily resigned to the unvarying routine of his life but briefly persuaded that things could be very different. A radiant Natalie Dormer is equally convincing as a woman not entirely convinced that her future lies with her boyfriend. Allan Hunter Screen International With special guests James Fox, Brenda Fricker and Virginia Gilbert
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STAY Archaeologist Dermot (Aidan Quinn) lives on Ireland’s west coast trying to bury his past. His young lover Abby (Taylor Schilling) is beginning to reconsider her future with him ‘at the end of the world’. When she finds he has no interest in having children, she returns to her native Montreal to reflect on her situation. Meanwhile, the local community trundles its way through death and birth, economic collapse and survival – its intimacy at times a comfort, at others an intrusion.
Sat 15 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 8pm / 99 minutes Writer-director: Wiebke von Carolsfeld 2013 Canada/Ireland Cast: Aidan Quinn, Taylor Schilling, Barry Keoghan
While Dermot’s professional and human engagement is renewed by a bogland find, Abby’s confusion grows as she excavates her own history. The film, based on Aislinn Hunter’s acclaimed debut novel Stay, shuttles between the Galway locale and cosmopolitan Montreal. The west of Ireland’s rugged, sparse landscape and rough roads stress the struggle to be close despite global connectivity and the story poses questions about language, identity, family, distance and home. The cast also includes Barry Keoghan and Brian Gleeson (both of Love/Hate), Nika McGuigan, Michael Ironside, Gina Moxley and Ann Marie Horan. Stephanie McBride DCU
YOZGAT BLUES The story of a city slicker forced to relocate to the provinces has been retold in many different countries. Yozgat Blues discovers a tasty variation on this wellworn theme. Yuvaz (Ercan Kesal – Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, JDIFF 2012) is a music teacher in Istanbul who also performs occasionally as a musician. When a performing gig is offered to him in the middle of the country, he decides to seize the opportunity, even though he is reluctant to trade the big city for life in a more remote outpost.
‘succeeds in capturing a bittersweet mood that will haunt viewers’ The Hollywood Reporter
Sat 15 Feb / Light House 3 / 8.30pm / 92 minutes Director: Mahmut Fazil Coşkun 2013 Turkey/Germany Writers: Tarik Tufan, Mahmut Fazil Coşkun Cast: Ercan Kesal, Ayça Damgaci, Tansu Biçer Winner, FIPRESCI Award, Warsaw Film Festival
Although Yuvaz is the protagonist, the film turns out to be a group portrait of half a dozen people whose lives intersect with his. Nese (Ayça Damgaci), his singing partner, develops an attachment to Sabri (Tansu Biçer), the barber who helps the balding Yuvaz with the toupee he wears while performing. The characters and relationships are incisively drawn, and the film’s deadpan sense of humour tickles. Kesal gives a sympathetic performance as Yuvaz, and Biçer is equally engaging as the sheltered barber. Yozgat Blues succeeds in capturing a bittersweet mood that will haunt viewers. Stephen Farber The Hollywood Reporter
With the support of the European Commission’s programme on enlargement of the European Union
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MISS VIOLENCE Opening with the inexplicable suicide of eleven-yearold Angeliki in the middle of her own birthday party, it’s plain to see that Miss Violence demands of its viewers a certain threshold of pain. Yet if Angeliki’s seemingly typical middle-class Greek family bears any emotional wounds from this harrowing loss, these are certainly not on public display. On the contrary, her single mother, grandparents and siblings present a perfectly composed front. And Child Protective Services are beginning to wonder… With his second feature, Alexandros Avranas creates a tastefully austere, colour-co-ordinated universe, where everything is ordered and nothing is what it seems. Upon closer inspection, the film’s subdued palette can be interpreted as a visual metaphor for submission, as the deceptively placid paterfamilias can slip from gentle protector to tormentor, causing all colour to drain from his household. Sat 15 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 8.30pm / 99 minutes Director: Alexandros Avranas 2013 Greece Writers: Alexandros Avranas, Kostas Peroulis Cast: Kostas Antalopoulos, Constantinos Athanasiades, Chloe Bolota
Set up as a carefully constructed series of episodes in which the family’s history is gradually revealed, Miss Violence is a domestic coup d’état waiting to happen. From the script to the acting, Miss Violence is precision film-making at its best.
Winner, Best Director & Best Actor, Venice International Film Festival Dimitri Epides Toronto International Film Festival
STRANGER BY THE LAKE L’INCONNU DU LAC One of the most talked about and lauded films at Cannes 2013, Stranger by the Lake is an intoxicating account of one heathen summer by a French lake, populated by men, gay and straight, dressed and undressed, hunter and prey. Franck is a gay man who frequents the lake, popular with nudists and men cruising for sex in the surrounding forests, and comes to know Michel, to whom he is dangerously and foolishly attracted. When given good reason to stay away from him, Franck chooses not to and walks into a deadly game of cat and mouse.
‘an absorbing and intelligent exploration of queer desire’ Variety
The film presents us with a tight examination of masculinity and homosexuality, where the nebulous urges in men sometimes manifest themselves as sexual passion and other times as murderous rage.
Sat 15 Feb / Light House 1 / 9pm / 92 minutes Writer-director: Alain Guiraudie 2013 France Cast: Pierre Deladonchamps, Christophe Paou, Patrick d’Assumçao
A masterpiece of carefully constructed narrative and concentrated visual storytelling, electric with tension, desire and danger and featuring graphic unsimulated gay sex, Stranger by the Lake is a fine example of both new French cinema and queer cinema.
Winner, Best Director, Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival David Mullane With the support of the French Embassy in Ireland With special guest Alain Guiraudie
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SUNDAY 16TH FEBRUARY HIGHLIGHTS THE STORY OF MUSIC WITH ALLISON & TIFFANY ANDERS 4pm Page 63 IDA WITH DAVID OGRODNIK 8.15pm Page 49 THE WONDERS WITH AVI NESHER 8.30pm Page 50
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SPECIAL PRESENTATION
‘achingly beautiful’ The Telegraph
TRACKS Sun 16 Feb / Savoy 1 / 11am / 110 minutes Director: John Curran 2013 Australia/UK Writer: Marion Nelson Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Adam Driver With the support of the Australian Embassy Dublin
Robyn Davidson’s remarkable journey in 1977 across 1,700 miles of Australian desert with four camels and a dog is given a richly sensorial screen treatment in John Curran’s Tracks. Alternately haunting, inspiring and dreamily meditative, this is a visually majestic film of transfixing moods and textures. Its stealth-like emotional charge is fuelled by unerring work from Mia Wasikowska. Required here to carry the film more single-handedly than in any role since Jane Eyre, she does arguably her most riveting screen work to date. The screenplay expands upon the presence of Rick Smolan (played by Adam Driver), an American photographer who documented the journey for National Geographic magazine. The threat of an imposed ‘love interest’ twisting the story is averted thanks to the sly humour, bumbling nerdiness and slow-release reserves of sensitivity that Driver injects into his deft characterization. But the dual heart of the drama is Robyn and the landscape across which she travels. Tracks is a stirring depiction of the clarity and self-discovery that can come with isolation in nature, and probably the best film of its kind since Sean Penn’s Into the Wild. David Rooney The Hollywood Reporter
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FELLINI’S ROMA Rome exerted a powerful influence over Fellini throughout his life but rarely did he express his love for it more clearly than here. Mixing documentarystyle reportage, self-contained dramatic set pieces and strange, impressionistic sequences, Fellini’s Roma explores the director’s youth, the process of filmmaking and the mysterious allure of The Eternal City.
‘one of his best works of this period’ Chicago Reader
Sun 16 Feb / Light House 1 / 1pm / 119 minutes Director: Federico Fellini 1972 Italy Writers: Federico Fellini, Bernardino Zapponi Cast: Britta Barnes, Peter Gonzales Falcon, Fiona Florence Presented in association with the Italian Institute of Culture - Dublin
Essentially a series of loosely-connected vignettes, the first section sees the young Fellini (Peter Gonzales Falcon) arriving in Rome. We visit a brothel, witness Fellini fall in love with a prostitute and listen to Gore Vidal’s bleak assessment of the city’s future. As with much of Fellini’s work it’s a free-form approach that values images for their own sake. Yet amid the purposefully imprecise sequences are some startling moments. The best of these sees a film crew uncovering a set of 2000-year-old frescos. Elsewhere is an extraordinary, fantastical fashion show in which solemn clergy model the latest Catholic vestments. Throughout, Fellini is acutely aware of the contradictions that make up his beloved Rome and though, in the strictest sense, the film goes nowhere, somehow it’s a fabulous journey. Jon Fortgang Film Four
ANTARCTICA: A YEAR ON ICE Antarctica is the world’s toughest environment – colder, higher and drier than anywhere else on earth – and less than 1000 souls are hardy enough to endure the winter there and spend a full year on the continent.
‘an extraordinary achievement that reinvigorates our sense of wonder about the natural world. Make a point of seeing it.’ New Zealand Herald
Sun 16 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 2pm / 92 minutes Director: Anthony Powell 2013 New Zealand
Among them is Anthony Powell, a New Zealand dairy farmer turned time-lapse photographer who for over ten years has documented life in Antarctica to create this portrait of life lived in the most isolated of environments. Powell interviews the ordinary workers of Antarctica who voluntarily remain trapped throughout the winter after the last plane leaves the continent. During these coldest months they somehow maintain good spirits as they deal with unimaginably extreme weather, living far from their loved ones and without sunshine for four months. The real stars of this unique film, however, are the breathtaking and incredibly moving time-lapse images that must be among the most stunning to ever appear in a documentary film, and Powell himself, whose enduring wonder at the beauty of his harsh surroundings is charming in the extreme. Ross Whitaker
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TWO LIVES ZWEI LEBEN Juliane Köhler (Downfall) stars in this heartrending thriller about a Norwegian woman leading a dangerous double life in the chaotic final days of the Cold War. She plays Katrine, a Norwegian woman raised in an East German orphanage after the Nazis stole her from her mother. Years later, so it seems, she managed to escape and track down her mother and now, in 1990, Katrine finds herself at the heart of a happy, bustling Norwegian family. But when a young lawyer calls, determined to recruit her in a claim for compensation from the new German state, Katrine is forced into a desperate struggle to conceal the lies on which her whole life is based.
Sun 16 Feb / Light House 1 / 3.30pm / 97 minutes Writer-director: Georg Maas 2012 Germany/Norway Cast: Juliane Köhler, Liv Ullmann, Sven Nordin
Two Lives is a gripping story of deception based on a real unsolved case. Köhler delivers a moving performance as Katrine, a woman torn between conflicting loyalties, while screen legend Liv Ullmann makes a rare appearance as Åse, the proud grandmother whose daughter is not what she seems. Shot through with nerve-jangling suspense, Two Lives shines a light on a forgotten corner of the Cold War and asks how much is real when a life is built on lies.
Official German submission for Best Foreign Film, 2014 Academy Awards®
Alistair Daniel
Presented in co-operation with the Goethe-Institut Irland
With special guest Juliane Köhler
THE SWIMMER The Swimmer is the story of a man (Burt Lancaster) who begins at the dawn of a new day to swim in the backyard pool of some friends. It occurs to him that a string of other backyard pools reaches to his own home. Why not swim all the way? Some of the pool owners are happy to see him. Others hate him. One is a bitter young woman who loved him once. We learn something about this man’s life at every poolside, until finally we are able to piece together a story of his disgrace and failure.
‘enigmatic, poetic, disturbing’ Empire Magazine
Sun 16 Feb / Light House 3 / 4pm / 95 minutes Directors: Frank Perry, Sydney Pollack 1968 US Writer: Eleanor Perry Cast: Burt Lancaster, Janet Landgard, Janice Rule
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The Swimmer begins as a perfectly realistic film. But somewhere along the way we realize it is an allegory. At every moment, we have the feeling that something tragic has already happened to these people. And, of course, something has. Burt Lancaster is superb in his finest performance. There are also fine performances by Janice Rule as the mistress, by Janet Landgard as the young girl, and by a host of character actors. The Swimmer is a strange, stylized work, a brilliant and disturbing one. Roger Ebert
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BEYOND THE EDGE - 3D At Everest base camp at night, if you try and sleep, you will awake breathless every few minutes. You feel as if you are drowning, which in a sense, you are. Base camp is at a modest 18,000 feet. The summit of the highest mountain on the planet lies 11,000 more feet above you. In 1953 no one knew whether a human being could reach the roof of the world and survive. Thirteen men had already died in unsuccessful expeditions. Enter a British team which included a humble New Zealand beekeeper, Edmund Hillary, and a member of the Nepalese Sherpa people, Tensing Norgay, a veteran of five attempts on Everest. It was probably the last ‘British’ chance to be the first to make it to the top. A Swiss team had almost succeeded in 1952 and a number of resourceful and resource-rich American climbers were ready to take on the awe-inspiring Chomolungma. Sun 16 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 4pm / 93 minutes Director: Leanne Pooley 2013 Argentina Cast: Chad Moffit, Sonam Sherpa
Beyond the Edge, in its clever mix of actuality and dramatization, captures both the extraordinary beauty of the high Himalayas and the peerless achievement of Hillary, Tenzing and the team led by John Hunt. Myles Dungan
HIDE YOUR SMILING FACES Daniel Patrick Carbone’s atmospheric, elliptical, and even dreamlike first feature announces a substantial new talent. Hide Your Smiling Faces focuses on a pair of brothers, 9-year-old Tommy (Ryan Jones) and 14-year-old Eric (Nathan Varnson), and their extended all-male social circle. Amid one of their leisurely afternoon idylls, Eric and close friend Tristan (Thomas Cruz) discover the dead body of one of Tommy’s pals. With the incomprehensible tragedy reverberating throughout the community, the unnerved brothers respond with searching conversation, conspicuous acts of violence, and a retreat from the comforts of home.
‘oblique yet emotionally acute … a bold, melancholy statement’ Variety
Sun 16 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 6pm / 80 minutes Writer-director: Daniel Patrick Carbone 2013 US Cast: Ryan Jones, Nathan Varnson, Colm O’Leary
The richly naturalistic Hide Your Smiling Faces is perhaps most remarkable for its effortlessly vivid, plausibly real portrait of adolescent male life. Constantly engaging in impromptu wrestling matches, games of ‘mercy’ and empty threats of greater violence, the experiences that the writerdirector brings to the screen are about as authentic as American indie cinema gets. Nearly as noteworthy is the almost complete absence of adolescent female actors; this is the rare story of male maturation that does not prominently include sex in the equation. The young male mind is otherwise occupied in Carbone’s truly thoughtful debut. Denver Film Society
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BLUE RUIN As tough as it is smart as it is suspenseful, Blue Ruin proves that action cinema isn’t just the preserve of the big Hollywood studios. It’s been a few years since Jeremy Saulnier’s horror-comedy mash-up Murder Party hit the festival circuit and won a lot of fans. Now he’s back with a riff on the revenge movie, immediately selected for the prestigious Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.
‘Distinguished by the way it allies solid storytelling to fine craftsmanship’ Screen International
Sun 16 Feb / Light House 1 / 6.15pm / 92 minutes Writer-director: Jeremy Saulnier 2013 US Cast: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, Amy Hargreaves Winner, FIPRESCI Prize, Cannes Film Festival
In the film’s solemn and quiet opening we meet Dwight (Macon Blair), a homeless man who collects trash for money. After reading about the release of a double murderer he visibly transforms from dishevelled bearded bum into determined member of society. What follows is a deeply comic narrative of family retribution, white-trash psychosis and home invasion, set to the unsettling rhythms of a weapons-obsessed world. Deftly shot, with thoughtful widescreen compositions, this terrifically directed film combines the classic feuding families set-up with the meditative veneer of a very clever contemporary arthouse thriller. Ant Timpson New Zealand International Film Festival
LA PAZ When Liso, a handsome young man from a wealthy Argentinian family, emerges from a spell in psychiatric care, he finds himself struggling to recover the pieces of his shattered life in this delicate and affecting drama from Santiago Loza (Extraño). Returning home, Liso finds his mother indulgent and doting, his father somewhat more impatient with his son’s apparent listlessness, while a succession of encounters with ex-girlfriends provide glimpses of the chaos his illness has caused. Only in the company of his genial grandmother and Sonia, the family’s Bolivian maid, does he find moments of respite from his struggle, but when these comforts are taken away, Liso’s hard-won equilibrium threatens to unravel. ‘oddly affecting’ The Hollywood Reporter
Sun 16 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 6.15pm / 73 minutes Writer-director: Santiago Loza 2013 Argentina Cast: Lisandro Rodríguez, Andrea Strenitz, Fidelia Batallanos Michel
Anchored by a sophisticated performance from Lisandro Rodríguez as Liso, Loza’s film is gentle, undemonstrative work, unafraid to draw comedy from Liso’s condition but generous enough to treat every character with the same clear-eyed compassion. Beautifully shot in a palette of washedout colours, La Paz is both a touching study of one man’s journey towards recovery and a subtle parable about Argentinian society. Alistair Daniel With special guest Lisandro Rodríguez
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
A LONG WAY DOWN Disgraced chat show host Martin Sharp (Pierce Brosnan) knows he’s reached rock bottom one New Year’s Eve when he finds himself standing on the roof of London’s premier suicide spot. But his efforts to end it all are thwarted by the arrival of a motley crew of fellow suicides, including JJ (Aaron Paul), a failed rock star with terminal cancer; Jess (Imogen Poots), an MP’s neglected daughter; and single mother Maureen (Toni Collette), struggling to care for her severely disabled son. The foursome make a pact not to kill themselves before Valentine’s Day, but when the media get wind of the story, they find themselves forming the unlikeliest of support groups.
Sun 16 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 8pm / 96 minutes Director: Pascal Chaumeil 2013 UK Writer: Jack Thorne Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Imogen Poots
Director Pascal Chaumeil (Heartbreaker) brings a delightful vein of gallows humour to this unflinching – and ultimately uplifting – tale about finding reasons to live, adapted from Nick Hornby’s best-selling novel. Toni Collette is touching as downtrodden Maureen and Imogen Poots is on scene-stealing form as the sharp-tongued Jess, but it’s Brosnan’s turn as the washed-up Sharp, whose desperation is thinly concealed beneath a layer of urbanity and charm, that lends the film its smart and steely edge. Alistair Daniel
A THOUSAND TIMES GOOD NIGHT The peerless Juliette Binoche heads an international cast in this sophisticated, gripping drama about a war photographer forced to choose between her work and her family.
‘Poppe imbues the film with enormous emotional resonance, brilliantly grounded by his leading lady’ Variety
We meet photojournalist Rebecca (Binoche) in a beguiling opening sequence set in Afghanistan, where she crosses the line from witnessing atrocity to being involved. On her return home to Ireland she struggles to adjust to family life with her husband Marcus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and her two daughters. Rebecca attempts to reconnect with her eldest daughter Steph through the very work which drove them apart but, when the photojournalist makes another controversial choice, their fragile détente is shattered.
Sun 16 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 8.15pm / 111 minutes Director: Erik Poppe 2013 Norway Writers: Erik Poppe, Harald Rosenløw-Eeg Cast: Juliette Binoche, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Maria Doyle Kennedy
Binoche inhabits the role of this complex and challenging protagonist with characteristic grace and commitment, while Steph is a breakout turn for young Irish actress Lauryn Canny. A Thousand Times Good Night is at its heart a touching story about family, the ties that bind us, and what you are willing to lose in the search to be true to yourself.
Winner, Special Grand Prix, Montreal World Film Festival
Kate McEvoy
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
SUNDAY 16TH FEBRUARY
IDA (POLISH GALA) The Polish-born director Pawel Pawlikowski grabbed attention at the beginning of the last decade with two brilliant and intensely English pictures: Last Resort and My Summer of Love. Now he has returned with an arresting period movie from the heart of post-war Poland – and from his own heart, too. Every moment of Ida feels intensely personal. It is a small gem, tender and bleak, funny and sad, superbly photographed in luminous monochrome.
‘richly sympathetic and deeply moving’ Time Out
Sun 16 Feb / Light House 1 / 8.15pm / 80 minutes Director: Pawel Pawlikowski 2013 Poland Writers: Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Pawel Pawlikowski Cast: Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, David Ogrodnik Winner, Best Film, BFI London Film Festival With the support of the Embassy of Poland
Newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska plays Anna, a novice nun about to take her final vows in a convent where she was left on the doorstep as a baby in 1945. But Anna has one surviving relative with whom she is encouraged to make contact. This turns out to be her aunt, Wanda Gruz, tremendously played by Agata Kulesza: a worldly, hard-drinking woman who lives on her own. Wanda reveals the truth to her niece: Anna’s first name is Ida and she is Jewish. Now Ida and Wanda must set out to discover what happened to Ida’s parents during the war. Pawlikowski’s film tells us a powerful, poignant story with fine, intelligent performances from Kulesza and Trzebuchowska. Peter Bradshaw The Guardian With special guest David Ogrodnik
STANDING ASIDE, WATCHING NA KATHESAI KAI NA KOITAS ‘It’s easy for someone to turn into a jerk,’ the heroine’s father wisely observes. ‘To just stand aside, watching.’ The gulf between passive acceptance and active resistance is at the heart of Standing Aside, Watching, a compelling thriller from Greek director Yorgos Servetas.
