Views of Ireland, old and new
Film festival honors director Boorman
One of the appealing quirks of the Boston Irish Film Festival, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, is that it announces its prize winners ahead of time - a trick that certainly makes it a little easier for time-pressed film fans to decide what to see.
This year's Best Film award is being presented to "Eden," a drama about a married couple whose looming 10th anniversary is highlighting all that's missing from their relationship. Eileen Walsh, who plays the wife, won the Best Actress award at this year's Tribeca Film Festival. Director Declan Recks will be at the Brattle Theatre on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. when "Eden" opens the festival. ("Eden" also begins a run at the Kendall Square Cinema on Nov. 21.)
Alison Millar's "At Home with the Clearys," which is this year's best documentary, looks at Father Michael Cleary, a well-known priest in Ireland. After his death, the public discovered that Cleary was also the father of a young son. That plays on Saturday at 5 p.m. at the Harvard Film Archive.
Writer and director Bob Quinn will be at the HFA on Friday at 7 p.m. with his "Vox
There often seems to be a push-pull within audiences who want to see both traditional Ireland and New Ireland on the screen. Festival producer Dawn Morrissey says the balance between the two is seen in the fest's tribute to Irish musician Ronnie Drew.
"Drew recently passed away and a documentary made about his life called 'Ronnie Drew: September Song' was submitted in competition to the festival," says Morrissey. "Although it did not win, we wanted to screen it as it was directed by Sinead O'Brien and features Bono, Billy Connolly, and Damien Dempsey." It's paired with another film about Drew, "O'Donoghue's Opera" and plays Saturday at 8 p.m. at the HFA.
All but two of the 40 feature and short films on the first part of the schedule were made in Ireland. The notable exception is Lowell native Stephen Croke's Massachusetts-based, Irish-tinged young-teen romance "The Busker." Croke will be attending the festival with his film next Sunday at 7 p.m. at the HFA.
The second part of the festival (which has been titled the Magners Irish Film Festival for the last five years) is devoted to a retrospective of the work of director John Boorman, who will be attending on Nov. 21 to receive this year's Excellence Award. A dozen of Boorman's films, including "Deliverance," "Hope and Glory," and "The General," play at the Brattle and HFA from Nov. 20 through Nov. 24.
The HFA notes that Boorman, who was born in London, has lived in Ireland for most of his life, and offers up this excerpt from Boorman's memoir "Adventures of a Suburban Boy," to explain his sensibility: "Although hag-ridden by priests and oppressed by the Church, I felt Catholicism was only skin deep [in Ireland], that underneath it was a pagan place. For all its sorrows and suffering, Ireland had at least escaped the brutalizing effect of the Industrial Revolution which, in England, had sucked people from the land to the misery of city slums."
Full festival information is online at www.irishfilmfestival.com, and from the Brattle Theatre (617-876-6837 and www.brattlefilm.org) and HFA (617-495-4700 and www.hcl.harvard.edu/hfa).
BIG BRATTLE GALA: Actor Willem Dafoe will be in town as the guest of honor at the 2008 Brattle Film Foundation Gala next Sunday. The party is being held at The Charles Hotel in Cambridge. Also being feted is film writer Gerry Peary.
The event is a fund-raiser and ticket information is at www.brattlefilm.org. Tickets must be ordered by end of day tomorrow. From Friday through next Sunday, the Brattle will show nine Dafoe films, including "The Last Temptation of Christ," "Mississippi Burning," and "Tom & Viv." Dafoe will be at the Brattle on Saturday for a Q&A following the 7 p.m. show of "Go Go Tales."
Peary has been a film critic in Boston for thirty years, working at the Real Paper, the Globe, and now the Boston Phoenix. He heads the film program at Suffolk University and has been the curator for more than 10 years of the Boston University cinematheque program, which brings filmmakers to BU. He's also in the middle of making his own documentary, "For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism."
RUFF CUTZ INDIE CONFERENCE: There will be a three-day conference next weekend at the Center for Digital Imaging Arts of Boston University featuring film screenings, vendors, and workshops. Local writer Steve Jermanok, who co-wrote the movie "Passionada" with his brother Jim, will be leading a seminar with Jim on "How to Make a Living Creatively." Also on the bill are Eduardo Sánchez, writer of "The Blair Witch Project," and Michael Corrente, director of the upcoming "The Prince of Providence," about Buddy Cianci. More information is online at www.rcifc.com.
BOSTON JEWISH FEST CONTINUING: The Boston Jewish Film Festival, which opened last week, fans out across the city today, with shows at the ICA, Coolidge Corner Theatre, and Museum of Fine Arts. It runs through Nov. 16. Details at www.boston.com/films.
At the MFA at 5:30 this afternoon, filmmakers Amram Jacoby, Leïla Férault, Erez Tadmor, and Guy Nattiv will talk about what spurs them on. The discussion will be moderated by Scott Kirsner, the Globe's "Innovation" columnist and author of the new "Inventing the Movies: Hollywood's Epic Battle Between Innovation and the Status Quo, From Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs." Full festival information is at www.bjff.org.
SCREENINGS OF NOTE: "Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine," plays the MFA on Thursday at 1:45 p.m. and five additional dates through the end of the month. And "Christmas on Mars," Wayne Coyne's Fantastical Film Freakout staring Coyne and his fellow Flaming Lips, plays its final show at the Brattle Theatre tonight at 10.
Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com. 