‘draw[s] not only on classical Greek tragedy but also, grippingly, on the codes of the Western’ The Hollywood Reporter
Sun 16 Feb / Light House 3 / 8.30pm / 90 minutes Writer-director: Yorgos Servetas 2013 Greece Cast: Marina Symeou, Nikos Yorgakis, Yorgos Kafetzopoulos
When Antigone (played with steely determination by Marina Symeou), returns home after years in Athens, she finds her small coastal town, and the townsfolk themselves, in an advanced state of moral decay. Undaunted, Antigone sets about making the best. She gets a job in the local school and rekindles her friendship with fellow teacher Eleni. She dates Nikos, a handsome and naïve local youth, and even adopts a stray dog. But, like her mythological namesake, Antigone is a strong-willed heroine who takes exception to the status quo, and it’s not long before the activities of a local thug compel her to speak out, with dire consequences for everyone involved. Shot with taut economy and a poetic eye, Yorgos Servetas’ second feature is at once a thriller filled with simmering tension, a coruscating portrait of small-town corruption and a penetrating study of the corrosive effects of poverty on the soul of Greece. Alistair Daniel
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SUNDAY 16TH FEBRUARY
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THE WONDERS PLAOT Lewis Carroll meets Carol Reed in this dizzyingly funny and fantastical farce from Israeli director Avi Nesher, about a good-natured slacker who becomes embroiled in a labyrinthine conspiracy. Anything can happen in Jerusalem. Just ask Ariel Navon (Ori Hizkiah), a bartender, art-school dropout and compulsive cartoonist whose pleasantly mundane existence is turned upside down late one night after he spots a strange flash of blue light emanating from an apparently vacant building. His investigation yields an encounter with famed modern-day prophet Rabbi Knafo (Yehuda Levi). Is Knafo being held against his will? And who would do such a thing? ‘a brilliant mix of genres’ The Jerusalem Post
Sun 16 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 8.30pm / 112 minutes Director: Avi Nesher 2013 Israel Writers: Avi Nesher, Shaanan Street Cast: Adir Miller, Ori Hizkiah, Yehuda Levi
Veteran director Avi Nesher’s latest is a hoot. There are red herrings, unlikely alliances, and cartoons that come to life when no one is looking. The Wonders shows a kinship with the films of the Coen brothers and Woody Allen and the novels of Michael Chabon. Both Hizkiah and Miller are stand-up comics with impeccable timing, and they fully commit to creating complex, compelling characters with much at stake. Jane Schoettle Toronto International Film Festival With special guest Avi Nesher
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
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FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY
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FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
MONDAY 17TH FEBRUARY HIGHLIGHTS
SCREEN TEST: FREELANCING FOR BEGINNERS 1pm Page 64 INEQUALITY FOR ALL 6pm Page 53 THE FOOD GUIDE TO LOVE 8pm Page 55
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
MONDAY 17TH FEBRUARY
CIRCLES KRUGOVI Serbian director Srdan Golubović tackles the scars of war in Circles, a moving film about the damage done to people’s souls from the hostilities that racked the region for years. Based on a true story, the film opens with a horrific event in 1993. Marko (Vuk Kostic), a young Serbian soldier, returns on leave to his Bosnian town. He intervenes as a gang of soldiers are mercilessly beating a Muslim shopkeeper (Leon Lucev), but before we can see what happens, the film jumps ahead 12 years to examine the consequences of the act.
‘Golubović keeps the viewer so off-balance and hungry for story that the upshot is exhilaration’ Variety
Mon 17 Feb / Light House 2 / 4pm / 112 minutes Director: Srdan Golubović 2012 France/Serbia/Germany/Slovenia/Croatia Writers: Melina Pota Koljevic, Srdjan Koljevic Cast: Aleksandar Bercek, Nebosja Glogovac, Vuk Kostic Winner, World Cinema Special Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival With the support of the European Commission’s programme on enlargement of the European Union
What makes it all work is Golubović’s obvious skill with actors and the quality of the performances. Lucev is appropriately resolute as the shopkeeper, while Rakocevic as the tortured doctor Bogdan and Bercek as Marko’s embittered father are pitch perfect. Golubović and his cinematographer Aleksandar Ilic have an eye for the sparseness of this terrain, yet find the beauty in it. The camera remains still, so as not to disturb or overly embellish the fabric of these lives. When it finally comes, their redemption and forgiveness is like a breath of fresh air. James Greenberg The Hollywood Reporter
INEQUALITY FOR ALL
‘a revolutionary film’ The Guardian
Fresh from Sundance, where it won the Special Jury Prize, Inequality for All examines widening income inequality in the United States of America. Presented by Robert Reich, Secretary of Labour in the Clinton Administration, and now a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, the film investigates how the rich have gotten richer and the rest of us haven’t. Director Jacob Kornbluth takes complex economic ideas and deftly explains how they relate to the quality of everyday life as lived by most ordinary people. One of the film’s great strengths is its interview subjects, who range from Erika Vaclav, a Costco check-out clerk, to Nick Hanauer, a Seattle billionaire who believes that his taxes should go up. Incisive, accessible and funny (who knew Reich had such a sense of comic timing?), Inequality for All is a landmark documentary on the defining issue of our time. Seattle International Film Festival
Mon 17 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 6pm / 90 minutes Director: Jacob Kornbluth 2012 US Winner, Special Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival
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There will be a post-screening panel discussion, presented in association with TASC, featuring Sally Anne Kinihan, Nat O’Connor and Margaret Ward, moderated by Seán Whelan, RTÉ’s Economics Correspondent.
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WAKOLDA: THE GERMAN DOCTOR
‘A gently striking and achingly tense drama’ Screen International
Mon 17 Feb / Light House 1 / 6.15pm / 93 minutes Writer-director: Lucia Puenzo 2013 Argentina/France/Spain/Norway Cast: Florencia Bado, Àlex Brendemühl, Alan Daicz
After exploding onto the international arthouse scene with XXY (JDIFF 2008), Lucía Puenzo returns with the chilling story of Josef Mengele: the doctor who performed unthinkable experiments at Auschwitz before fleeing to Argentina. In Wakolda Mengele – posing under a pseudonym – befriends the family of young Lilith, a pretty but abnormally short girl with whom the doctor develops an obsession. Seduced by his attention and promises of injections that will make her grow, Lilith warms to Mengele, who moves into the hotel where she lives with her pregnant mother. Mengele’s exploits provide ample ammunition for dramatic tension, with Àlex Brendemühl (so memorable as the deadpan serial killer in The Hours of the Day) perfectly sinister as the doctor himself. But alongside the thriller narrative, Puenzo also allows room for a broader contextual sweep that reflects candidly on Argentina’s history as a Nazi retreat. Cambridge Film Festival
LOS WILD ONES Reb Kennedy stood at the corner of Advance Records on South King Street throughout the summer of punk, 1977, and glared at people like a selfappointed guardian of music taste. Diminutive and intense, Reb was real, particularly in the post-punk universe when men wore badgers on their heads and guitars sounded like geese being electrocuted. He was chasing a dream of passion for real music and of his place within it. He emigrated to California, found his dream and helped to fashion a genuine, vibrant and exciting roots/rock and roll/rockabilly vision.
‘The multi-dimensional look at these musicians is so heart-warming, heartbreaking, and humanizing that you feel like you know them’ Phoenix New Times
Mon 17 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 6.15pm / 77 minutes Director: Elise Salomon 2013 US/Ireland/Spain/UK Winner, Best Documentary, Michigan Film Awards Winner, Best Documentary, Phoenix Film Festival Winner, Best Feature, Reel Indie Film Fest
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Elise Salomon’s compelling documentary about Reb and his rockabilly ‘family’ is an edgy, passionate, beautiful and funny – as well as a deeply moving – story. Los Wild Ones is not just a film about a disgruntled Dublin punk who followed his dream and found a musical crusade, it’s a film about the most important commodity that human beings possess – love. It’s also the greatest film about Dublin ever to be set in Los Angeles. A total delight, and a movie that is guaranteed to put the dip in anyone’s hip. Ferdia Mac Anna
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
MONDAY 17TH FEBRUARY
THE DEER HUNTER The Deer Hunter, Cimino’s second movie, can, and should, be read as an epic treatise on endurance and, in particular, the indomitable spirit of the American male, tracing the classic human parabola from wedding bliss to funeral blues.
‘One of the few great films of the decade’ Time Out
The Deer Hunter is distinguished by quite audacious transitions from light to dark. The notorious Russian Roulette sequence – where POWs Michael (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken) and Steven (John Savage) must face off against each other for the amusement of their Viet-Cong captors – was one of the most terrifying scenes in celluloid history. In a movie spoilt for stand-out performances – Meryl Streep’s luminous debut, John Cazale’s last screen appearance, Christopher Walken’s Oscar-winning breakthrough – De Niro is always central.
Mon 17 Feb / Savoy 2 / 6.30pm / 182 minutes Director: Michael Cimino 1978 US Writer: Deric Washburn Cast: Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Cazale
From the justly ubiquitous theme music to Vilmos Zsigmond’s rich and lyrical cinematography, The Deer Hunter is a film of enormous, if mostly melancholy, beauty. 35 years on, The Deer Hunter deserves to be reclaimed as one of the most powerful humanist tracts ever committed to celluloid.
Winner, Best Film & Best Director, Academy Awards®
Colin Kennedy Empire Magazine
THE FOOD GUIDE TO LOVE Precocious culinary celebrity Oliver (Richard Coyle) lives his life in a succession of relationships that last precisely six months. When his latest girlfriend kicks him out (naked) onto the street he meets beautiful and fiery Spaniard Bibiana (Leonor Watling), whose own relationship is in the process of imploding. Despite having little in common their relationship starts well; he teaches her about his passion for food and she opens his eyes to a world beyond the kitchen. But as the six-month deadline approaches Oliver gets cold feet and a bumpy ride begins.
Mon 17 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 8pm / 90 minutes Directors: Dominic Harari, Teresa Pelegri 2012 Ireland Writers: Dominic Harari, Teresa Pelegri, Eugene O’Brien Cast: Richard Coyle, Leonor Watling
The Food Guide to Love is set in a colourful contemporary Dublin with an excellent supporting cast of home-grown talent including Simon Delaney and Bronagh Gallagher. Written and directed by husband and wife team Teresa Pelegri and Dominic Harari (Only Human), with an additional writing credit for Irish playwright Eugene O’Brien, this bright and light romantic comedy is about learning the true nature of love, the love that happens after the fireworks. Barry Dignam Film-maker With special guests Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THE PAST LE PASSÉ Following the taut Oscar-winning divorce drama A Separation, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi returns with another stunning study of modern family life, this time set on the outskirts of Paris where Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) arrives from Tehran to finalise the end of his tempestuous marriage to estranged wife Marie (Bérénice Bejo). The Past, however, is not simply a variation on a theme; it is a gripping, emotional detective story, as curious Ahmad investigates the events of the previous four years, his interest piqued by Marie’s sulky teenage daughter Lucie (Pauline Burlet), whose strange contempt for her mother’s new boyfriend Samir (Tahar Rahim) sets the story in motion. ‘An intricate and often brilliant drama, with restrained and intelligent performances’ The Guardian
Mon 17 Feb / Light House 1 / 8.15pm / 130 minutes Writer-director: Asghar Farhadi 2013 France/Iran Cast: Ali Mosaffa, Bérénice Bejo, Tahar Rahim
Farhadi’s cast is note-perfect, especially The Artist’s Bejo, playing beautifully against type as a flaky suburban mother of three. But the real star is the script, a masterwork of restraint that drip-feeds one explosive revelation after another. Damon Wise BFI London Film Festival
Winner, Best Actress, Cannes Film Festival With the support of the French Embassy in Ireland
THE MATCHMAKER Set in Haifa in the summer of 1968, The Matchmaker is a tender story of love, loss and survival in the aftermath of the Second World War. Director Avi Nesher explores a fascinating juncture in Israeli history, where an embryonic society still reeling from the Holocaust is beset by the cultural-sexual upheaval of the sixties.
‘gripping’ The New York Times
Mon 17 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 8.30pm / 112 minutes Writer-director: Avi Nesher 2010 Israel Cast: Adir Miller, Maya Dagan, Tuval Shafir Winner, Best Actor & Best Actress, Israeli Academy Awards Winner, Best Director, Chicago International Film Festival
Sixteen-year-old Arik is at loose ends one summer when he gets a job offer from a mysterious old friend of his father’s named Yankele Bride. A Holocaust survivor, Bride makes his living as a matchmaker and hires Arik to scout potential clients throughout the bustling port city. The diverse characters he meets on the job open Arik’s eyes to a world of wonder, pain and longing, offering him glimpses into unspeakable darkness and the depths of human love. There is Clara, a beautiful, fragile woman whom Bride loves from afar; Sylvia, a survivor of Josef Mengele’s Nazi experiments who yearns for a partner; and Meir, a librarian whose search for love leads him to commit an extraordinary act of malice. Then Arik falls in love for the first time, a development that brings surprising consequences. AICE Israeli Film Festival With special guest Avi Nesher
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
MONDAY 17TH FEBRUARY
LASTING NIEULOTNE Michał and Karina fall head over heels in love during their summer holiday in Spain. Under the warm sun-soaked vineyards in the ecstasy of their thrilling new romance, everything feels carefree and innocent. But when Michał (Jakub Gierszał) has a threatening encounter with an unsavoury property owner while scuba diving, an impulsive act leads to a devastating turn. Michał covers up what happened and suddenly returns to Poland without telling Karina (Magdalena Berus) the truth. Soon Karina also has something she keeps from Michał. With their secrets looming over them, their once-unbridled affection begins slipping through their hands, and their bright, innocent faces turn dark with worry.
Mon 17 Feb / Light House 2 / 9pm / 93 minutes Writer-director: Jacek Borcuch 2012 Poland/Spain Cast: Jakub Gierszał, Magdalena Berus, Ángela Molina
With an immersive touch, Jacek Borcuch (All That I Love, JDIFF 2010) effortlessly captures the couple’s youthful spirit and rapture, amplifying the weight of the emotionally sobering drama that ensues. Lasting is an exploration of that rare species of love that can endure life’s pitfalls, and a terrifying reminder that one fateful minute can upend everything.
Winner, Cinematography Award, Sundance Film Festival Sundance Film Festival With the support of the Embassy of Poland With special guest Jacek Borcuch
THE LAST DAYS ON MARS The Last Days on Mars is a new science fiction thriller and the debut feature film of Irish director Ruairí Robinson, whose animated short Fifty Percent Grey was nominated for an Academy Award® in 2002. Liev Schreiber, Romola Garai and Olivia Williams, in a scene-stealing supporting role, are crewmembers on the first manned mission to Mars, which was all going according to plan until the final day, when an exciting discovery is made a few miles from the base camp. A science officer goes missing while attempting to collect what appears to be evidence of Martian life and the crew’s hopes of a safe home journey to Earth are dashed.
‘an atmospheric chiller’ The Hollywood Reporter
Mon 17 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 9pm / 98 minutes Director: Ruairí Robinson 2013 Ireland/UK Writer: Clive Dawson Cast: Liev Schreiber, Romola Garai, Olivia Williams
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Reminiscent of Duncan Jones’ recent contribution Moon and bowing its head to seminal works of the genre, Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Last Days on Mars is both a moody and stylish exploration of group psychology in space, and a tense and poundingly violent account of the battle to remain alive on our mysterious neighbouring planet. David Mullane
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TUESDAY 18TH FEBRUARY HIGHLIGHTS JAMESON CULT FILM CLUB - JAWS WITH RICHARD DREYFUSS Page 61 LOVELY LOUISE WITH BETTINA OBERLI 6.30pm Page 72
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
TUESDAY 18TH FEBRUARY
BEFORE THE WINTER CHILL AVANT L’HIVER They are the perfect French haute bourgeois couple. Paul (Daniel Auteuil) is a respected surgeon; Lucie (Kristin Scott Thomas) cooks and gardens exquisitely. Together, they bring joy and a sense of stability to their extended family and community of friends. But the passion for Paul of a stranger (Leïla Bekhti) brings chaos into their well-manicured existence.
‘elegantly cool’ The Hollywood Reporter
Tues 18 Feb / Light House 1 / 6.15pm / 103 minutes Writer-director: Philippe Claudel 2013 France/Luxembourg Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Daniel Auteuil, Leila Bekhti
Novelist/film-maker Philippe Claudel’s second film opens as a skilful, unnerving Gallic take on Fatal Attraction, with a nod to the great Claude Chabrol’s thrillers, but it is far too smart to follow those well-worn tracks, gradually morphing into something more disconcertingly original and passionate. Claudel extends the strong creative partnership he began with Scott Thomas in I’ve Loved You So Long (JDIFF 2010) and extracts a superb, poignant performance from Auteuil, as he offers an unforgettable glimpse at the skeleton beneath the elegant skin of suburban gentility. Telluride Film Festival
With the support of the French Embassy in Ireland
THE DEVIL’S POOL: MADNESS, MELANCHOLIA AND THE ARTIST Reel Art is an Arts Council scheme designed to provide film artists with a unique opportunity to make highly creative, imaginative and experimental documentaries on an artistic theme. Is there a connection between creativity and madness? Does being creative involve a risk of madness or is madness a prerequisite for creativity? This unusual documentary addresses the long-held public belief in a connection between madness and artistic creativity. The documentary combines a dramatised section with interviews with artists, researchers and academics. These interwoven strands contrast the chaos and torment of mental collapse with the careful rationality of psychiatric research and the views of working artists.
Tues 18 Feb / IFI 1 / 6.15pm / 35 minutes Writer-director: Cecily Brennan 2013 Ireland
Over the course of the documentary the film-maker compares the intellectual and measured observations of the experts, their words controlled and thought through, with a description of a descent into chaos and madness, overwhelming depression and stasis. Interviewees include Dr Simon Kyaga from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Professor Patricia Waugh of Durham University, the playwright Frank McGuinness and the poet Paul Muldoon. Film-maker’s statement
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
VOLTA PRESENTATION On 20 December 1909, with help from friends in Trieste, James Joyce opened the Cinematograph Volta Cinema on Mary Street in Dublin. Nearly a century later, in 2007, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival established the Volta Award to recognise individuals who have made a significant contribution to the world of cinema. The Volta Awards have drawn some of the biggest names in film to our shores, including actors like Al Pacino and Martin Sheen, directors such as François Ozon and Paolo Sorrentino, and a host of famous industry names. Last year’s prestigious recipients were composer Ennio Morricone, actordirector Danny DeVito, actor Tim Roth, director Costa-Gavras and writer-director Joss Whedon. We are delighted to welcome Richard Dreyfuss to Dublin for the presentation of his 2014 Volta Award and a special Jameson Cult Film Club screening of Jaws. Richard Dreyfuss was born Richard Stephen Dreyfus in Brooklyn, New York on October 29, 1947 and spent his early childhood in Bayside, Queens before moving to Los Angeles. He attended Beverly Hills High School with fellow actors Rob Reiner and Albert Brooks, and acted in community plays as a teenager. He briefly attended San Fernando Valley State College but was booted out after starting a contentious argument with a teacher. Because he registered as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, he spent two years fulfilling an alternate term of service as a hospital clerk. Dreyfuss’ first film role was an uncredited part in Valley of the Dolls, followed by a single line in The Graduate in 1967. But it was the smash hit American Graffiti which provided him with his breakout role and he was nominated for a Golden Globe for best actor. Over the next four years, with shrewd film choices and robust performances, Dreyfuss became one of American cinema’s leading men and had a spectacular string of successes both critical and commercial. Firstly, the wonderful Canadian film The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, which was followed by the two signature films he made with Steven Spielberg; as the shark expert in the blockbuster Jaws and then as an engineer who sees a UFO in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Then in 1978, Dreyfuss won an Oscar for best actor for the romantic comedy The Goodbye Girl. He was just 29, and, at the time, the youngest actor to ever receive the honour. For the next few years, Richard Dreyfuss’ career somewhat declined, but in 1986 he rebounded with the comedy Down and Out in Beverly Hills which he followed with Stakeout and What About Bob? In 1995 Dreyfuss was nominated for both an Academy Award® and a Golden Globe for his performance in the musical drama Mr Holland’s Opus. More recently, Dreyfuss portrayed Vice President Dick Cheney in Oliver Stone’s film W and Jason Priestley’s debut feature Cas & Dylan (screened at JDIFF – see page 78). In addition to acting, he is a vocal advocate for individual civic rights.
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
TUESDAY 18TH FEBRUARY
JAMESON CULT FILM CLUB
‘it could be Spielberg’s finest moment’ Empire
JAWS Tues 18 Feb / 124 minutes Director: Steven Spielberg 1975 US Writers: Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb Cast: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss Winner, Best Motion Picture, 1976 Golden Globes Winner, Best Sound, Best Film Editing & Best Music, 1976 Academy Awards® THIS YEAR, JAMESON IRISH WHISKEY PRESENTS THE JAMESON CULT FILM CLUB. A YEAR-LONG PROGRAMME OF SPECIAL SCREENINGS WILL TAKE PLACE THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY, CULT FILMS WILL BE PRESENTED IN KEY NON-CINEMA LOCATIONS, WITH KEY GUESTS INVITED TO TALK ABOUT THE FILM WITH THE INVITED AUDIENCES.
For JDIFF, Jameson presents one of the most suspenseful films of all time: Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. Just as the pursuit of its colossal predator cries out for a bigger boat, the muchtelevised Jaws demands to be seen on a bigger screen. Restored and digitally remastered to mark Universal Pictures’ 100th anniversary, Steven Spielberg’s 1975 thriller remains exceptional entertainment. Based on Peter Benchley’s bestseller, it’s part affable adventure, part hydrodynamic horror. The high-concept story sees the residents of Amity Island terrorised by a rogue great white shark as they prepare for their 4th July celebrations. With Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) determined to keep the beaches open despite fatalities, conscientious police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) is tasked with disposing of the slippery fish. He’s an aquaphobic New Yorker who’s recently moved to the island with his devoted wife Ellen (Lorraine Gary) and two button-cute kids. Brody is accompanied on the hunt by maverick seaman Quint (Robert Shaw) and oceanographer Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss). The trio’s cracking camaraderie has seldom been bettered and the aquatic terror is deftly balanced with lively, likeable characterisations. Unlike Spielberg’s subsequent films, Jaws avoids sentimentality. More out of necessity than design, the shark features fleetingly; instead its presence is ingeniously felt in John Williams’ iconic ‘da-dums’, in a section of broken pier returning to pursue a fisherman, in the ordeal of a skinny dipper and in the ominous appearance of barrels. It may indeed be the shark that ate Hollywood but alongside this buoyant beast all those it inspired sink like stones.
Please note: this screening is only available to Jameson Cult Film Club members. For details go to www.jamesoncultfilmclub.ie
Emma Simmonds The List Richard Dreyfuss will take part in a post-screening Q&A with Rick O’Shea
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15A
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
WORKSHOPS & EVENTS
PYROTECHNICS AND PISTOLS FRIDAY 14 FEB / SMITHFIELD SQUARE / 2PM FREE AND UNTICKETED The 12th Jameson Dublin International Film Festival is delighted to present a demonstration of practical special effects. In partnership with F/X Ireland and the Stunt Actors Guild, Ireland, there will be a live demonstration on Friday 14 February at 2pm. Special effects form a broad range of resources at a film-maker’s disposal, from something as simple as smoke or rain to fire and explosions. In a digital age practical special effects still have a major role to play. JDIFF invites you to come along and see Hollywoodstyle effects scenarios unfold on the streets of Dublin. Post-demonstration, the F/X and stunt teams will field questions from the audience about how they coordinate and organise realistic action sequences in a safe and secure environment. This is an exciting and unique opportunity not to be missed!
THE STORY OF MUSIC SUN 16 FEB / THE CHURCH / 4PM FREE BUT TICKETED As part of our inaugural Guest Curator season, this year curated by Allison and Tiffany Anders, this panel discussion will gather a number of the film-makers programmed in the season, joined by Allison and Tiffany, to discuss music documentary as a genre. Allison Anders is an award-winning film and television writer and director and Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara. With her daughter Tiffany Anders she co-founded the Don’t Knock the Rock Film and Music Festival in Los Angeles. Tiffany Anders is a recording artist, working with PJ Harvey amongst others. She is also a music supervisor and a radio broadcaster. Featuring Paul Kelly (Lawrence of Belgravia), Louise Palanker (Family Band: The Cowsills Story) and Stan Warnow (Deconstructing Dad), and hosted by acclaimed Irish music blogger Nialler9, join us for an exploration of how the story of music and musicians is told through the medium of documentary film.
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SCREEN TEST
In partnership with the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Screen Test has become a mainstay at JDIFF, at which various industry experts kindly donate their time to come and discuss their fields of proficiency. These events are geared towards entry-level professionals and graduates but there is also plenty for more experienced industry members to absorb. With daily events at the Festival Hub in Filmbase, Screen Test promises to be both enlightening and engaging. David Mullane and Liam Ryan Tickets (€10) can be purchased online (jdiff.com), in person at our box office in the Festival Hub at Filmbase, or by phone (01 687 7974) . Pre-booking is recommended, as spaces can be limited. Ticket holders for other Screen Test events can attend the Making Your First Feature event for free (on a first come, first served basis).
FREELANCING FOR BEGINNERS
THE FOUNDATIONS OF FUNDING
Mon 17 Feb / Filmbase / 1pm
Thurs 20 Feb / Filmbase / 1pm
A panel of experts will explore the skills needed to make your start as a freelancer in the Irish broadcasting industry. Leading communications expert Terry Prone will talk through the networking and interpersonal skills crucial in helping you make connections in the industry. Managing director of Samson Films David Collins will share his knowledge and experience in Irish broadcasting. Gaby Smyth, accountant, chairperson of the festival’s board of directors and expert in business for freelancers in film and culture, will discuss the smooth running of your new enterprise.
Hosted by John Kelleher, awardwinning producer, former Controller of Programmes, RTÉ 1 Television, and former Director of Film Classification, this panel will explore the sources of financing available to media professionals in Ireland. The panel includes Jane Gogan, RTÉ Commissioning Editor Drama; Aaron Farrell, Production Executive and Project Manager, Octagon Films; Andrew Hetherington, Project Director, Business to Arts and Fundit.ie; Ciarán Kissane, Head of Contract Awards, Broadcasting Authority of Ireland; and project managers from the Irish Film Board.
CINEMATOGRAPHY
FROM SCRIPT TO SCREEN: A CASE STUDY OF ‘AMBER’
Tues 18 Feb / Filmbase / 1pm
Fri 21 Feb / Filmbase / 1pm In this increasingly popular annual event, the Irish Society of Cinematographers returns to discuss the relationship between the director and their DOP, as well as the right tools to create amazing images. Chaired by John Leahy (ISC Admin).
THE FUTURE OF BROADCASTING
This panel takes an in-depth look at the creation, development and delivery of new RTÉ drama Amber. Join creators and producers Paul Duane and Rob Cawley alongside director Thaddeus O’Sullivan and writer Gary Duggan as they discuss the factors involved in bringing this show to life.
Wed 19 Feb / Filmbase / 1pm
MAKING YOUR FIRST FEATURE With the advent of online media such as video-on-demand, podcasting and TV playback services, the landscape of broadcasting has changed significantly. A panel of industry experts will discuss how broadcasters are adapting to meet audiences’ evolving demands. The panel includes Philippe Brodeur, Director of Aertv; Jill O’Brien, Head of Digital, TV3; Jarlath Regan, comedian and podcaster; and Alan Swan, award-winning RTÉ radio producer.
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Fri 21 Feb / Filmbase / 3pm After the success of last year’s event, we are delighted to once again invite the students of Filmbase’s MA in Film-making to screen their latest feature film, which will be followed by a Q&A. Screen Test ticket holders for other events can attend this event for free on a first-come, firstserved basis.
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
WORKSHOPS & EVENTS
PRODUCING WITH PAULO BRANCO
TUES 18 FEB / BROOKS HOTEL / 4PM Paulo Branco started his career as a producer in 1979. Nowadays he is one of the most important figures of independent production in the world. A key player in auteur cinema, he is recognized for having given opportunities to numerous aspiring film-makers who later became significant cinematographers, offering them the opportunity to make their screen debut.
To date he has produced over 270 films, working with the most renowned film directors in the world, such as David Cronenberg, Wim Wenders, Chantal Akerman, Werner Schroeter, André Téchiné, Andrzej Zulawski, Christophe Honoré, Olivier Assayas, Cédric Kahn, Lucas Belvaux, Paul Auster and Mathieu Amalric, among many others. His career has been particularly notable for longrunning collaborations with Raúl Ruiz (Time Regained, Three Lives and Only
One Death) and with Manoel de Oliveira (Francisca, Abraham’s Valley). Paulo Branco is also well known as the producer who has had the greatest number of films selected at the Cannes Film Festival and the greatest number of films competing for the Palme d’Or. He is president of the Lisbon & Estoril Film Festival, an event he founded in 2007. For application details, see jdiff,.com
CASTING WITH MARGERY SIMKIN FOR DATE, VENUE AND TICKET DETAILS SEE JDIFF.COM €15 Back by popular demand! Margery Simkin has cast such films as Beverley Hills Cop, Top Gun, Brazil, Field of Dreams, Twelve Monkeys, Erin Brockovich, Marley & Me, Avatar, Pacific Rim and Beautiful Creatures. In the course of her career she has given early opportunities/starts to such actors as Tom Cruise, Laura Dern, Kevin Bacon, Robert Downey Jr, Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Queen Latifah, Natalie Portman and Sam Worthington. Based in Los Angeles, Ms Simkin has had the privilege of working with many great directors including Terry Gilliam, Frank Oz, Danny DeVito, David Frankel, James Cameron and Richard LaGravenese. ‘The casting event was definitely one of the highlights of the 2013 festival for me. Very interesting and a great insight into the world of casting.’ Trish Ryan
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WRITE HERE, WRITE NOW FROM PAGE TO SCREEN
SAT 15 FEB / PEARSE ST LIBRARY / 2PM FREE BUT TICKETED
Toby Jones in Frost/Nixon. © Universal Pictures.
In recent years, some of the most successful films at the box office have been adaptations from popular novels. This event will explore how this adaptation process occurs. How does a book get optioned for screen? Do you need an agent and how do you approach one? What do agents do and how do they find books to bring to the screen? Writing. ie’s Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin will quiz industry insiders Camilla Young and Conor Barry to find the answers to these questions. Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin is a publishing consultant and literary scout, founder of The Inkwell Group and Writing.ie, Vice Chair of Irish PEN and the Irish adviser to the Alliance of Independent Authors.
Having worked in the actors department of Independent Talent for over two years, Camilla Young joined Curtis Brown in 2010 and since then has worked with Nick Martson, representing an amazing list of both new and established writing and directing talent across television, film and theatre. Conor Barry, founder of SP Films with Brendan Muldowney, has produced a number of award-winning features, documentaries and short films. His most recent production, Love Eternal, which screens at this year’s festival, is an adaptation of Kei Oishi’s novel In Love with the Dead. This event is held in association with Dublin City of Literature and the national online writing magazine, Writing.ie.
WRITERS IN CONVERSATION Hosted by Laurence Mackin, Arts Editor of The Irish Times, this panel gathers together some of the most celebrated writers and film-makers working in Ireland to discuss the relationship between books and film and how a literary voice translates to the screen. They will also pick out their own personal favourite scenes of dialogue from film in a celebration of screenwriting as fans and not just as professionals.
Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird FRI 21 FEB / IRISH WRITERS’ CENTRE / 4:30PM FREE BUT TICKETED
The panel will include acclaimed Irish author (and film festival regular) John Connolly; British screenwriter Malcolm Campbell, who has written for Skins and Shameless, and who wrote the screenplay for What Richard Did, loosely based on Kevin Power’s novel A Bad Day in Blackrock; Irish film-maker and lecturer Pat Murphy, celebrated for her films Maeve, Anne Devlin and Nora; Irish writerdirector Michael Kinirons, well known for his short film Lowland Fell, among many others; and Darren Thornton, another successful Irish writer-director who received critical acclaim for his short films Frankie and Two Hearts and the TV series Love is the Drug. This event is held in association with the Irish Writers’ Centre.
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
WORKSHOPS & EVENTS
SCREENWRITING WITH PETER MORGAN SAT 15 FEB / LIGHT HOUSE 3 / 11AM Peter Morgan is an international awardwinning writer for stage, screen and film. In addition to receiving Oscar®, Golden Globe and BAFTA Award nominations for his screenplays for Stephen Frears’ The Queen, Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon and, most recently, Howard’s Rush, Morgan has won a host of international awards. Morgan has won a host of international awards. His most recent play, The Audience, which starred Mirren, was a West End smash hit, receiving nominations in five categories at the 2013 Olivier Awards. His previous play, the Olivier and Tony Award-nominated Frost/Nixon, received critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic before being adapted into the Academy Award®nominated film of the same name.
Morgan’s many film credits include the award-winning The Last King of Scotland, which won the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; The Damned United; and Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, which starred Matt Damon. Morgan’s upcoming credits include the Hugh Hefner biopic Playboy, which is in development with Warner Bros. Pictures; and the television movie Christopher Jefferies, to be directed by Roger Mitchell. Morgan’s extensive television credits include the BAFTA Award-winning The Deal; The Special Relationship, which is the first part of Morgan’s Tony Blair trilogy; and the multi-award-winning Longford. For application details for this masterclass, see jdiff.com
DO CRITICS MATTER? TUES 18 FEB / THE CHURCH / 5PM FREE BUT TICKETED Film distributors eagerly quote professional critics when marketing their slate, yet poor reviews don’t seem to hamper the commercial success of large films. Conversely, certain films have suffered at the box office after negative advance word from critics. It can be argued that, whereas reviewers have no effect on blockbusters, their opinions are crucial to the success or failure of films outside the mainstream. But, in the age of social media, what do we mean by a critic? These issues and more will be thrashed out in a debate, which the critics are already calling ‘a compelling triumph’. The panel will include members of the Dublin Film Critics Circle and international film critics such as Screen International’s Mark Adams.
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Buster Keaton in Speak Easily (1932)
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WRITE HERE, WRITE NOW
SCRIPTWRITING FOR ANIMATION WITH RICHELLE WILDER SAT 22 FEB / IRISH TIMES BUILDING / 2PM €15
As part of this year’s focus on screenwriting, we are delighted to welcome Richelle Wilder to the festival to present a talk on scriptwriting for animation. Working in screenplay development for twenty years, Richelle has been Head of Film Development at Aardman (Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit), Head of Development for Pathé UK (An Ideal Husband) and creative producer on the UK/Irish/ French-animated series Freefonix. Among many other projects, she developed and polished the screenplay for Khumba, wrote and script edited Dennis and Gnasher (CBBC), and worked with the Irish Film Board and MEDIA on project funding assessments. In 2010 she founded Script Matters, a story and script agency which works with producers, writers, studios and broadcasters to develop scripts for both animation and live action movies and series. Following Richelle’s presentation, there will be a Q&A hosted by Gareth Lee, Network Manager of Animation Skillnet.
Still from Wallace and Gromit: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
This event is presented in association with Animation Skillnet.
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM SUN 23 FEB / THE CHURCH / 3PM FREE BUT TICKETED An examination of the relationship between Irish audiences and Irish cinema, this panel discussion with explore how our national cinema is received by the nation. Are Irish film-makers making films for their fellow countrymen, their foreign neighbours or both? What do audiences expect from their national cinema? How do Irish films represent Ireland in the twenty-first century? Discussing these questions will be arts journalist and broadcaster Sinead Gleeson; managing director of Samson Films David Collins; director of our Closing Night Gala, The Stag, John Butler; Head of Distribution for Element Pictures Audrey Sheils, and awardwinning film-maker Neasa Hardiman, who will chair the discussion.
John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara in The Quiet Man
This panel discussion is presented in association with the Writers Guild of Ireland.
FOR DETAILS OF STORY CAMPUS AT JDIFF 2014, SEE PAGE 122 68
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
WORKSHOPS & EVENTS
INDUSTRY NETWORKING EVENTS AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT OF ANY FESTIVAL IS THE OPPORTUNITY FOR INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS TO MEET AND EXCHANGE IDEAS. TO THIS END, WE HAVE PROGRAMMED TWO NETWORKING EVENTS, ONE FOR IRISH FILM-MAKERS AND ONE TO WELCOME OUR EUROPEAN GUESTS.
JDIFF IRISH SHORTS RECEPTION
EUROPEAN FESTIVAL NETWORKING EVENING
FRI 14 FEB / THE CHURCH / 8.30PM
WED 19 FEB / THE CHURCH / 5PM
Following the screening of this year’s JDIFF Shorts, we invite you to meet our featured Irish short filmmakers and short film experts Sharon Badal (Tribeca Film Festival) and Kathleen McInnis (Palm Springs International Film Festival) to discuss and celebrate short film-making in Ireland.
We are honoured to welcome a number of leading European film professionals to Dublin to enjoy this year’s programme of films and events. On Wednesday evening, we invite local Irish film-makers to meet these European leaders, who will include Ania Trzebiatowska (Off Plus Camera, Poland), Hrönn Marinósdóttir (Reykjavik International Film Festival), Lars Hermann (CPH:PIX, Copenhagen), Mihai Chirilov (Transylvania International Film Festival), Jean-François Rauger (Cinémathèque Française), and Paulo Branco (acclaimed Portuguese producer).
To register your interest in attending these events, please email workshoprsvp@jdiff.com
DUBLIN FILM CRITICS CIRCLE Established in 2006, The Dublin Film Critics Circle offers the city’s full-time professional movie reviewers an opportunity to pool opinions on recent releases, consider movie heritage and whinge about each other’s shortcomings. Join these irrascible folk as they ponder JDIFF 2014 and name their final selections for Best Film, Best Director, Best Irish Film, Best Documentary and Best Performances from the festival programme.
SAT 22 FEB / THE CHURCH / 4PM
This year, a jury that includes Daniel Anderson (Click), Brogen Hayes (Spin FM), Paul Whittington (Sunday Business Post), Nicola Timmins (Average Film Reviews), Dave O’Mahony (Access Cinema), Rory Cashin (entertainment.ie), Donald Clarke (The Irish Times) and DFCC president Tara Brady (The Irish Times) will, additionally, announce the recipient of the fifth Michael Dwyer Discovery Award, named for our late friend and colleague. Presentable DFCC member Gavin Burke (Phantom FM) will be on hand to introduce the final deliberations of the 2014 jury at the Film-makers Lounge at The Church Café Bar.
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CLOSE-UP ICONIC FILM IMAGES FROM SUSAN WOOD CITY ASSEMBLY HOUSE, SOUTH WILLIAM STREET FRIDAY 7–SATURDAY 22 FEBRUARY OPENING HOURS: 10AM–5PM, MONDAY–SATURDAY
A collection of Susan Wood’s work, on exhibition in association with the Irish Georgian Society and curated by Deirdre Brennan, represents a number of milestones in American photography over a period of more than 30 years. Her pictures have appeared worldwide, from galleries and museums to publications and websites. She was involved with the original ‘Mad Men’ of Madison Avenue and during that time won several Clios, the most sought-after awards in advertising.
Mademoiselle chose her as one of their top Ten Women of the Year and her work appeared in many other periodicals including People and Vogue. Although her most famous magazine cover is an iconic photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, she is best known for her movie stills. Under contract to Paramount Pictures, United Artists and 20th Century Fox, Ms Wood was on set and on location during the filming of movies which defined the 1960s,
like Leo the Last, Easy Rider and Modesty Blaise (pictured above). Her assignments allowed her to capture remarkable, unrehearsed shots of some of that era’s most unforgettable actors like Peter Fonda, Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn – on display as a group, here for the first time ever.
BRAINBELT FILMBASE 13 - 23 FEBRUARY MON - SAT, 10AM - 5PM Following the success of the Brainbelt Illustration Collective Exhibition at JDIFF 2013, we have teamed up with Brainbelt again so the artists can respond to this year’s line-up of films. Artists Shane Cluskey, John Corrigan, Michelle Cunningham, Peter Dawson, Alan Dunne, Séamus McArdle, Edel McMahon, Duffy Mooney Sheppard, Tom Moore, Jamie Murphy, Eileen O’Neill, Lauren O’Neill, Emma Rowe, Gareth Teggin and Stephen McNally bring you limited edition images from over 30 festival films.
Photo: Ultan Courtney
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
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TUESDAY 18TH FEBRUARY
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TUESDAY 18TH FEBRUARY
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
LOVELY LOUISE Middle-aged André is the quintessential mother’s boy; his life is so inseparable from his elderly mother’s that they share an apartment, a bank account and a stultifying routine. His mother – the pointedly named Louise Dubois – spurned her chance of Hollywood stardom to raise him, and André’s guilt over her dashed hopes has ruined his life. Now he works as a taxi driver, ferrying his mother to lunch appointments at a restaurant she can little afford. But when a gregarious American suddenly turns up claiming to be Louise’s long-lost second son, the pair are thrown into a turmoil that will drive them right to the edge.
Tues 18 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 6.30pm / 91 minutes Director: Bettina Oberli 2013 Switzerland/Germany Writers: Bettina Oberli, Petra Biondina Volpe Cast: Stefan Kurt, Annemarie Duringer, Stanley Townsend Presented in co-operation with the Goethe-Institut Irland and with the support of the Embassy of Switzerland
Lovely Louise is a touching drama about finding the courage to move on with your life. Director Bettina Oberli never lets the deadpan comedy get in the way of real emotion, and the film is blessed with strong performances throughout, from Annemarie Duringer, note perfect as the duplicitous Louise, living off the vapours of her dreams; to Irish actor Stanley Townsend as Bill, a man-child sweating fury, self-pity and charm. Alistair Daniel With special guests Bettina Oberli and Stanley Townsend
LOVE ETERNAL Based on the Japanese novel In Love with the Dead, from acclaimed author Kei Oishi (Apartment 1303, The Last Supper), Love Eternal centres on an isolated and death-fixated young man who tries to make sense of the world, and his existence, in the only way he knows how… by getting closer to death.
‘ a beguiling and deftly enigmatic tale of dark and haunted love’ Screen International
Brendan Muldowney’s second feature, following the award-winning Savages, is a dark and elegiac yet inspiring portrayal of a damaged young man trying to find his way in a world he no longer understands. Featuring note-perfect performances from Robert de Hoog and Pollyanna McIntosh, Love Eternal is a rich cinematic experience, and, in his exploration of notions of life, death and the universe as a whole, Muldowney has created a bold cinematic landscape all his own. Galway Film Fleadh
Tues 18 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 8.30pm / 93 minutes Writer-director: Brendan Muldowney 2013 Ireland/Luxembourg/ Netherlands/Japan Cast: Pollyanna McIntosh, Amanda Ryan, Robert de Hoog
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With special guests Brendan Muldowney, Pollyanna McIntosh and Conor Barry
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
TUESDAY 18TH FEBRUARY
LIFE FEELS GOOD CHCE SIE ZYC Neither tearfully sentimental nor coldly scientific, Life Feels Good, Maciej Pieprzyca’s film, about a man with cerebral palsy, instead proves oddly entertaining. The protagonist, diagnosed as mentally ‘retarded’ since childhood, delivers interior monologues that supply ironically ‘normal’ counterpoint to the contorted sounds and movements he makes. Brilliantly thesped by non-disabled actors, the film is filled with fully fleshed-out characters that defy simple categorization. Pieprzyca places the character of Mateusz squarely at his story’s centre. While his mother showers him with kisses and laughter, his father fires his imagination. As he grows up, Mateusz (Dawid Ogrodnik) even wins a loving girlfriend. But, as with all his attempts to influence the world, his efforts to help her backfire.
Tues 18 Feb / Light House 1 / 8.30pm / 101 minutes Writer-director: Maciej Pieprzyca 2013 Poland Cast: Dawid Ogrodnik, Kamil Tkacz, Katarzyna Zawadzka Winner, Grand Prix & Audience Award, Montreal World Film Festival Winner, Silver Lion, Gdynia Film Festival
Pieprzyca situates his film in that gap between the Mateusz seen by even the kindliest, and the smart, sardonic, inner Mateusz. His erratic movements and unintelligible sounds register less as symptoms of disease than as a language that others are too unimaginative to interpret. Ronnie Scheib Variety
With the support of the Embassy of Poland With special guest Dawid Ogrodnik
LOOKING FOR LIGHT: JANE BOWN A revealing portrait of Jane Bown, the self-effacing but acclaimed portrait photographer, emerges through conversation, anecdote and candid reflection in this new documentary from Michael Whyte and Irish filmmaker Luke Dodd. In the almost six decades that Bown worked for The Observer, she became renowned for insightful, highly individualistic portraits of the famous. Some of these portraits are now regarded as classics of the genre - Samuel Beckett, Queen Elizabeth II, The Beatles, Bertrand Russell, Mick Jagger and Margaret Thatcher.
Tues 18 Feb / Light House 2 / 8.45pm / 83 minutes Directors: Luke Dodd, Michael Whyte 2014 UK
The film grew out of a 2005 interview conducted with Bown as she was coming to the end of her working life and beginning to contemplate what it would be like when she was no longer able to take photographs. For the first time, she spoke candidly about her career and revealed how her very personal approach to the taking of portraits is informed by a deep sense of loss and abandonment. This private portrait is enhanced by a series of insightful interviews with Jane’s peers, family, colleagues, friends, and of course some of her subjects. David Mullane With special guests Luke Dodd and Michael Whyte
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MOOD INDIGO L’ÉCUME DES JOURS It’s a match made in heaven: director Michel Gondry, master of cinematic bricolage, meets Boris Vian’s cult novel Froth on the Daydream, and the result is Mood Indigo. Romain Duris plays handsome, wealthy Colin, who lives in a lovely apartment with a factotum (Omar Sy from The Untouchables) so brilliant and accomplished he leaves Jeeves at the starting post. Colin’s friend Chick, avid collector of the books of celebrity philosopher Jean Sol Patre, falls in love, so Colin decides that he too wants a girlfriend, which is when he meets Chloe (Audrey Tautou). So far, so cute. But there’s heartbreak ahead.
‘Gondry builds a beautifully busy alternate universe full of surprises’ Screen International
Tues 18 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 8.45pm / 125 minutes Director: Michel Gondry 2013 France/Belgium Writers: Michel Gondry, Luc Bossi Cast: Audrey Tautou, Romain Duris, Gad Elmaleh
Froth on the Daydream, first published in 1947, was described by Raymond Queneau as ‘the most heartbreakingly poignant modern love story ever written’. Gondry’s brand of dark romantic whimsy and penchant for lo-tech effects nail the writer’s jazzy invention, surreal flights of fancy, streaks of satire and wall-to-wall puns. Like the novel, the film starts off light-hearted, but there are signs all is not rosy in this world. As the characters are confronted by worsening health and financial crises, the film becomes darker and more melancholy. Mood Indigo is a rom-com haunted by death.
With the support of the French Embassy in Ireland Anne Billson The Telegraph
THE CINE TALENT AWARD CREATE. INSPIRE. NETWORK. ENGAGE.
JDIFF, in partnership with Universal Pictures International Ireland, Screen International and Bord Scannán na hÉireann/Irish Film Board is delighted to announce the return of the CINE Talent award. CINE Talent aims to celebrate emerging Irish talent and 2014 sees a slight change to the award’s structure. To emphasise the collaborative nature of the film-making process, nominations for this year’s award will come directly from the production companies and/or distributors of the feature titles within the Irish season. • Nominees must be members of the cast or key creative team (writer, director, producer, DoP, editor, production designer etc.) • Nominees must have a tangible track record and have made noteworthy contributions within their discipline • Nominees must be of Irish citizenship/ resident in Ireland • A maximum of FOUR nominees may be submitted per title in the Irish Film Season of JDIFF 2014
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CINE Talent will be open for nominations after the festival launch. The closing date for nominations and publication of candidates will be end of business on 30 January. A public vote will go live on jdiff.com from 13 February, so the audiences can engage and vote for the nominees they feel are most deserving of this award. Updates will be available throughout the festival with shortlists being announced by closing weekend. The winner will be announced on Tuesday 25 February, with their prize including a promotional editorial from Screen International as well as networking support and opportunities to both domestic and international industry contacts.
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY
WEDNESDAY 19TH FEBRUARY HIGHLIGHTS SCREEN TEST: THE FUTURE OF BROADCASTING 1pm Page 64 CAS & DYLAN WITH RICHARD DREYFUSS & JASON PRIESTLEY 6.30pm Page 78 UNDER THE SKIN WITH JONATHAN GLAZER 8.45pm Page 80
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THOSE HAPPY YEARS ANNI FELICI A delicate, nuanced film that is unexpectedly moving in its portrait of a young Italian family living through the turbulent, freedom-loving 70s, Those Happy Years uses ironic distance to talk about very intimate things. Director Daniele Luchetti (My Brother is an Only Child) brings a personal, even autobiographical urgency to the story, coolly told in hindsight by a narrator who watched his parents’ marriage unravel when he was a child.
Wed 19 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 6pm / 101 minutes Director: Daniele Luchetti 2013 Italy Writers: Sandro Petraglia, Daniele Luchetti, Stefano Rulli, Caterina Venturini Cast: Micaela Ramazzotti, Martina Gedeck, Kim Rossi Stuart Presented in association with the Italian Institute of Culture - Dublin
Guido Marchetti (Kim Rossi Stuart) is an ambitious but still unknown avant-garde artist. He sculpts female nudes in his Roman studio by pouring plaster over models’ naked bodies. Serena (Micaela Ramazzotti) is a pretty, curly-haired housewife who understands all too well what her good-looking spouse is up to. Serena has always accepted Guido’s attitude that a wife should stay home, but now something changes inside her. Serena puts aside her doubts and heads off to a feminist retreat. There, as the expression goes, she learns a lot about herself. Rossi Stuart is wholly believable as the angry, selfabsorbed artist, but Ramazzotti steals the spotlight with her engaging pout and sudden courage to follow her own path. Deborah Young The Hollywood Reporter
CANNIBAL CANÍBAL When a film-maker is capable of exploring a series of frankly outlandish filmic, thematic and moral propositions with absolute conviction and sureness of touch, the results are usually memorable. Such is the case with Manuel Martin Cuenca’s Cannibal, a carefully crafted study of a psychopath that brings a whole new meaning to the phrase Eat, Pray, Love. Carlos (de la Torre in a career-best performance) is a tailor with a snobbish disdain for prêt à porter. Quietly spoken, fastidious and dapper, he’s a fascinating figure, but imperfection threatens in the form of a Romanian immigrant (Olimpia Melinte) who comes to live in the house opposite. One night, following an argument over money, she seeks shelter at Carlos’ house: an ellipsis suggests that she does not survive the visit. Matters are complicated further when the girl’s twin sister comes looking for her.
Wed 19 Feb / Light House 1 / 6.15pm / 90 minutes Director: Manuel Martín Cuenca 2013 Spain/Romania/Russia/France Writers: Manuel Martín Cuenca, Alejandro Hernández Cast: Antonio de la Torre, Olimpia Melinte
Cannibal pulses from first scene to last with tension. But it is not the tension raised by the cheap question of how and when Carlos’s next victim will meet her end. Audiences will emerge from Cannibal with their perspectives slightly rearranged, something which few films can claim to do. Jonathan Holland The Hollywood Reporter
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
WEDNESDAY 19TH FEBRUARY
GARE DU NORD An unclassifiable hybrid of fiction and documentary, imagination and sociology, Gare du Nord is above all a complex portrait of a familiar city space. Mapping the Parisian railway station and its many layers above and below ground, Claire Simon depicts a restless crossroads of stories, encounters and fantasies.
‘Compelling viewing … understated yet moving’ Time Out London
Wed 19 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 6.15pm / 119 minutes Director: Claire Simon 2013 France/Canada Writers: Claire Simon, Shirel Amitay, Olivier Lorelle Cast: Nicole Garcia, Reda Kateb, François Damiens
Reda Kateb (Zero Dark Thirty) is Ismaël, a doctoral student researching the station and its various populations, while Nicole Garcia is Mathilde, an academic on the eve of a major operation. As they tentatively fall for each other, they cross paths with the multitudes who make up the station’s daily life: guards, railway workers, shop assistants, street people, a harassed estate agent (Monia Chokri) and a TV presenter (François Damiens) in search of his missing daughter. Simon’s ever-shifting perspective builds up a detailed mosaic of the station as global village, souk and microcosm of Paris itself, in a film at once poetic, political, realist and romantic. Jonathan Romney BFI London Film Festival With special guest Claire Simon
LIVING IN A CODED LAND As we grapple with the post Celtic Tiger, post bail-out landscape, along comes film-maker Pat Collins with a documentary which not only offers us a context – historical, social and philosophical – but also prompts us to think. This filmic essay is centred in the Midlands, in County Westmeath, Ireland’s historical ‘umbilicus’, and from here the legacy of colonialism, patronage and privilege are explored, as well as our relationship with the land and the past. The real strength of this documentary is Collins’ judicious use of archive material, both sound and image, which he intercuts with present-day footage and contributions from commentators, geographers and historians. The effect is both lyrical and remarkable.
Wed 19 Feb / Light House 2 / 6.30pm / 80 minutes Director: Pat Collins 2013 Ireland
We are also given a fascinating insight into how the so-called ‘middle man’ rose to a position of power in Ireland, from the cattle ranchers of the 1600s to the new middle men of the financial sector, much beloved of modern governments. This is an important piece of work, a forward-looking social commentary of our time. Róisín Duffy RTÉ With special guest Pat Collins
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WEDNESDAY 19TH FEBRUARY
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
CAS & DYLAN An ailing surgeon and a young writer are thrown together on a memorable journey across Canada in this touching road movie directed by former Beverley Hills 90210 star Jason Priestley. Richard Dreyfuss is Cas Pepper, a Winnipeg surgeon who ditches his job after receiving some very bad news. His plan is to strike out west alone, but after crossing paths with Dylan Morgan – a free-wheeling, chain-smoking kleptomaniac – he finds himself fleeing the scene of a crime in a stolen VW Beetle with Dylan resolutely in tow and, despite his best attempts, he just can’t seem to shake her off. But as the pair wind their way across the Rockies , they find themselves forced to reveal the real reasons for their flight.
Wed 19 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 6.30pm / 90 minutes Director: Jason Priestley 2013 Canada Writer: Jessie Gabe Cast: Tatiana Maslany, Richard Dreyfuss, Jayne Eastwood Winner, Audience Award & Best Actress, Whistler Film Festival
Like the best road movies, Priestley’s directorial debut is a moving film about life and what to do with your share, bolstered by a wise and funny script from Jessie Gabe. Tatiana Maslany is perfect as the irrepressible Dylan, while Dreyfuss revels in his best role in years as the straitlaced doctor slowly unbuttoned by his companion’s sense of fun. Alistair Daniel With special guests Jason Priestley and Richard Dreyfuss
A VISION: A LIFE OF WB YEATS Reel Art is an Arts Council scheme designed to provide film artists with a unique opportunity to make highly creative, imaginative and experimental documentaries on an artistic theme. The life and work of Nobel laureate WB Yeats holds a particular place in hearts and imaginations across the world. Beyond Ireland – where Yeats is a kind of unofficial national poet – his work echoes in profound ways. In places beyond easy comprehension. Beyond the rational mind. In the places where poetry truly lives and breathes.
Wed 19 Feb / IFI 1 / 6.30pm / 75 minutes Writer-director: Alan Gilsenan 2013 Ireland
Commissioned for the Arts Council’s Reel Art scheme, this film is a response to that vast body of work. A visual – and avowedly experimental – ‘film-poem’, to coin an uneasy term. Using solely the words of WB Yeats, we attempted to take the viewer on a cinematic journey of sorts into Yeats’ extraordinary imagination. It is a biography of a kind, but not in any conventional way. Yet, beyond Yeats’ popular profile and his cultural tourist caché, little is really known of his complex life, despite having articulated it so completely, so creatively. In so many ways, Yeats dreamt up his life. He fashioned his own majestic screenplay and we are – endlessly – the beneficiaries. Film-maker’s statement
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
WEDNESDAY 19TH FEBRUARY
THE UNSPEAKABLE ACT Directed by former Los Angeles Reader film critic Dan Sallitt, The Unspeakable Act takes one of the few remaining social taboos in the western world and presents it in an earnest and incredibly charming way. Dealing with the controversial theme of incest within a close-knit yet strangely detached family dynamic, Sallitt’s film relies far more on the strength of its character development than it does on gaudy sensationalism.
‘Dan Sallitt is America’s indie answer to Rohmer’ IndieWire
Wed 19 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 8.30pm / 91 minutes Writer-director: Dan Sallitt 2012 US Cast: Tallie Medel, Sky Hirschkron, Aundrea Fares
Intelligent 17-year-old New Yorker Jackie (Tallie Medel) has long held a fondness for her brother Matthew. However, when he brings home a girlfriend, Jackie struggles to deal with her deep-rooted heartbreak. Successfully immersing us into Jackie’s curious attitude towards romance and family, Sallitt allows us to detach ourselves from the stigmas of society and study this tale of incest in almost an entirely clinical way. Like Rohmer, Sallitt has created a remarkable honest portrait of adolescent romantic confusion. The Unspeakable Act is an intimate, yet thoroughly enjoyable film with a far more universal theme of sexual confusion and teenage angst than its eyecatching synopsis suggests. Patrick Gamble Cine Vue
THE CONGRESS Ari Folman follows his groundbreaking animated documentary Waltz with Bashir with an equally bold and brilliant movie. A meta-textual Hollywood satire starring Robin Wright as herself, it morphs midway into a full-blown sci-fi cartoon, but only to cut even closer to the philosophical bone in its investigation of femininity, fantasy and virtual reality.
‘contains tricks aplenty and ideas in abundance’ The Guardian
Wed 19 Feb / Light House 1 / 8.45pm / 120 minutes Writer-director: Ari Folman 2013 Israel/Germany/Poland/Luxembourg/ France/Belgium Cast: Robin Wright, Harvey Keitel, Jon Hamm Winner, Best Picture, Best Screenplay & Best Actress, Fantastic Fest
Inspired by Stanislav Lem’s novel The Futurological Congress, Folman delves into a make-believe world where a beautiful, talented actress like Robin Wright (The Princess Bride) is considered all but washed up. Miramount studio head Danny Huston does have one last proposition for her though, a deal that will guarantee her riches for life and fame well beyond that. He wants to scan her, sample her, and take full rights to the virtual Robin Wright. Only one condition: the actual Robin must never act again. It’s a Faustian bargain too good to turn down. But that’s only the beginning. A visionary film that takes its place alongside Brazil, Blade Runner and Solaris, The Congress is a savagely funny and surprisingly moving commentary on our increasing reliance on screens – not just to watch, but to hide behind. Vancouver International Film Festival
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WEDNESDAY 19TH FEBRUARY
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
UNDER THE SKIN Bones, nerves, blood and meat: we are all made of the same stuff underneath. Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin presents us with a person who isn’t. The film is certainly divisive: but would you expect anything else from an almost wordless science-fiction thriller in which Scarlett Johansson plays an alien who lures lonely and/or horny Glaswegians into her van and turns them into Scotch broth?
‘a tour de force of sensual and sensory film-making’ Variety
Wed 19 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 8.45pm / 107 minutes Director: Jonathan Glazer 2013 UK Writer: Walter Campbell Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Paul Brannigan
Johansson is nothing short of iconic here; her character is a classic femme fatale in the film noir tradition, down to the plump red lips and deep fur coat, but with a refrigerated nothingness at her core. She looks at her fellow cast members as if they are from another planet – which is, of course, exactly as it should be. Even the Scottish landscape looks alien: dawn mist rolls across lochs like curls of space dust. Glazer’s astonishing film takes you to a place where the everyday becomes suddenly strange, and fear and seduction become one and the same. You stare at the screen, at once entranced and terrified, and step forward into the slick. Robbie Collin The Telegraph With special guest Jonathan Glazer
NORDVEST Michael Noer’s first film was the acclaimed 2010 prison drama R (co-directed with Tobias Lindholm, who appeared at JDIFF 2013), and while Nordvest shares some of that film’s fascination with young men and violence, it is also a convincing crime drama.
‘a compelling portrait of a young man whose moral compass is skewed but not broken’ Variety
Wed 19 Feb / Light House 2 / 9pm / 100 minutes Director: Michael Noer 2013 Denmark Writers: Michael Noer, Rasmus Heisterberg Cast: Gustav Dyekjær Giese, Oscar Dyekjær Giese, Nicholas Westwood Kidd
Eighteen-year-old Caspar (Gustav Dyekjær Giese) is a burglar whose stolen items are sold by tough immigrant traders. Caspar sees the chance of a bigger pay day when he is approached by tough older gangster Björn (the impressive Roland Møller) to steal a few specific items. Making big money for the first time Caspar pampers his family, but makes the mistake of annoying the immigrant gang who assume he is ‘their’ man. With his life spiralling out of control, Caspar is faced with some tough decisions. Noer co-wrote the script with Rasmus Heisterberg, who wrote the Oscar-nominated A Royal Affair (JDIFF 2013), and turned to two real-life brothers in the leads, Gustav Dyekjær Giese and Oscar Dyekjær Giese. Noer films in an appropriately gritty and intense style, drawing out the sense of community in Nordvest and layering in moments of humour. Mark Adams Screen International
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
WEDNESDAY 19TH FEBRUARY
SALVO A henchman for the Sicilian Mafia, Salvo is solitary, cold and ruthless in this Italian film noir, which won the Critics’ Week Grand Prix at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
‘an impressive feature debut’ The Hollywood Reporter
Wed 19 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 9pm / 105 minutes Writer-directors: Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza 2013 Italy Cast: Saleh Bakri, Sara Serraiocco, Luigi Lo Cascio
After being ambushed by a rival Mafia clan and winning the shootout, Salvo sneaks into the house of one of the last members to finish the job. Upon entry he discovers Rita (Sara Serraiocco), a beautiful young blind girl who powerlessly stands by while he assassinates her brother. After sparing Rita’s life, Salvo escorts her to an abandoned factory where she is held captive. He battles with his duty to dispose of this witness while his fascination with her grows. An intense part-miracle results in an unbreakable bond between the two. Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri (The Time That Remains, The Band’s Visit) offers a captivating performance as the supposedly steely mafia assassin in Sicilian film-makers Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s astonishing part-action, part-thriller. Lavazzo Italian Film Festival
Winner, Critics’ Week Grand Prize, Cannes Film Festival Presented in association with the Italian Institute of Culture - Dublin
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With special guests Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza
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FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THURSDAY 20TH FEBRUARY HIGHLIGHTS PUBLIC INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM KLEIN 6pm Page 19 ELIZA LYNCH: QUEEN OF PARAGUAY 8pm Page 86 THE REUNION WITH ANNA ODELL 9pm Page 87
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THURSDAY 20TH FEBRUARY
A STORY OF CHILDREN AND FILM Debuting at Cannes to impressive acclaim, Mark Cousins’ latest cinematic odyssey gathers a mosaic of remarkable clips from 53 films to create a unique portrait of childhood in cinema. Using simple contemporary footage of his nephew and niece, Cousins explores elements of childhood personality and experience in films from almost eighty years of cinema. He notes the initial wariness, for example, of his niece Laura towards the camera, and uses her facial expression as a starting point to study that same look as it appears in films as diverse as Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Ozu’s An Inn in Tokyo. ‘entirely distinctive, sometimes eccentric, always brilliant … this film is a treat’ The Guardian
Thurs 20 Feb / Light House 3 / 4.30pm / 101 minutes Director: Mark Cousins 2013 UK
And while Cousins’ reflections are endlessly fascinating as he dances from class and the changing social politics of the Soviet Union to the volcanic temperaments of children in Iranian film, what is perhaps most impressive is that he manages to remain eye to eye with the children he features, bringing us into their world. What results is perhaps Cousins’ most beguiling film to date and a fitting follow up to the epic The Story of Film. Ross Whitaker
THE GRAND SEDUCTION In order to secure a vital factory contract, the residents of a small Newfoundland fishing village conspire to charm a big-city doctor into becoming the town’s full-time physician in this sparkling comedy from director Don McKellar (Last Night). Like many affected by the collapse of the fishing industry, residents of this once-thriving settlement are driven to seek employment in the city, or, worse, queue for government assistance. Their future begins to look brighter when a plastics manufacturer proposes to set up shop – until they learn that the contract calls for a resident doctor. Enter Dr Lewis (Taylor Kitsch), an ethically suspect cosmetic surgeon. In a riotous attempt to charm him, the villagers fall over themselves trying to persuade him that their seemingly sleepy hamlet is a hotbed of cosmopolitan sophistication.
Thurs 20 Feb / Light House 1 / 6.15pm / 115 minutes Director: Don McKellar 2013 Canada Writers: Michael Dowse, Ken Scott Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Taylor Kitsch, Gordon Pinsent
The Grand Seduction’s gentle, whimsical reflections are poignant and uproarious by turns, and brought to life through superb performances from Brendan Gleeson and Canadian icon Gordon Pinsent. Shot on location in Trinity Bay, the film is certain to delight even the saltiest cynic. Toronto International Film Festival
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THE SQUARE AL MIDAN The Square follows a variety of revolutionaries as they take to Cairo’s Tahrir Square from 2011 to 2013 to protest the rule of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, then the military, and finally the newly elected president Mohamed Morsi. Jehane Noujaim’s documentary charts the rebellious efforts of three friends: twentysomething Ahmed Hassan, who preaches social unity and freedom; Kite Runner actor Khalid Abdalla, who advocates reshaping the government apparatus; and Magdy Ashour, whose allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood is complicated by his support for rule of law.
‘[a] stunning new documentary’ The New York Times
Thur 20 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 6.15pm / 90 minutes Director: Jehane Noujaim 2012 Egypt Winner, Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary, Sundance Film Festival Winner, Audience Award, Toronto International Film Festival
FINSTERWORLD
Gaining power from its proximity to the chaotic events in and around its central location, The Square evokes the vital role that such centres play in bringing citizens together. Noujaim’s handheld footage has a visceral intensity that captures the lethal brutality that its subjects, and millions of others, faced. The Square refuses to sugarcoat its material, conveying the anarchic and terrifying experience of being in the centre of Cairo over the course of these two turbulent years. What emerges is a blistering portrait of rebellion against social discord, marginalization and oppression, and a call to arms for true democratic ideals. Nick Schager Slant Magazine
A chiropodist with disturbing baking ingredients, a policeman who likes to dress as a teddy bear, a silverbearded old man who lives in harmony with nature in the woods and a film-maker without a muse: these are just some of the strange characters that coexist in Frauke Finsterwalder’s debut fiction feature. Jonas (Max Pellny), a shy teenager, spends his days lost in comic books. He is surrounded by a motley array of flawed and unbalanced individuals, like his classmate Maximilian, whose silver-spoon upbringing has made him obnoxious and self-centred. On a school tour to a former Nazi concentration camp the teenagers’ fates become entangled. ‘A dark, multi-stranded fairytale’ The Hollywood Reporter
Thurs 20 Feb / Light House 3 / 6.30pm / 91 minutes Director: Frauke Finsterwalder 2013 Germany Writers: Frauke Finsterwalder, Christian Kracht Cast: Corinna Harfouch, Sandra Hüller, Ronald Zehrfeld
With an ensemble cast featuring some of Germany’s finest talents (including Corinna Harfouch from Downfall), Finsterworld is a quirky drama that explores complex and sometimes sinister aspects of human relationships. Newcomer Max Pellny is illuminating as the young Jonas, while Michael Maertens really steals the show as Claude, the creepy chiropodist. David Desmond
Presented by the Goethe-Institut Irland and Trinity College Dublin. Christian Kracht will read from his novel Imperium on Friday 21 February at 6pm in the Long Room Hub in Trinity College Dublin. Admission free
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With special guests Frauke Finsterwalder and Christian Kracht
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THURSDAY 20TH FEBRUARY
THE LADY ASSASSIN MY NHAN KE This colourful Vietnamese action spectacular catches the spirit of the Hong Kong wuxia tradition. Set in an indefinite past, the plot centres on a glamorous band of prostitutes who live together in a remote riverside tavern, robbing and killing the hapless travellers who stop by. When Linh (Tang Thanh Ha), a seemingly innocent noblewoman, becomes their prisoner, they decide to train her as an assassin in a plot for revenge against a local warlord (Le Thai Hoa). Gradually she grows accustomed to her new life, while harbouring a secret of her own.
Thurs 20 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 6.30pm / 89 minutes Director: Quang Dung Nguyen 2013 Vietnam Writer: Ngo Quan Dung Cast: Kim Dzung, Tang Thanh Ha, Thanh Hang
There are plenty of sword fights and impossible leaps, although the fight scenes are more decorative than intensely physical. The director, Nguyen Quang Dung, incorporates as much slapstick humour as possible, as well as a brief musical number. The camera peers through nets or between bamboo poles, while objects and bodies fly. Linh participates in games of kick volleyball as part of her training, as well as learning an acrobatic new method of scrubbing floors. Jake Wilson Sydney Morning Herald
STARRED UP A complex father/son relationship is viewed through a raw depiction of prison life in the riveting Starred Up. Pitched somewhere between Scum and a British version of A Prophet, this is the most powerful and assured film of David Mackenzie’s career.
‘Some years from now, Starred Up... will be remembered as the film that announced a new star, Jack O’Connell’ The Hollywood Reporter
Thurs 20 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 8.30pm / 100 minutes Director: David Mackenzie 2013 UK Writer: Jonathan Asser Cast: Jack O’Connell, Ben Mendelsohn, Rupert Friend
Jack O’Connell has some of the arrogant swagger and tightly coiled menace of a young James Cagney as Eric, a teenage young offender who is prematurely moved to an adult jail or ‘starred up’. Aggressive and unpredictable, he is soon armed and dangerous. The other prisoners include Neville (Ben Mendelsohn), the father he has not seen since he was five. A weary, inarticulate veteran of the system, Neville seems uncertain whether to protect his offspring or join in punishing him. Shot on location at Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast and Maze Long Kesh, Lisburn and working from a first screenplay by prison system therapist Jonathan Asser, Starred Up feels totally authentic. Tightly edited but with the space to embrace the lives of other inmates, Starred Up is a raw, compelling drama that only grows more compelling as it unfolds. Allan Hunter Screen International With special guest David Mackenzie
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
SPECIAL PRESENTATION
ELIZA LYNCH: QUEEN OF PARAGUAY Thurs 20 Feb / Savoy 1 / 8pm / 80 minutes Writer-director: Alan Gilsenan 2013 Ireland Cast: Leryn Franco, Maria Doyle Kennedy
This absorbing Irish documentary recounts the life of Eliza Lynch, the Cork-born beauty who is revered in Paraguay as a national heroine. Guided by Michael Lillis and Ronan Fanning – the authors of her meticulously researched biography – director Alan Gilsenan (whose A Vision also screens at JDIFF this year – see page 78) takes us on an epic journey from famine-stricken Ireland to the battlefields of South America’s bloodiest war. The film’s emotional heart is provided by Maria Doyle Kennedy’s hypnotic interpretation of Lynch, looking back on her life from beyond the grave and confronting her many enemies who branded her an avaricious whore. These dramatized scenes are juxtaposed with a series of beautiful, often melancholy images shot in contemporary Paraguay. In interviews with the country’s elite, the hunt for the historical Lynch evolves into an exploration of the disastrous war her lover, the dictator Francisco Solano López, launched against Brazil and Argentina. Gilsenan has delivered a film that helps rescue one of the great Irish lives of the 19th century from obscurity while opening a fascinating window onto what is perhaps South America’s least-known country and the apocalyptic conflagration that still haunts its society. Tom Hennigan The Irish Times South America Correspondent With special guests Alan Gilsenan and Maria Doyle Kennedy
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THURSDAY 20TH FEBRUARY
WE ARE THE BEST! VI ÄR BÄST! A bright, breezy and thoroughly enjoyable story of three teenage punkettes who strain and struggle to life, love and music in Stockholm in the early 1980s, Lukas Moodysson’s We Are The Best! is a real feelgood delight. Based on the semi-autobiographical graphic novel Never Goodnight by his wife Coco Moodysson, the film is familiar territory, but handled with a great sense of warmth and will remind Moodysson fans of his earlier films such as Together and Show Me Love.
‘Audiences who responded to the light touch and warm communality of … Show Me Love and Together will thrill to this sweet, spirited return to form’ Variety
Thurs 20 Feb / Light House 1 / 9pm / 102 minutes Writer-director: Lukas Moodysson 2013 Sweden Cast: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne
The early part of the film details the deep and warm friendship between Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and the ever-smiling Klara (Mira Grosin). They manage to snag some time in the youth club music room. Neither can actually play an instrument and so they recruit classmate Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), a trained guitarist whose strict Christian upbringing also makes her something of an outcast at school. The three young actresses are all excellent, though the relationship between Bobo and Klara is the heart of this charming film. Liv LeMoyne is striking as the most mature of the girls, while amongst the adults Anna Rydgren as Bobo’s mother is terrific.
Winner, Sakura Grand Prix, Tokyo International Film Festival There will be a second screening of We Are the Best! on Friday 21 February at 6pm in UCD Cinema. For tickets see ucd.ie/cinema
Mark Adams Screen International
THE REUNION ÅTERTRÄFFEN Anna Odell is a controversial Swedish artist, infamous for an art installation in which she faked a suicide attempt on a Stockholm bridge. In her first feature film, the audacious Odell presents us with a curious premise: she has filmed an imaginary class reunion, in which she confronts her former classmates and charges them with bullying her during their school years, and then invites those same people to watch this fictional enactment with her and discuss both the film and their shared history.
‘[a] brave and quite timely film about human behaviour’ The Guardian
Thurs 20 Feb / Light House 3 / 9pm / 88 minutes Writer-director: Anna Odell 2013 Sweden Cast: Anna Odell, Anders Berg, Kamila Benhamza Winner, FIPRESCI Award, Venice Film Festival
Taking the taut discomfort of her fellow Scandinavian Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen and mixing it, unexpectedly, with the almost naïve boldness of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, Odell has crafted a wholly unique film, one which challenges both its subjects with the complicity and crimes of youth but also challenges the viewer with its complex layering of reality and fiction, documentary and narrative, the past and an imagined present. Ruthless and uncompromising, Odell is an altogether strange new voice in Scandinavian film and The Reunion will stand apart as a provocative debut that thrills and surprises audiences. David Mullane With special guest Anna Odell
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
AFTERNOON DELIGHT This sparklingly raunchy mixture of comedy and drama follows the midlife crisis of thirtysomething mum Rachel (Kathryn Hahn). In an effort to spice up her bland sex life with her husband (Josh Radnor), she arranges a saucy evening at a Los Angeles strip club, only to develop an unhealthy fixation on young exotic dancer McKenna (Juno Temple). Desperate to escape the numbingly dull preschool parents in her neighbourhood, Rachel arranges an ‘accidental’ coffee date with the blonde stripper and, in the first in a series of bad decisions, offers McKenna a gig as a live-in nanny. Soon Rachel is on a rebellious downward spiral. Kathryn Hahn moves from long-time supporting character (Step Brothers, Parks & Recreation, Girls) to leading lady in a bold and quick-witted performance, supported by a cast of comic talents that include Jane Lynch and Bridesmaids alumni Jessica St Clair and Annie Mumolo. Writer-director Jill Soloway (Six Feet Under, United States of Tara), makes her feature film debut with this smart burlesque about the frustrations and imperfections of a so-called perfect life.
‘sly, hip, and rewarding comedy of manners’ Chicago Reader
Thurs 20 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 9pm / 102 minutes Writer-director: Jill Soloway 2012 US Cast: Kathryn Hahn, Juno Temple, Josh Radnor Winner, Best Director, Sundance Film Festival
Seattle International Film Festival
IN CINEMAS JANUARY 31
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY
FRIDAY 21ST FEBRUARY HIGHLIGHTS WRITERS IN CONVERSATION 4.30pm Page 66 THE ZERO THEOREM WITH TERRY GILLIAM 9pm Page 97 DAWN OF THE DEAD WITH LIVE SCORE BY GOBLIN 10pm Page 98
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
SOLDATE JEANNETTE Daniel Hoesl’s striking but inscrutable debut feature is an absurdist redesign of Chantal Akerman’s feminist still life, down to the unexplained title. Dreyer and Godard are also explicitly name-checked in this deadpan study of a bourgeois Viennese housewife abandoning material living in the face of economic recession, though Ulrich Seidl, on whose Paradise trilogy Hoesl was an assistant director, is a clearer aesthetic influence.
Fri 21 Feb / Light House 3 / 4pm / 82 minutes Writer-director: Daniel Hoesl 2013 Austria Cast: Johanna Orsini-Rosenberg, Christina Reichsthaler, Josef Kleindienst
A dryly funny pre-credits sequence follows unflappable fortysomething Fanni (a committed Johanna Orsini-Rosenberg) as she buys a designer dress at great expense, only to toss it straight into the nearest recycling bin. That sets the pace, tonally and thematically, for her ensuing adventures, as she is evicted from her plush, rent-overdue apartment, literally burns her remaining assets and takes a job on a rural piggery, where she finds a kindred spirit in rebellious farmhand Anna (Christina Reichsthaler). Any allegorical interpretations are as open-ended as Bettina Koester’s slamming techno-pop score is emphatic.
Winner, Best Feature, International Film Festival Rotterdam Special Mention, Krakow Independent Film Festival Off Camera
Guy Lodge Variety
TRAP STREET SHUIYIN JIE A poignant and engaging thriller, Vivian Qu’s feature debut plunges us into the fascinating world of state surveillance in China as it follows a digital mapping surveyor’s investigation of an ‘off-the-grid’ hidden alley.
‘pulses with a sweet, youthful energy’ Variety
Fri 21 Feb / Light House 3 / 6pm / 93 minutes Writer-director: Vivian Qu 2013 China Cast: Lu Yulai, He Wenchao
Li Qiuming (Lu Yulai) works at a digital mapping company, photographing the streets that comprise the maze of China’s cities. One day while out surveying, he sees an attractive woman disappearing into a secluded alley. Unable to forget the mysterious lady who has triggered his romantic imagination, Qiuming returns to where he saw her first, only to discover that the data he had collected there was never registered. Even though he stands right there in front of the street sign, Forest Lane has fallen off the map of the city, as if it never existed. Trap Street is one of the most interesting Chinese films of the year. Contextualized in the uniqueness of China’s recent history, the universal paradoxes of societies in which individual freedom constantly clashes with new forms of control are themselves under surveillance here, trapped between modernity and socialism. Giovanna Fulvi Toronto International Film Festival
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FRIDAY 21ST FEBRUARY
CONCUSSION Abby is a fortysomething, wealthy, married, lesbian housewife who – after getting smacked in the head by her son’s baseball – walks around every corner of her suburban life to confront a mounting desire for something else. She takes on a new project and purchases a pied-à-terre in Manhattan. Walking around the city streets reminds Abby what it feels like to be sexy, and her pent-up libido shakes off its inhibitions. Her desire is not a take-home item for the minivan ride back home, so Abby inaugurates a double life that draws her deeply into a world of prostitution for women.
‘With strong acting, plenty of piquant black-comic dialogue, and an assured look, [Concussion] has all the right elements’ Screen International
Fri 21 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 6.15pm / 97 minutes Writer-director: Stacie Passon 2012 US Cast: Robin Weigert, Maggie Siff, Johnny Tchaikovsky
In an auspicious debut, director Stacie Passon draws a pitch-perfect performance from her lead actor, Robin Weigert, as a sexy, shut-down family woman stretching to bloom again. Palpably sensual and deliciously contained, Concussion is a keen observation of the complicated contours of midlife crisis. Shari Frilot Sundance Film Festival
THE GIRL FROM THE WARDROBE DZIEWCZYNA Z SZAFY The debut film from Polish director Bodo Kox is a tender and often very funny story about people who are lost within themselves. Jacek (Piotr Glowacki) lives with his brother in a typical apartment block in Warsaw. He takes care of Tomek (a tour de force from Wojciech Mecwaldowski) who suffers from a neurological condition that leaves him chronically isolated. Living and caring for his brother takes its toll on Jacek and he takes refuge in a string of romantic liaisons. Enter their mysterious neighbour Magda (Magdalena Rózanska) – the titular girl from the wardrobe. She, too, lives an insular life, shielded from the stresses of the outside world, but a connection slowly develops between the characters, leading them to realise that they’re not alone.
Fri 21 Feb / Light House 1 / 6.30pm / 89 minutes Writer-director: Bodo Kox 2013 Poland Cast: Wojciech Mecwaldowski, Piotr Glowacki, Magdalena Rózanska With the support of the Embassy of Poland
The film’s breakout star is Mecwaldowski, whose performance as Tomek has invited comparisons with Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. A touching film about longing and our need for safety, The Girl from the Wardrobe is a must-see. Zbyszek Zalinski RTÉ Radio 1 With special guest Bodo Kox
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THE DOUBLE Submarine director Richard Ayoade’s second film lays Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella out in a nowhereland of office bureaucracy. Jesse Eisenberg plays Simon James, a skivvying worker bee who’s belittled by his colleagues and shunned by Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), the elfin girl who works the office’s giant, clanking photocopier. Eisenberg also plays James Simon, Simon James’ doppelgänger, who arrives unannounced, wins over the boss and immediately starts dating Hannah. No one reacts to the duplication, because Simon’s such a nobody. Ayoade builds farce and tragedy out of the simplest devices. Everything, inside and out of the fiction, is against Simon. A blender roars to life as he tries to listen in on a conversation. A draft whips up and drowns him out when he thinks of something clever to say. Ayoade’s killer script takes evil pleasure in having Simon swallow his words and stutter through life. Fri 21 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 6.30pm / 93 minutes Writer-director: Richard Ayoade 2013 UK Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn
The Double isn’t an original idea. It wasn’t even in Dostoyevsky’s time. But it’s a great story. And Ayoade has produced a brilliant copy. Henry Barnes The Guardian With special guest Richard Ayoade
GUN CRAZY Joseph H Lewis’s noir classic Gun Crazy is a small but perfectly formed black-and-white masterpiece of flash and trash, unwholesome obsession and criminal daring. The masters of the nouvelle vague adored it, not least for the bold and brilliant camerawork: there’s a tremendous continuous take of a bank job, filmed from one camera position in the back seat of the getaway car. Present and future cinephiles may be tempted to compare it to coups from Touch of Evil and I Am Cuba. John Dall plays Bart, a guy with a deep and abiding love of guns, but a paradoxical detestation of violence. Peggy Cummins is Annie Laurie Starr, a carnival cowgirl with a burning need for more money than can be obtained through strictly legal means. Psyched up and tooled up, Bart and Annie join forces for a Bonnie-and-Clyde robbery spree across the country, and their episodic adventures are dramatised with flair. Fri 21 Feb / Light House 3 / 8pm / 86 minutes Director: Joseph H Lewis 1950 US Writers: MacKinlay Cantor, Dalton Trumbo Cast: John Dall, Peggy Cummins, Berry Kroeger
Peter Bradshaw The Guardian With special guest Peggy Cummins
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FRIDAY 21ST FEBRUARY
THE GOLDEN DREAM LA JAULA DE ORO Spanish director Diego Quemada-Diez was a camera assistant on Ken Loach’s Carla’s Song, Land and Freedom and Bread and Roses, and there is something very Loachian in this tough, absorbing, suspenseful drama about three Guatemalan kids trying illegally to cross the Mexican border into the US.
‘demonstrates a great sense of humanity’ Screen International
Fri 21 Feb / Light House 1 / 8.30pm / 102 minutes Writer-director: Diego Quemada-Diez 2013 Mexico/Spain Cast: Brandon López, Rodolfo Domínguez, Karen Martínez Winner, Best International Film & Audience Award, Mar del Plata Film Festival Winner, Golden Alexander, Best Director & Audience Award, Thessaloniki International Film Festival
Quemada-Diez has found three excellent nonprofessional actors for his lead roles. Brandon López and Karen Martínez play Juan and Sara, two kids who are desperate to get out of Guatemala, along with a young Indian boy they meet, Chauk (Rodolfo Domínguez). With some US dollar bills sewn secretly into their jeans, they plan on hopping boxcars and riding the rails up through Mexico and then over the border into California, this last part requiring them to work their passage by volunteering as drug mules for the gangs running heroin through secret crossing points. At every stage, these vulnerable teenagers face danger and almost certain death from predatory criminals to whom their young lives are worth less than zero. It is a very substantial movie, with great compassion and urgency. Peter Bradshaw The Guardian
A STREET IN PALERMO VIA CASTELLANA BANDIERA Don’t mess with Sicilian women. That’s perhaps a reductive summary of the cinematic debut of Italian theatre director Emma Dante, which revolves entirely around a stand-off between two cars in a narrow lane in the jerry-built outskirts of Palermo. Two women, Rosa (Emma Dante) and Clara (Alba Rohrwacher), bicker as they drive through Palermo backstreets; we soon realise they are lovers on the verge of a break-up. A proletarian family return from a fractious day at the beach, driven by Samira, the resented mother-in-law of a sweaty, crass, bolshy family patriarch. Finally, the two cars grind to a halt facing each other, with neither driver prepared to reverse. It’s a stand-off that begins in the realm of the possible but soon drifts into more dreamlike, allegorical territory.
Fri 21 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 8.30pm / 90 minutes Director: Emma Dante 2013 Italy/Switzerland/France Writers: Emma Dante, Giorgio Vasta Cast: Emma Dante, Alba Rohrwacher, Elena Cotta Winner, Best Actress, Venice Film Festival
In Italy, the expression ‘Far West’ is used to mean a place or situation where no rules apply, and A Street in Palermo depicts a Sicilian Far West which is also a Far West of the soul: a place forsaken by God and man, where obstinacy is the only virtue left. Lee Marshall Screen International
With the support of the Italian Institute of Culture Dublin
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
VOLTA PRESENTATION On 20 December 1909, with help from friends in Trieste, James Joyce opened the Cinematograph Volta Cinema on Mary Street in Dublin. Nearly a century later, in 2007, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival established the Volta Award to recognise individuals who have made a significant contribution to the world of cinema. The Volta Awards have drawn some of the biggest names in film to our shores, including actors like Al Pacino and Martin Sheen, directors such as François Ozon and Paolo Sorrentino, and a host of famous industry names. Last year’s prestigious recipients were composer Ennio Morricone, actor-director Danny DeVito, actor Tim Roth, director Costa-Gavras and writer-director Joss Whedon. We are delighted to welcome Terry Gilliam to Dublin for the presentation of his 2014 Volta Award and a screening of The Zero Theorem. Terry Gilliam, over a forty-year film-making career, has directed a number of visually stunning pictures which have championed the power of imagination and dared cinemagoers to view the world differently. Born near Minneapolis, Minnesota, Gilliam settled in London in the 1960s where he became a member of the Monty Python team, contributing the animations. He co-directed Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) with Terry Jones. He was production designer for Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), for which he was also actor, writer, and animator. Gilliam’s first outing as sole director was Jabberwocky in 1977, which he then followed with Time Bandits (1981), an anarchic time travel romp featuring Sean Connery and John Cleese. In 1985, Gilliam released his ambitious Brazil, a satirical take on both Britain and America, which was given two Academy Award® nominations (Original Screenplay and Art Direction). This was followed by the sumptuous The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) with John Neville, Robin Williams and Oliver Reed. It gained four Academy Award® nominations. Gilliam made his next three feature films in the United States. The Fisher King (1991), starring Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams, was nominated for five Academy Awards®, and won one for Best Supporting Actress Mercedes Ruehl. Twelve Monkeys (1995) followed, a critically-acclaimed time travel story featuring Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt. In 2011 he wrote and directed a 20-minute short film, The Wholly Family, which was awarded The Best Short Film by the European Film Academy. Gilliam made his opera debut the same year at London’s English National Opera, directing The Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz. His latest film, The Zero Theorem, screens at JDIFF 2014 (see opposite).
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
FRIDAY 21ST FEBRUARY
CINEWORLD GALA
‘Frank Kafka is alive and well and making films under the name of Terry Gilliam’ Screen International
THE ZERO THEOREM Fri 21 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 9pm / 107 minutes Director: Terry Gilliam 2013 UK/Romania/France Writer: Pat Rushin Cast: Christoph Waltz, David Thewlis, Mélanie Thierry
After modern classics Brazil and 12 Monkeys, Terry Gilliam returns with the final part of his dystopian trilogy The Zero Theorem, a colourful, ambitious and intelligent film about an angst-ridden computer programmer tasked with proving the titular theorem, and thereby revealing the meaning of life. Christoph Waltz stars as the put-upon protagonist Qohen Leth, whose quest is supported by charming love interest Mélanie Thierry and hampered by David Thewlis (in a hilarious turn as his supervisor) and Matt Damon as Management, owner of the mysterious Mancom Corporation. Tilda Swinton also pops up as the ebullient and scene-stealing Dr Shrink-Rom, an artificial-intelligence psychiatrist who counsels Waltz from within his computer. Gilliam’s inimitable visual style and unique voice are on full display here, creating a world filled with his trademark Orwellian technology and loud, garish colours. But while The Zero Theorem delivers a biting critique of corporate culture, the satire is tempered by a surprisingly warm and humane core. By turns hilarious and pleasingly bizarre, The Zero Theorem is the work of a unique film-maker and a worthy conclusion to a masterful trilogy. David Mullane With special guest Terry Gilliam
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
DAWN OF THE DEAD WITH LIVE SCORE BY GOBLIN Forza Italo presents the world premiere of Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin performing the live score to their soundtrack of George A Romero’s famed zombie film Dawn of the Dead (aka Zombi). Goblin composed the soundtrack for this horrifying movie in 1978, having already made their mark with their musical collaborations with Dario Argento on both Suspiria (1975) and Profondo Rosso (1978). This audio-visual premiere promises to be a thrilling and intense ride through one of the most important and apocalyptic horror films ever put to celluloid.
‘One of the best horror films ever made’ Roger Ebert
Following the performance, Forza Italo DJs Sebastian Simonetti & Stefano Crosserini will throw down the hottest dischi d’oro from the golden age of italodisco, giallo soundtracks and synth music of the late 70s and early 80s. Forza Italo auxiliary member Stefano Galvino of Film Ireland will debut a unique new zombie-horror audio-visual piece to give us our second premiere of the night. Bravo!
Fri 21 Feb / The Sugar Club / 10pm / 127 minutes Writer-director: George A Romero 1978 US Cast: David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H Reiniger
Simon Conway
With the support of the Italian Institute of Culture Dublin
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SATURDAY 22ND FEBRUARY HIGHLIGHTS SCRIPTWRITING FOR ANIMATION 2pm Page 68 DECEPTIVE PRACTICE WITH RICKY JAY 6pm Page 106 OUT OF HERE 8.30pm Page 109
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SPECIAL PRESENTATION
‘an engrossing and original work’ The Hollywood Reporter
BORGMAN Sat 22 Feb / Savoy 1 / 11am / 113 minutes Writer-director: Alex van Warmerdam 2013 Netherlands/ Belgium/Denmark Cast: Jan Bijvoet, Hadewych Minis, Jeroen Perceval With the support of the Embassy of The Netherlands in Ireland
Stitch together a Buñuelian satire of the bourgeoisie with the enigmatic unease of a Michael Haneke drama and the absurdist humour of Roy Andersson and you begin to have the measure of Borgman, an unsettling, blackly comic fable from veteran Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam (Grimm, The Last Days of Emma Blank). A priest leads a hunting party in search of the title character and his followers, who are hiding out in an underground warren. Is Borgman (Jan Bijvoet) a cult leader or the devil in disguise? He escapes and makes his way to suburbia, knocking on doors and politely asking if he might take a bath. Arrogant television producer Richard (Jeroen Perceval) is so incensed by his request and his manner that he punches and kicks him to the ground. Later, his wife Marina (Hadewych Minis) offers Borgman a bath, food and a bed in their guest house. It is her good intentions and complicity with their clandestine guest that paves the way to a kind of hell. Jan Bijvoet has some of the velvety-voiced confidence of a Christoph Waltz. His ability to bring out the malice lying dormant in the good citizens of suburbia seems effortless. Jeroen Perceval is equally impressive as a husband with a trigger-hair temper and pressing anger management issues. Allan Hunter Screen International
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THE INQUIRY On 29 September 1913 trade unionist Jim Larkin and industrial magnate William Martin Murphy came face to face for the first time in an attempt to bring an end to the Dublin Lockout. The Lockout, in which employees locked out workers belonging to (or refusing to pledge not to join) the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, had already been in effect for several weeks, sparking a series of demonstrations brutally suppressed by police and leaving thousands of families around the capital in desperate poverty and close to starvation.
Sat 22 Feb / Light House 1 / 12.30pm / 60 minutes Director: Brian Gray 2013 Ireland Writer: Turlough Kelly Cast: Stephen Murray, Bosco Hogan, Gerry O’Brien
Bosco Hogan (In the Name of the Father) is Murphy and Stephen Murray plays the impassioned firebrand Larkin in The Inquiry, a docu-drama that brings to life the dramatic events of that encounter, when the two most notorious figures in Irish public life hurled accusations at one another in front of the international press. Turlough Kelly’s script draws on British Parliamentary reports and contemporary newspapers to provide a gripping account of events, going behind the scenes at the meeting to explore the tensions within both camps. Alistair Daniel
DUAL DVOJINA A delicately crafted charmer of a film, for a while Nejc Gazvoda’s colourful, funny and insightful film feels like a lesbian equivalent of Before Sunset as two young women wander the warm night-time streets of Ljubljana, talking, having fun and gradually coming under each other’s spell. Due to a technical problem, a plane from Denmark heading to Greece lands at a Slovene airport, with the passengers eventually taken to a Ljubljana hotel for the night. Quiet young Dane Iben (Mia Jexen) can’t face waiting in the hotel and asks Tina (Nina Rakovec), who drove the minibus from the airport, to drive her around the city. Tina starts to fall for the fresh-faced Dane, but despite the fact that they seem very similar, one is hiding a terrible secret and the other is simply trying to find her place in the world.
Sat 22 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 1pm / 102 minutes Writer-director: Nejc Gazvoda 2013 Slovenia/Denmark/Croatia Cast: Nina Rakovec, Mia Jexen, Jure Henigman Winner, Best Actress, Slovenian Film Festival
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While on the surface a love story, Dual is also a delicate drama about trying to adjust to where you want to go in life. The two leads are perfect, with Mia Jexen’s doe-eyed warmth and compassion a fine balance to Nina Rakovec’s nervy enthusiasm. Mark Adams Screen International
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
SATURDAY 22ND FEBRUARY
OUR SUNHI U RI SUNHI Korea’s poet laureate of infantile male intellectuals and the women who bewitch them delivers one of his most appealing recent efforts in Our Sunhi. Winner of the director prize in Locarno, Hong’s 15th feature delights as it orchestrates the seriocomic ping-ponging of a canny young woman and her three equally hapless suitors. Wonderfully played by the gamine Jung Yu-mi (in her fifth collaboration with Hong), Sunhi is a recent film school grad first seen returning to her alma mater to solicit a recommendation letter from her former teacher, Professor Choi (Kim Sang-joong). There’s just one caveat: he can only write an ‘honest’ letter. ‘another pleasurable, loquacious and low-key film’ The Hollywood Reporter
Sat 22 Feb / Light House 3 / 2pm / 88 minutes Writer-director: Hong Sang-soo 2013 Italy/Switzerland/France Cast: Jung Yu-mi, Lee Sun-kyun, Kim Sang-joong Winner, Silver Leopard, Locarno Film Festival
While grabbing a beer at a nearby chicken restaurant, Sunhi encounters her ex-boyfriend Mun-su (Hong regular Lee Sun-kyun). As the beer flows, it becomes all too clear that Munsu still hankers for his ex. The plot thickens with the introduction of curmudgeonly fellow film-maker Jae-hak (Jung Jae-young). Hong has a lot of fun orchestrating these various comings and goings which, as in a classic farce, revolve around the idea of all three men pursuing the same woman without realizing it. Scott Foundas Variety
HAUS TUGENDHAT ‘Tugendhat’ is a legendary word in modern design; the name refers to the seminal house created by the German architect Mies van der Rohe for the Tugendhat family outside Brno in the Czech Republic in 1930. This beautiful and reflective documentary acknowledges the house as a modernist monument but is more absorbed by its role as catalyst for human events in the years after its construction – interactions which reflect on the wider travails of 20th-century European history.
Sat 22 Feb / Light House 1 / 2.45pm / 116 minutes Director: Dieter Reifarth 2013 Germany
Intelligently interweaving the restoration of the house and searing interviews with surviving Tugendhat siblings, it slowly unpicks family truths, from the Shangri-La of childhood, through exile (for being Jewish in the wrong place and time) to uncertain attempts at remaking the dream elsewhere. The most beautiful words are left to the ordinary Czechs with spinal injuries who lived there as children under Communism, and who simply revered its light, space and architecture – underscoring the film’s theme about the relationship between people and the hard and complex nature of brilliant things.
Presented in co-operation with the Goethe-Institut Irland Niall McCullough McCullough Mulvin Architects With special guest Michael Guggenheim
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THE 100 YEAR OLD MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT THE WINDOW AND DISAPPEARED HUNDRAÅRINGEN SOM KLEV UT GENOM FÖNSTRET OCH FÖRSVANN Jonas Jonasson’s witty, feel-good international best-seller gave pleasure to millions and proved that it is never too late to let a little adventure in your life. The eagerly awaited screen version stars Robert Gustafson as the Zelig-like Allan Karlsson who quietly escapes from the celebrations for his one-hundredth birthday and takes to the road. Little misunderstandings and unfortunate coincidences soon find him in possession of a suitcase of cash and being hotly pursued by crooks and criminals. It’s hardly going to trouble a man who played a vital role in making the atomic bomb, has known several world leaders and participated in some of the key events of the last century. An outrageous delight. Glasgow Film Festival
Sat 22 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 3.15pm / 114 minutes Director: Felix Herngren 2013 Sweden Writers: Felix Herngren, Hans Ingemansson Cast: Robert Gustafson, Iwar Wiklander, David Wiberg
GOOD OL’ FREDA Pure joy for Beatles fans, Ryan White’s Good Ol’ Freda introduces us to a woman who had a ringside seat for Beatlemania and, until now, has never spoken about it. Freda Kelly was a teenage typist in Liverpool when co-workers took her to the Cavern Club. She went on to see the nascent Beatles, by her count, around 190 times. So it was no surprise that Brian Epstein hired this plain-faced girl with the lovely smile to be their secretary. In hounding the four men to sign autographs and answer fans’ questions, she became almost literally part of the family.
‘a new insight into one of the great creative explosions of our times’ Time Out London
Sat 22 Feb / Cineworld 5 / 3.30pm / 86 minutes 2013 / US / 86 minutes Director: Ryan White
Backstage rock stories are a dime a dozen, but they’re usually well-rehearsed anecdotes told by hangers-on. Kelly, on the other hand, hasn’t told these stories even to her family. Many of the stories are clearly coming to her as the camera rolls. White has parlayed Kelly’s involvement into a very rare license to use a few Beatles songs in the film. But audio cues are unnecessary given the spark in Freda’s eyes as she conjures the personalities of four young men whose stardom she enabled. John DeFore The Hollywood Reporter With special guest Freda Kelly
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
SATURDAY 22ND FEBRUARY
BAD HAIR PELO MALO Nine-year-old Junior has bad hair, or so he believes. He would much rather have straight hair like his mother, Marta. Living in a run-down tenement flat in a Venezuelan city, he finds inspiration in the televised beauty pageants that he watches with his friend. Together they plan to have their school photos taken in costume: he as a straight-haired singer and she as a beauty queen. Unfortunately for Junior, his mother doesn’t share his interest in pageantry and hair relaxers. On the contrary, she is terrified that these are early signs of her son’s dormant sexuality and responds with homophobic hostility, threatening to cut his hair or ship him off to live with his grandmother. ‘Mariana Rondón’s impressively multilayered drama brings a powerful specificity to the story of a boy and his embittered single mother’ Variety
Sat 22 Feb / Light House 3 / 4pm / 93 minutes Writer-director: Mariana Rondón 2013 Venezuela Cast: Samantha Castillo, Samuel Lange
With a startlingly raw performance from Samantha Castillo as the hard-headed Marta and an endearing introduction to the young Samuel Lange Zambrano as Junior, this low budget, guerrilla-style feature outlines the complexities of mother-son relationships as Junior struggles to gain acceptance in his mother’s eyes and Marta is simultaneously forced to confront her own fears and prejudices.
Winner, Best Film, San Sebastián Film Festival
David Desmond
VIOLETTE The trailblazing feminist writer Violette Leduc gets a biopic worthy of her complex life with Violette. Director Martin Provost (Seraphine) once again casts his sharp yet sympathetic gaze on an uncompromising woman artist, and he has crafted a plum role that allows a gifted actress (Emmanuelle Devos) to show the full range of her abilities.
‘a beautifully crafted and performed period drama’ The Hollywood Reporter
Sat 22 Feb / Light House 1 / 5.30pm / 139 minutes Director: Martin Provost 2013 France/Belgium Writers: Martin Provost, René de Ceccatty, Marc Abdelnour Cast: Emmanuelle Devos, Sandrine Kiberlain, Catherine Hiegel
Provost hones in on the events in Leduc’s life that most affected her writing – and vice-versa – in six elegant chapters. A chance reading of Simone de Beauvoir’s She Came to Stay compels Violette to embark on her own roman à clef, L’Asphyxie. And Violette doesn’t think twice about handing the completed manuscript to de Beauvoir. It’s the start of a friendship that spans the rest of Leduc’s life, and it becomes the nexus of Provost’s film, with Sandrine Kiberlain making for a wonderfully severe, unflappable de Beauvoir. Provost is a small master of tact and restraint, and even when Leduc turns her own life into high theatre, the movie never overplays its hand. These may be the finest screen hours yet for Devos, who gives Leduc a caged-animal intensity.
With the support of the French Embassy in Ireland Scott Foundas Variety
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THE GAMBLER LOSEJAS Vincentas is a paramedic in a bleak industrial port on Lithuania’s Baltic coast. An award-winning employee, he is good at his job but years of struggle have left him inured to life, death and the suffering of others. Hounded by loan sharks as his gambling debts mount, Vincentas hits on a desperate and macabre scheme: a secret betting syndicate that gambles on the survival of patients. Soon the whole unit is on board, all but Ieva, the principled co-worker struggling to make ends meet for herself and her son. But as the syndicate starts to make serious money, and he falls for Ieva, Vincentas begins to lose his grip on the game.
Sat 22 Feb / Light House 3 / 6pm / 109 minutes Director: Ignas Jonynas 2013 Lithuania Writers: Ignas Jonynas, Kristupas Sabolius Cast: Vytautas Kaniusonis, Oona Mekas
Stylishly shot by Ignas Jonynas, and animated by a pulsing electronic score, The Gambler is an unflinching portrait of a world in which everyone gambles with their own – and each other’s – lives. As Vincentas, Vytautas Kaniusonis (Vanishing Waves – JDIFF 2013) impresses in a uniformly strong cast, while Oona Mekas (daughter of film-maker Jonas Mekas) is equally good as a desperate young mother struggling with her conscience. Alistair Daniel
Winner, Special Jury Prize, Warsaw Film Festival
DECEPTIVE PRACTICE: THE MYSTERIES AND MENTORS OF RICKY JAY Few lives seem to have been as preordained as that of Ricky Jay. At the tender age of four he was already learning sleight-of-hand from his beloved grandfather, Max, an amateur magician. By seven, he was performing before audiences, and as he grew up he received lessons, advice and encouragement from many of the true giants of magic: Al Flosso, Slydini, Cardini, Francis Carlyle and Roy Benson. So it’s little wonder that, now in his sixties, Ricky Jay is widely considered the world’s greatest magician, a performer whose one-man shows draw rave reviews and sold-out houses.
‘a wonderful movie about a great artist’ Woody Allen
Sat 22 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 6pm / 88 minutes Directors: Molly Bernstein, Alan Edelstein 2012 US
Molly Bernstein and Alan Edelstein’s warm and fascinating portrait of Jay offers a rare glimpse into the very private world of professional magicians, an entertainment tradition that stretches back hundreds of years and yet continues to delight and astonish contemporary audiences around the world. New York Film Festival With special guests Ricky Jay and Molly Bernstein
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
SATURDAY 22ND FEBRUARY
RUN & JUMP Born in the US, but now dividing her time between Los Angeles and Dublin, director Steph Green was nominated for an Oscar in 2009 for her short film New Boy, a sensitive portrait of a young African lad struggling to settle into a new school in Ireland. The theme of coming to terms with a dramatic life change is once again central in her confident, boldly stylized feature debut Run & Jump.
‘captures the beauty of an obviously flawed family with remarkable warmth and immediacy’ Variety
Sat 22 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 6.15pm / 99 minutes Director: Steph Green 2013 Germany/Ireland Writers: Ailbhe Keogan, Steph Green Cast: Maxine Peake, Edward MacLiam, Will Forte Winner, Best Irish Feature, Galway Film Fleadh
Set in a picturesque Irish town, the film begins with the return to the family of Conor (Edward MacLiam), a 38-year-old carpenter who’s suffered a damaging stroke, leaving him severely mentally restricted. In response, his spirited wife, Vanetia (Maxine Peake), has brought an American neurophysiologist, Ted Fielding (Will Forte), into the household to observe Conor’s condition. Ted soon finds himself becoming inextricably woven into the family in ways he hadn’t imagined. Undoubtedly a name to watch, Green has crafted a debut as fresh, intimate, and compassionate as Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher. Ashley Clark Slant Magazine
GOLD
‘Gold is beautifully served by its actors. David Wilmot as the drifter Ray is understated and brilliant; Maisie Williams is driven and faultless. Kerry Condon and James Nesbitt are spot on in everything they do.’ Peter Sheridan
Twelve years ago, Ray (David Wilmot) left town after his childhood sweetheart, Alice (Kerry Condon), dumped him, taking their daughter away from him. Now he must return home at the request of his ailing father, who wishes to see his granddaughter before it’s too late. But things take a turn for the absurd when Ray realises his daughter and her mother have built a new life with his former PE teacher, a controlling and regimented figure who is the direct opposite of Ray. After Ray is found sleeping in his beat-up car, Alice feels guilty enough to invite him to stay. But from his first bumbling efforts to get close to his daughter to the catastrophic effect his presence has on Frank – Ray manages to create chaos all around him. Set in an affluent suburb in north County Dublin, this offbeat comedy and unconventional love story delights in the hilarity of everyday life.
Sat 22 Feb / Savoy 2 / 6.30pm / 84 minutes Director: Niall Heery 2013 Ireland Writers: Brendan Heery, Niall Heery Cast: David Wilmot, Maisie Williams, James Nesbitt
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
GODDESS Talented singer-songwriter Elspeth Dickens thinks her chance of stardom has come and gone. Now married to James, whose work as a whale-saving activist takes him to sea for weeks at a time, she finds her days more than filled looking after threeyear-old twins. But Elspeth hasn’t quite given up on her dreams, and when she sets up a webcam in her kitchen to keep her husband entertained with performances of her own, self-penned show-stoppers, she becomes an internet sensation overnight.
‘Keating … makes an impressive acting debut’ Screen International
Sat 22 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 6.30pm / 104 minutes Director: Mark Lamprell 2013 Australia Writers: Mark Lamprell, Joanna Weinberg Cast: Laura Michelle Kelly, Ronan Keating, Magda Szubanski
Mark Lamprell’s delightful musical – based on Joanna Weinberg’s one-woman stage show – is an uproariously entertaining picture full of glorious tunes and big laughs. In his feature film debut, Ronan Keating impresses as James (he’s in fine voice too), but the show belongs to West End and Broadway star Laura Michelle Kelly as the irrepressible Elspeth. By turns witty and charming, Goddess is an infectious delight. Alistair Daniel
A TOUCH OF SIN TIAN ZHUDING Chinese master Jia Zhang-ke makes a bold play for greater accessibility and up-to-the-minute social relevance with his brilliant new film, a Cannes Film Festival prizewinner (for best screenplay) this year.
‘a stunning slap in the face’ The Guardian
Sat 22 Feb / Light House 1 / 8.15pm / 133 minutes Writer-director: Jia Zhang-ke 2013 China Cast: Jiang Wu, Wang Baoqiang, Zhao Tao Winner, Best Screenplay, Cannes Film Festival Winner, Best Foreign Feature Film, Denver Starz Film Festival Winner, Best Narrative Film, Abu Dhabi Film Festival
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The film is made up of four interconnected stories. Jiang Wu plays Dahai, a coalminer in Shanxi who discovers his corrupt village chief is in cahoots with a rich mining mogul to swindle the villagers’ money. Chinese comedy star Wang Baoqiang visits his home village near Chongqing to care for his family. Jia’s regular muse (and wife) Zhao Tao plays a martial arts heroine, a switchblade-wielding receptionist whom local goons unfortunately mistake for a prostitute. Finally, Luo Lanshan and Li Meng are a worker and prostitute in the industrialized south, seeking romance. Jia has never made anything quite like this, with its references to classic and modern Hong Kong action cinema and its dark vision of a violent society pushed over the edge into frightening bloodshed. Jia sacrifices none of his formal control or his artfulness, though, in this thrillingly shot drama of China today, ripped fresh from the headlines. Shelly Kraicer Vancouver International Film Festival
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
SATURDAY 22ND FEBRUARY
OUT OF HERE Rising Irish star Fionn Walton (What Richard Did) plays Ciaran, a passionate yet restless college dropout who has returned home to recession-struck Dublin after a year of travelling. Broke and living with his parents, struggling to re-connect with the ex-girlfriend that he left behind and the friends and social scene that have moved on without him, Ciaran questions whether he should stay or go – and comes to realise the difference between being stuck and being present.
‘enormously successful … the picture features hypnotically beautiful images and employs very sly, sideways humour throughout’ The Irish Times
Out of Here is a contemporary coming-of-age story showing Ireland and its youth culture in a light not previously seen or explored. Timely and expertly realised, Donal Foreman’s debut feature is a pitchperfect and resonant depiction of contemporary Ireland and its young people. Galway Film Fleadh
Sat 22 Feb / Light House 3 / 8.30pm / 80 minutes Writer-director: Donal Foreman 2013 Ireland Cast: Fionn Walton, Aoife Duffin, Annabell Rickerby
With special guest Donal Foreman
Second Place, Best First Irish Feature, Galway Film Fleadh
LOCKE Charged with the responsibility of ensuring the sound foundations of huge architectural constructions, structural engineer Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) is as solid as the concrete that he pours for a living. For ten years he has built a reputation as a highly respected professional and as a fiercely loved father and husband. On the eve of a career-crowning moment, we follow Ivan’s journey driving from Wales to London, and see how one mistake has caused his hitherto firmly focused and controlled life to slowly and completely fall apart.
‘One of the most nail-biting thrillers of the year … minute-by-minute, Hardy has you spellbound’ The Daily Telegraph
Sat 22 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 8.30pm / 85 minutes Writer-director: Steven Knight 2012 UK Cast: Tom Hardy
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Both Ivan’s brute determination to regain control over his life and his stubborn refusal to engage fully with the emotional reality, are combined perfectly in Hardy’s taut performance. Steven Knight’s direction, too, is as resolutely spartan as his central character. Shot in its entirety over eight days, and never leaving the interior of the car, Knight’s film nevertheless succeeds in creating a gripping atmosphere of tightly wound tension. Jemma Desai BFI London Film Festival
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PIONEER PIONÉR Director Erik Skjoldbjaerg’s suspenseful thriller begins as Petter and Knut, brothers and two of Norway’s best professional divers, are training to dive a deathdefying 500 metres below the surface of the Black Sea. It’s the early 80s, and oil and natural gas reserves worth millions have been discovered off the shores of Norway. Working as part of a joint Norwegian-US effort for a multinational corporation, the two men risk everything to reach the ocean floor and the untapped natural resources. When their first mission ends in tragedy, Petter must uncover what really happened and why.
Sat 22 Feb / Cineworld 12 / 8.45pm / 100 minutes Director: Erik Skjoldbjaerg 2013 Norway Writers: Hans Gunnarsson, Nikolaj Frobenius, Erik Skjoldbjærg Cast: Aksel Hennie, Wes Bentley, Stephanie Sigman
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Sixteen years ago, Skjoldbjaerg made his directorial debut with the contemporary thriller classic Insomnia (later remade by Christopher Nolan), and his return to the genre is a wonderfully tense work with ever-rising stakes. Boasting an atmospheric soundtrack by AIR and a superb lead performance by Aksel Hennie, one of Norway’s biggest stars, Pioneer is a gripping tale of determination, avarice and paranoia in the deep sea. Philadelphia Film Festival
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SUNDAY 23RD FEBRUARY HIGHLIGHTS SAFETY LAST! WITH SUZANNE LLOYD & NEIL BRAND 2pm Page 115 THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM 3pm Page 68 THE STAG (CLOSING GALA) 7.30pm Page 119 112
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
SUNDAY 23RD FEBRUARY
SPECIAL PRESENTATION
‘It’s hard to imagine another documentary this year that will be as uplifting, entertaining and moving as Morgan Neville’s 20 Feet From Stardom’ Huffington Post
20 FEET FROM STARDOM Sun 23 Feb / Savoy 1 / 11am / 90 minutes Director: Morgan Neville US 2012
Their voices are powerful enough to tear you apart and put you back together again, and their stories will do the same. But when you call them backup singers, you better smile. That’s because the performers in the infectious and irresistible 20 Feet From Stardom are willing and able to outsing any solo act in sight and are not shy about letting you know it. Veteran director Morgan Neville (Troubadours) has made a moving and joyous behind-the-scenes documentary about a world filled with big, bold personalities and the music they make. Neville interviewed more than 50 people for this film, including major stars like Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen and Sting, but the people you remember turn out to be the handful of women who made and remade the backup world in their image. Though 20 Feet talks to singers whose solo careers faltered, in some ways the film’s most memorable singer is a woman who made the break and then went back. That would be the prodigiously gifted Lisa Fischer, who won a Grammy for one of the songs on her debut album but decided she didn’t have the kind of ego necessary for a solo career. For her, background singing seems to function as a kind of higher calling, and the grace of 20 Feet From Stardom is that it allows you to see why. Kenneth Turan LA Times
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THE FAKE SAIBI If Yeon Sang-ho’s The King of Pigs (JDIFF 2012) served as a brutal reminder that feature-length animation can be an ideal medium for social critique, the Korean helmer is at it again with The Fake, a ferocious indictment of organized religion.
Sun 23 Feb / Light House 1 / 12.30pm / 101 minutes Writer-director: Yeon Sang-ho 2013 South Korea Cast: Yang Ik-june, Oh Jung-se, Kwon Haeh-yo
With the support of the Korean Embassy Dublin and Korea Foundation
Yeon’s sophomore feature unfolds in a small Korean village about to be flooded in preparation for the construction of a hydroelectric dam. Preparing to vacate their houses, the townspeople have fallen under the spell of a charismatic church pastor, Choi Kyung-suk, who has promised them a new home in exchange for their savings. Into this cesspool of smalltown corruption steps Min-chul. Ugly, violent, and with a vocabulary that seems to encompass every expletive in the Korean language, Min-chul is a figure of unrepentant savagery. But, in Yeon’s most perverse stroke, this sceptic also becomes the story’s moral centre, the lone truth-teller who becomes obsessed with exposing the powerful church elder as a con artist. Soon the knives come out and the bodies start to pile up and yet, even as it veers toward moral and physical chaos, The Fake doesn’t loosen its grip. Justin Chang Variety
AT BERKELEY At Berkeley is a timely film for Irish audiences, as education in Ireland faces severe cuts in public funding and the resetting of assumptions about what and who education is for. Inherited institutional models are being tested and re-formed but, worryingly, the process appears underpinned by an ideological momentum which is mostly unspoken.
‘one of Wiseman’s best’ Variety
Sun 23 Feb / Light House 2 / 1pm / 244 minutes Director: Frederick Wiseman 2013 US
The director of At Berkeley, eighty-four-year-old Frederick Wiseman, has focused, over almost fifty years of film-making, on documentary features which reveal the often unspoken ideologies that underpin a range of institutions. The University of California at Berkeley is one of the United States’ most respected public institutions, founded on the principle that ‘you don’t have to be a member of an elite to have an education’. The central concern of At Berkeley is the implications for society if education becomes a quantitative rather than a qualitative exercise, its value privatised as part of a neo-liberal economic agenda. It makes the point that the stakes are very high for the US but just as high for Ireland. Wiseman, typically, has delivered a film which is a demanding but also a salutary experience. Declan McGonagle Director, NCAD
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
SUNDAY 23RD FEBRUARY
SPECIAL PRESENTATION
‘one of the best of this era’ Empire Magazine
SAFETY LAST! Sun 23 Feb / Savoy 1 / 2pm / 73 minutes Directors: Fred C Newmeyer, Sam Taylor 1923 US Writers: Hal Roach, Sam Taylor Cast: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother
There may be no film image more iconic: Harold Lloyd, high above the street, dangling from the minute hand of a giant department store clock. The face of the clock swings down; the minute hand bends. It’s been 90 years since the silent era’s greatest daredevil shot that sequence, and it still has the power to prompt shrieks and laughter. Lloyd’s character was the All-American Boy, innocent in his horn-rimmed glasses, eager to climb the ladder of success – and like many a social striver before him, he was plagued by anxiety that he’d fall before he got to the top. Safety Last! made that metaphor literal: to earn the money to get the girl he braves harrowing heights, flocks of pigeons, a mouse up his pant leg and, near the top of his climb, a photo-studio explosion a bit like one that had happened to Lloyd in real life four years earlier. For a publicity shot, he’d lit a cigarette from what he thought was a prop bomb in his right hand – only it wasn’t a prop, and his hand was badly mangled. All of Lloyd’s greatest thrill comedies were filmed after that accident. Think about that as he’s dangling from a ledge by one hand. That was Harold Lloyd – always trying to top himself, and reaching a comedy summit in Safety Last!
Having trained originally as an actor, Neil Brand has been accompanying silent films for over 25 films, performing regularly at the NFT on London’s South Bank, and at film festivals and special events throughout the world. He is considered one of the finest exponents of improvised silent film accompaniment in the world.
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Bob Mondello NPR With special guest Suzanne Lloyd and accompaniment from writer, composer and accompanist Neil Brand
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THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG A Palme d’Or winner at Cannes in 1964, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a masterpiece of French cinema and the peak of writer-director Jacques Demy’s career. Inspired by Hollywood musicals, Demy created a poignant fairytale, in colour and song. Catherine Deneuve, the grand dame of French cinema, stars in her breakout role as fresh-faced teenager in love Geneviève Emery. The object of her affections is a young car mechanic Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), but Geneviève’s mother disapproves of the match, and when Guy is drafted to fight in the Algerian war and Geneviève discovers she is pregnant, the lovers seem doomed never to meet again. ‘A glorious romantic confection unlike any other in movie history’ The Washington Post
Sun 23 Feb / Light House 1 / 3pm / 91 minutes Writer-director: Jacques Demy 1964 France Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon With the support of the French Embassy in Ireland
Demy transforms this bittersweet tale into a soaring operatic masterpiece. The beautiful choreography and fluid camera work create a feel of constant motion, while vivid colours enliven the small town setting. The film’s expressive score, by turns haunting and uplifting, earned composer Michel Legrand his first Academy Award® nomination (he went on to win three). Brimming with playful charm and anchored by Deneuve’s timeless performance, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg still enchants fifty years after its release. Kate McEvoy
CLUB SANDWICH CLUB SÁNDWICH A delightfully mannered and offbeat take on the oft-told ‘coming of age’ story, Fernando Eimbcke’s charming film is both poignant and laugh-out-loud funny as the relationship between a boy and his loving mother is tested by the arrival on the scene of a girl his own age.
‘a delightful twist on the adolescent coming-of-age story’ Screen International
Sun 23 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 3pm / 82 minutes Writer-director: Fernando Eimbcke 2013 Mexico Cast: María Renée Prudencio, Lucio Giménez Cacho Goded, Danae Reynaud Winner, Best Film, Turin Film Festival
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35-year-old single mother Paloma (María Renée Prudencio) and her fifteen-year-old son Hector (Lucio Giménez Cacho Goded) are the very best of friends. But while their relationship is wonderfully close, Hector is also changing. The arrival of Jazmin (Danae Reynaud) at the resort complicates matters further. The teens start to spend time together with the sexual chemistry becoming more and more palpable. The joy of the film is Paloma’s reaction to the prospect of her son/best friend being entranced by Jazmin. Reacting almost like a jealous lover, she seeks to gently sabotage their time together. Mexican filmmaker Eimbcke’s third feature film is brimming with subtle but extremely funny sequences and directed with compassion and delicacy. Mark Adams Screen International
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
SUNDAY 23RD FEBRUARY
THE PRIEST’S CHILDREN SVEÐENIKOVA DJECA A condom-piercing Catholic priest takes God’s will into his own hands in this contraception comedy from Croatia.
‘An engagingly broad and breezy comedy, The Priest’s Children is a genuine easy-going filmic pleasure, delightfully performed, beautifully shot and relishing its sense of playful irony.’ Screen International
Sun 23 Feb / Light House 1 / 5pm / 93 minutes Director: Vinko Brešan 2013 Croatia/Serbia Writer: Mate Matišić Cast: Krešimir Mikić, Nikša Butijer, Marija Škaričić
Fabian, an ambitious young Catholic priest, is sent to take over from a popular predecessor in a small Dalmatian island village. On arrival he is shocked to discover birth rates are surprisingly low. And the cause? A rampant culture of contraception amongst the congregation. Soliciting the support of some key local vendors, Fabian takes to puncturing prophylactics and switching contraception pills to put a stop to all this sinful wasting of seed. An hilarious, madcap comedy ensues as the tiny island experiences a pregnancy boom. Set to become Croatia’s highest grossing film ever, The Priest’s Children is directed by the undisputed darling of new Croatian cinema, Vinko Brešan. While the film revels in its own sardonic absurdity and delightfully executed screwball and slapstick, it is not without its more cutting critiques, in particular the church’s opposition to sex education in Croatian schools. In a year in which we have seen some very serious cinema around religious themes, this is a witty, welcome dose of blithe satire. Canberra International Film Festival
THE ROCKET BANG FAI Winner of both the Best First Feature Award at the Berlinale and Best Narrative Feature at Tribeca, The Rocket is a heart-warming coming-of-age tale set entirely in Laos. Kim Mordaunt, who made the excellent documentary Bomb Harvest, which was also set in Laos, tells this story with great empathy and authenticity.
‘An intriguingly subversive drama’ Screen International
Sun 23 Feb / Light House 3 / 5pm / 96 minutes Writer-director: Kim Mordaunt 2013 Laos/Thailand/Australia Cast: Sitthiphon Disamoe, Loungnam Kaosainam, Thep Phongam Winner, Best First Feature, Berlin Film Festival Winner, Best Narrative Feature, Tribeca Film Festival Winner, Audience Choice Award, Sydney Film Festival
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Ahlo is the surviving twin of a difficult birth and believed by some to be a source of bad luck. When the 10-year-old and his family are displaced by the construction of a dam, further tragedy strikes. Upon reaching the relocation village, Ahlo befriends young Kia and her eccentric uncle Purple, but is still ostracised by the superstitious community, and even treated with suspicion by his own family. Ahlo decides that his only hope of redemption is the Rocket Festival: a riotous, and dangerous, annual competition where huge bamboo rockets are set off to provoke the rain gods. Despite being too young to enter the competition, Ahlo is determined to succeed. Set amidst a beautiful landscape, and with lovely performances by the young actors, The Rocket is a sensitive and uplifting film. Sydney Film Festival
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ROXANNE Tavi Ionescu (Șerban Pavlu), the protagonist of Roxanne, discovers during a meeting with a member of the Romanian secret police that he might be the father of the son of his ex-girlfriend. Tavi’s discovery leads him on a self-defeating investigation that echoes the very issues Romania had to deal with under the dictatorship of Ceauşescu. Tavi should know better, but for some reason he can’t help himself, and this says something poignant about the situations that Romanians of a certain generation find themselves in. A story of friendship, betrayal and courage, Roxanne is filmed by Hotea in a matter-of-fact, almost invisible style. It’s set in a present which has not yet escaped its past, a past whose traces might be under the surface, but threaten to bubble to the surface at any point.
Sun 23 Feb / Cineworld 8 / 5pm / 98 minutes Director: Valentin Hotea 2013 Romania/Hungary Writers: Valentin Hotea, Ileana Muntean Cast: Șerban Pavlu, Diana Dumbravă, Mihai Călin
Mark Peranson Locarno International Film Festival
With the support of the Romanian Cultural Institute UK
SURPRISE FILM This year I have been tracking three or four films for the 2014 Surprise Film but, in keeping with JDIFF tradition, it has not been confirmed as we go to print with the festival catalogue. Described by one of its most devoted fans as ‘the festival’s most sacred and respected tradition’, the Surprise Film screening is always one of the first to sell out and the source of constant speculation in the run up to the festival and for the duration of the event itself. So be brave and take a risk on one of the festival’s hottest and most surprising films!
Sunday 23 February / Savoy 1 / 5pm / ??? minutes Director: ??? / Year ??? / Country ??? Cast: ???
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For many years I was one of many filmgoers addicted to the annual pleasure of booking a ticket for a film about which I knew absolutely nothing. The ritual starts with the growing sense of excitement as the Savoy auditorium fills, the last minute suggestions placed in the competition boxes, followed by the gasps which accompany the trailers that kick off proceedings. Then the lights dim and the opening credits are revealed… Gráinne Humphreys
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
SUNDAY 23RD FEBRUARY
CLOSING GALA
‘takes a refreshingly different look at this pre-marital rite of passage’ Screen International
THE STAG Sun 23 Feb / Savoy 1 / 7.30pm / 94 minutes Director: John Butler 2013 Ireland Writers: John Butler, Peter McDonald Cast: Hugh O’Conor, Andrew Scott, Brian Gleeson, Peter McDonald, Amy Huberman, Andrew Bennett, Michael Legge With special guests John Butler, Andrew Scott, Hugh O’Conor, Peter McDonald, Brian Gleeson, Michael Legge, Andrew Bennett, Amy Huberman, Rebecca O’Flanagan and Rob Walpole
Not your average groom, Fionán (Hugh O’Conor) has little interest in a bachelor party: he would much rather stay at home and make seating plans with his fiancée Ruth (Amy Huberman), but when his micromanagement of the wedding begins to get out of hand, Ruth decides that he needs a nudge in the right direction. Enlisting the help of best man Davin, a stag weekend is planned: nothing crazy, just five friends on a simple camping trip in the Irish countryside. That is, until Ruth insists that her brother (nicknamed ‘The Machine’) is invited along too. While Davin tries his utmost to dissuade the notorious sibling, there’s simply no way The Machine is going to miss out on a stag party and, what’s more, he’s determined to make this a trip to remember! Unlike some recent American films loosely based on the same premise, John Butler’s hilarious debut feature draws from a deeper well, sprinkling moments of glorious slapstick over a well-constructed foundation of real-life drama. The characters here all have hidden depths and this is as much a voyage of self discovery as a madcap comedy caper. The Stag boasts splendid performances all round from an ensemble cast of home-grown talent and, while The Machine (played by Moone Boy’s Peter McDonald) provides most of the intense belly laughs, Andrew Scott’s performance as Davin yields some of the film’s more tender and emotional moments. David Desmond
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THURSDAY 13 – SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY
PICTURE HOUSE 4 – 9 FEBRUARY VENUES & DATES TUE 4 FEB CAIRDEAS DAY CARE CENTRE, CORK ST, DUBLIN 8 (THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG) TUE 4 FEB THE MARLAY, RATHFARNHAM (SAFETY LAST! WITH DANNY FORDE) WED 5 FEB ORWELL HOUSE, RATHGAR (THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG) THU 6 FEB DALKEY COMMUNITY UNIT, DALKEY (SAFETY LAST! WITH DANNY FORDE) FRI 7 FEB ASHFORD HOUSE, DUN LAOGHAIRE (THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG) SUN 9 FEB ST MARY’S, PHOENIX PARK (SAFETY LAST! WITH MORGAN COOKE)
JDIFF’s Outreach Programme has long been an integral part of the festival, bringing the magic of cinema to people who would otherwise be unable to take part. Over the years we’ve organised screenings in everything from hospitals to prisons, and in 2012 we took the festival to selected care centres throughout Dublin. We called the initiative ‘Picture House’. This year, three care centres will enjoy a screening of Safety Last! with musical
accompaniment from Danny Forde and Morgan Cooke. We will also screen The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in three of the centres. We are delighted to announce that Academy Award®-winning actress Brenda Fricker is the patron of Picture House for the third year running. Thanks to all the participating venues and to Age & Opportunity.
FILM TOUR
REGIONAL TOUR: MULTI-COUNTY PREMIERE
Presented with the support of the Goethe-Institut Irland and the Embassy of Switzerland, Ireland BOOK ONLINE AT JDIFF.COM
The festival is delighted to celebrate the growth of audiences for cultural cinema in arts centres throughout Ireland. We are also celebrating the Arts Council’s investment in projection equipment with the premiere of Lovely Louise in Cineworld on 18 February, followed by its premiere in the Model & Niland Arts Centre, Sligo, Co. Sligo on Wednesday 19 February, and Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Co. Kildare on Thursday 20 February, where actor Stanley Townsend and director Bettina Oberli will be in attendance. 121
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THE AUDIENCE AWARD AT YOUR FESTIVAL One of the most hotly contested aspects of the festival is the Audience Award. The award is bestowed on a film, based on the results of ballots cast by festival-goers at cinemas after screenings. So don’t forget to cast your vote!
STORY CAMPUS: SCREENWRITERS LAB
Photo: Simon Lazewski 15 & 16 FEBRUARY FILMBASE Story Campus returns this year with Screenwriters Lab; an intensive, two-day, project-centred development lab for narrative feature film screenwriters led by film-maker David Pope and directorscreenwriter David Keating.
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The lab will draw on the experience of ten international film industry advisors, including feature film creative producers, screenwriters and development executives. Over the two days each participant will have the opportunity to: 1. Have three one-to-one project development meetings, each meeting with a different advisor. These meetings will be aimed at advancing the project and refining its essence
2. Attend masterclass sessions on specific screenplay development topics 3. Network with participants and advisors Please note: participation is by selection. The selection process has been completed and successful candidates will be informed by 18.00 GMT on Friday 24 January.
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THURSDAY 13 – SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY
FESTIVAL HUB The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival is delighted to continue its partnership with Filmbase, on Curved St to bring you the 2014 Festival Hub. The Hub will be home to the Brainbelt exhibition, as well as being the base of operations for the Volunteers department and festival box office, alongside a significant portion of our industry programme: Screen Test.
FILMBASE, CURVED STREET, TEMPLE BAR, DUBLIN 2 PHONE: (01) 679 6716
Each day, throughout JDIFF, this venue will be a hive of activity. Our friendly box office team will be dispensing tickets and recommendations together with industry professionals who will be participating in lively and engaging panel events. There will be also be the opportunity to have your photo taken in front of our own ‘wall of fame’! The Festival Hub is also home to Roasted Brown Café, arguably the best coffee in Dublin. Keep an eye on our social media and website for details of daily special offers. Also check out the Irishtimes.com corner where they will be interacting with film fans throughout the festival. We very much look forward to welcoming you to the Festival Hub.
FILM-MAKERS LOUNGE
THE CHURCH, JUNCTION OF MARY ST & JERVIS ST, DUBLIN 1, PHONE: (01) 828 0102 You might think that once the credits roll and the lights come up after our last screening of the day that it’s time to head on home. Not so! We warmly invite you to come and join us at the JDIFF Filmmakers Lounge. Here, festival staff, special guests and spirited volunteers will share their daily highlights and look forward to upcoming festival screenings and other events. There may even be opportunities for a post Q&A follow-up with some of our visiting film-makers. BOOK ONLINE AT JDIFF.COM
Each evening will have its own festivalrelated DJ set to keep your toes tapping while conversation is flowing in the friendly and relaxed atmosphere of The Church Café Bar. So please, come join us to celebrate cinema and all the festival’s films. You never know who you might bump into!
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THURSDAY 13 – SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY
BOARD AND STAFF BOARD OF DIRECTORS Paddy Breathnach Sue Bruce-Smith Clare Duignan Jonathan Kelly Hugh Linehan David McLoughlin James Morris Margery Simkin Gaby Smyth Chairperson
Print Transport & Exhibition Co-ordinator Andy Beecroft Catalogue Editor Alistair Daniel Industry/Programme Assistant David Mullane
STAFF
Production Manager Liam Ryan
Festival Director Gráinne Humphreys
Production Assistant Seán Kingston
General Manager Jackie Ryan
Audience Development Julia O’Mahony
Marketing Manager Colm Ó Riagáin
Festival Publicist Glenn Hogarty
Festival Administrator Kevin O’Farrell
Festival Publicist Nicola Costello
Accounts Officer Bairbre Quinn
Festival Publicity UK Laura Pettitt & Katy Towse
Press Assistant Kate O’Leary
Venue Manager Philip Kelly
Marketing Assistant Gráinne Curtin
Venue Manager Orla Basquille
Hospitality Manager Sarah Smyth
Venue Manager Sarah Ahern
Hospitality Manager Ruth Phelan
Venue Manager Claire-Louise Brennan
Volunteers Manager Paul Donnelly
Marketing & Tourism Intern Hélène Martin-Vallet
Volunteers Assistant Aisling O’Farrell Volunteers Assistant Caroline Duff Box Office Manager Alison Reilly Assistant Box Office Manager Claire Tait-Doak
VOLUNTEERS
A VITAL ELEMENT OF THE SMOOTH RUNNING AND CONTINUED SUCCESS OF JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL IS OUR VOLUNTEER PROGRAMME Every year the festival attracts film aficionados from around the globe, both on screen and off screen. The festival’s volunteers are a vital bridge between the festival and her audience, and can be spotted all over town; from our venues doing everything from pointing you in the JDIFF direction to wishing you a happy cinema experience.
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The volunteer community within the festival is a special one, and despite the festival occurring in February, the volunteer’s enthusiasm remains in place throughout the year. Their enthusiasm for cinema, both Irish and international, enriches the festival experience as a whole and creates that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you realize you’re a part of something special in the Irish film calendar. For your generosity, enthusiasm and goodwill we here at the festival are extremely grateful to each and every one of you. Thank you.
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THURSDAY 13 – SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THANK YOU Aaron Farrell Access Cinema Age & Opportunity Alan Fitzpatrick Alan Swan Alliance Française Altitude Films American Airlines Andrew Hetherington Ania Trzebiatowska Arrow Films Arthur Lappin Artificial Eye The Arts Council Audrey Sheils AVC Axiom BAI Barry Dignam Barrie Dowdall Beta Cinema Bettina Seitz Brainbelt Breakthrough Entertainment Brian Finnegan The British Council Burrell PR Byrne, Moreau, Connell Accountants Camilla Young Carlton Screen Advertising Cashmere Media Celluloid Dreams Charlotte Kelly The Church Cinetamaris Cineworld Coco TV Conn’s Cameras Conor Barry Culture Ireland Curzon World The Danish Embassy Darren Thornton Dave King David Collins Declan McGonagle Design Factory DHR Communications DLIADT Donald Clarke Donald Taylor Black Dogwoof Dublin Bus Dublin City Council Dublin Film Critics Circle Eclipse Pictures Element Pictures Embassy of Australia Embassy of the Netherlands Embassy of the Republic of
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Poland EMC Post Production Emotion Pictures Entertainment.ie Eone Films Eureka Entertainment Ltd Eureka Films The Eye Cinema Fáilte Ireland Fastnet Films Ferdia Mac Anna Figa Films Filmbase Film Factory Film Ireland Films Distribution Films Transit Fortissimo Films The French Embassy Funny Balloons Fusion Media Gareth Lee Gary Duggan GCN GFD Glasgow Film Festival Glass Machine Productions GMS Security Goethe Institut Hrönn Marinósdóttir Hugo Films IMC Group Instituto Italiano di Cultura Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard The Irish Film Board The Irish Film Institute Irish Rail The Irish Society of Cinematographers The Irish Times Irish Writers’ Centre Israeli Films Jean-François Rauger James Armstrong Jane Gogan Jarlath Regan Jill O’Brien John Connolly John Leahy John Kelleher Kathleen McInnis The Korean Embassy Lars Hermann Laura Lee Conboy Laurence Mackin Lighthouse Cinema Lionsgate Lisa Richards Agency Malcolm Campbell Mañana Margaret Ward
Mark O’Halloran M-Appeal Media-Consulta The Merrion Hotel Metrodome Group Michael Kinirons Mihai Chirilov Mobile Radio Links The Model and Niland Arts Centre Momentum Pictures Myles Dungan Natalie Colville National Concert Hall Neasa Hardiman Neil O’Gorman Newgrange Pictures Niall McCullough Nialler9 Nina Lidder Norwegian Film Institute Off Plus Camera Parallel Films Paramount Pictures Park Circus Park Films Patrick Redmond Photography Pat Murphy Paul Duane Paulo Branco Pearse Street Library Peccadillo Pictures Peter Morgan Peter Sheridan Philippe Brodeur Premium Films Richelle Wilder Rick O’Shea Riverbank Arts Centre Rob Cawley Robot Display Róisín Duffy JJ Rolfe Romanian Cultural Institute Ross Whitaker Still Films RTÉ Radio One Samson Films Screen Producers Ireland Screen Training Ireland Sean Whelan Session Hire Sharon Badal Sinéad Gleeson Soda Pictures Sony Pictures Stephanie McBride Studio Canal Swedish Film Institute Tamasa Distribution
Tara Brady TASC Teach Solais Telwell Productions Terry Prone Thaddeus O’Sullivan Ticketsolve Tom Hennigan Toyota Twentieth Century Fox 24/7 Drama UCD UCD Cinema UCD Film Society Universal Picture Urban Distribution International US Embassy Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin Verve Pictures Visit Films Walt Disney Motion Pictures, Ireland Warner Bros Warrior Films The Weinstein Company Wells Cargo WFDiF Wide Management Wilder Films Windmill Lane Writers Guild of Ireland Zbyszek Zalinski Zipporah Films and all staff in our festival venues and care centres
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
THURSDAY 13 – SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY
INDEX 20 Feet from Stardom The 100 Year Old Man... A Long Way Down A Long Way From Home A Story of Children and Film A Street in Palermo A Thousand Times Goodnight A Touch of Sin A Vision A World Not Ours Afternoon Delight Antarctica At Berkeley Autoluminescent
113 104 48 39 83 95 48 108 78 31 88 44 114 33
Bad Brains Bad Hair Before the Winter Chill Beyond the Edge 3D Big Sur Blue Ruin The Book Thief Borgman
33 105 59 46 25 47 24 101
Calvary Cannibal Cas & Dylan Circles Club Sandwich Come into the Gardens Concrete Night Concussion The Congress
16 76 78 53 116 38 36 93 79
Dawn of the Dead Deceptive Practice Deconstructing Dad The Deer Hunter Design is One The Devil’s Pool The Double Dual
98 106 33 55 35 59 94 102
Eliza Lynch Exhibition
86 34
The Fake Family Band Fellini’s Roma Finsterworld The Food Guide to Love Frost/Nixon
114 33 44 84 55 21
Gabrielle Gare du Nord The Gambler The Girl from the Wardrobe Goddess Gold The Golden Dream Good Ol’ Freda The Grand Budapest Hotel
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36 77 106 93 108 107 95 104 31
The Grand Seduction Gun Crazy
83 94
Half of a Yellow Sun Haus Tugendhat Hide Your Smiling Faces
37 103 46
Ida Inequality for All The Inquiry International Shorts 1 & 2 It’s All So Quiet
49 53 102 15 37
Jaws JDIFF Shorts La Paz The Lady Assassin The Last Days on Mars Lasting Lawrence of Belgravia Life Feels Good Living in a Coded Land Locke Los Wild Ones Looking for Light Love Eternal Lovely Louise The Lunchbox
61 23 47 85 57 57 32 73 77 109 54 73 72 72 35
The Major The Matchmaker Messiah The Militant Miss Violence Mode in France The Model Couple Mood Indigo Mother of George Mr Freedom Muhammad Ali Mystery Road
24 56 18 22 41 19 18 74 22 19 19 25
New World No Limbs No Limits Nordvest
30 29 80
Our Sunhi Out of Here
103 109
The Past Pioneer The Priest’s Children
56 110 117
Reaching for the Moon Looking for the Light The Reunion The Rocket Roxanne Run & Jump
30 73 87 117 118 107
Safety Last! Salvo
115 81
Soldate Jeannette The Square The Stag Standing Aside, Watching Starred Up Stay Stranger by the Lake Surprise Film The Swimmer
92 84 119 49 85 40 41 118 45
Those Happy Years Tracks Trap Street Two Lives
76 43 92 45
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Under the Skin The Unspeakable Act
116 80 79
Violette Visitors
105 34
Wakolda We Are the Best! Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? The Wonders Wrecking Crew
54 87 19 50 32
Yozgat Blues
40
The Zero Theorem
97
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FRID FRI F FR FRIDAY RIID R IDAY Y 14TH 14T 4TH 4 TH T H FEBRUARY FE FEBR FEB F EBR EB E BR B UA UA UAR UARY AR ARY RY R Y
1130 30 0
JAMESON JA JAME J A SON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM F M FESTIVAL 2014 FIL
BOOK BO B OO O OK O OK ON ONL NLIN NL NLINE IINE N NE E AT A JDIFF.C FF FF.C F F CO F.C OM M ONLINE JDIFF.COM
JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL IS ALL ABOUT DISCOVERING NEW FILMS, SO BE SURE TO IMMERSE YOURSELF IN THE ELEVEN-DAY FESTIVAL AND MAKE THE MOST OF IT BY FOLLOWING THESE HANDY TIPS...
Get to the cinema on time – All seating is unreserved and is allocated on a first come, first served basis. Q&As – Each year, we invite over 80 filmmakers from around the world to attend the festival so check jdiff.com for details of Q&As that might be on after a screening. Share your festival moments with us – Whether it is a photograph, a comment or a review, we want to see it! So join in the conversation online. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social platforms. Just to be sure to tag us! #jdiff Daily Deals – Every day during the festival, between 1pm and 3pm, we’ll be posting special discounts and offers on our website and social media channels. Explore the city – Check out our festival map above and you’ll see how centrally located our venues are and all within walking distance of each other. Make your way in and around the city by using Dublin Bus, DART or even hop on one of the Dublin Bikes.
Have a question? – Then talk to our army of volunteers who will be located at every venue and can tell you what is on each night. Buying tickets – You can buy tickets online at jdiff.com (on a desktop or mobile), by calling (01) 687 7974 or dropping into any of our ticket offices. You can then collect your pre-booked tickets at the JDIFF ticket office in the venue from half an hour before the film starts. It couldn’t be easier! The Film-makers Lounge – Come join us in The Church (junction of Mary Street & Jervis Street) each evening of the festival from 9.00pm where you will meet other film fans and enjoy a refreshing drink with some excellent background tunes. You never know who might pop in so be sure to make it part of your festival experience. facebook.com/dublinfilmfestival @dublinfilmfest Jameson Dublin International Film Festival youtube.com/dublinfilmfest
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FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY
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JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
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