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Film Fleadh fandango

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Michael Gray

If you haven’t quite got your fill of Irish things to do in New York in the run-up to St. Patrick’s Day, here’s something else to add to your calendar: the Irish Film Fleadh, which is being held the week before the big Celtic occasion at the theater of the Directors’ Guild of America, in midtown Manhattan.

The Fleadh (the first in a series, if enough of you show up to make this one a success) begins on Thursday, March 11, and continues through Sunday the 14th. A diverse selection of features and shorts from Irish and Irish-American directors working in Ireland, the U.S. and Germany will be presented at matinee and evening screenings during this four-day period.

March 11, The McCourts

The program opens with the HBO documentary "The McCourts of New York," directed by Conor McCourt. The film reviews the lives of the ubiquitous siblings Frank and Malachy in their adopted city in the U.S. and takes up where Conor McCourt’s earlier film, "The McCourts of Limerick," left off.

Before the main feature, a 10-minute short will be shown — a pattern that will continue for the rest of the festival. The opening short will be "Guy’s Dog," a Rory Bresnahan claymation comedy that won awards for Best Short at Galway Film Fleadh and Cork Film Festival last year.

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The Fleadh program closes with the latest movie from Ireland’s top actor, Brendan Gleeson, in the title role of "Sweety Barrett." Written and directed by Stephen Brady, making his feature debut, "Sweety" presents Gleeson as a slow-witted circus performer who swallows an assortment of objects for a living. He leaves the circus and becomes an odd-jobs man for a smuggler in the fictitious seaside town of Dockery, where he runs into trouble with the head of the local police, Mannix Bone. Bone runs the town as his own personal fiefdom, and even muscles in on the profits from the local bootlegging trade. Sweety, despite his apparent simple-mindedness, proves to be a more formidable adversary than his enemies in the police force might suspect. "Sweety Barrett" was featured previously at Toronto and San Sebastian Film Festivals in 1998, and the Fleadh screening will be its first in New York. Gleeson will be present and will answer questions about "Sweety Barrett" from the audience afterward.

Another Barrett is the central character in a documentary to be shown on the 13th. "Southpaw" is a biopic about an Irish Olympic athlete who competed at the Atlanta Games in 1996, a Galway traveler named Francis Barrett. Barrett was a teenage welterweight boxer who realized his dream of fighting at the highest level in his sport. He trained for two years at a halting site in conditions so basic that he lacked running water and electricity. Director Liam McGrath will be on hand to go a few rounds with the audience after the film.

March 12, The Quinns

Arguably the most anticipated soirée of the festival will be the Friday night event, "An Evening With the Quinns." The featured movie will be "This Is My Father," directed by Paul Quinn, starring his brother Aidan, and shot by a third Quinn, the renowned cinematographer Declan. Paul Quinn’s directorial debut is a moving love story that ends in tragedy, due to the intolerance of the local community and clergy in the rural Ireland of the 1930s. The film also stars Colm Meaney and veteran American actor James Caan. "This Is My Father" won the top award in the "Best Feature" category at Galway Film Fleadh last year. Both Aidan and Paul Quinn are expected to fraternize with the audience after this screening. Lensman Declan is shooting on location and is unlikely to be present. The Carole Moore short "Gort na gCnamh" will precede the main feature.

March 13, "Divorcing Jack"

Another debutant filmmaker from Ireland will be appearing at the Fleadh on the 13th, for the New York premiere of his comedy thriller, "Divorcing Jack." David Caffrey directed this film and Colin Bateman wrote the screenplay, adapting the text from his own novel. The film stars David Thewlis in the role of Dan Starkey, a dissolute Belfast journalist who becomes a murder suspect when a girl he picked up in a park is killed in her apartment. Starkey goes on the run with the RUC and paramilitaries in hot pursuit. Thewlis gained international recognition in 1993 for his performance in Mike Leigh’s "Naked," playing a despicable nihilist. "Commitments" singer Bronagh Gallagher makes a brief appearance in "Divorcing Jack" as a Belfast taxi driver.

Northern Ireland also provides the backdrop for the short film coupled with Caffrey’s feature. "Flying Saucer Rock and Roll" is directed by Enda Hughes, who previously assaulted cinema audiences with the frenetic horror sci-fi, no-budget genre-buster "The Eliminator" back in 1997. The energetic young director keeps up the pace in "Flying Saucer Rock and Roll," a quickie about a rock band on the road in the Six Counties.

March 14, "Break Even"

The locale shifts to the European mainland for two of the films lined up for the Fleadh. "Break Even," to be shown on the 14th, is set in Berlin, and shot in German with English subtitles. The director and writer is Irish-born Eoin Moore, and his downbeat story centers on the dismal life of a construction worker who lives in a container on the building site where he goes to work after he becomes estranged from his wife. His life changes slightly for the better when he meets Svetlana, a Bosnian refugee about to be deported from Germany to her war-devastated homeland. This barrel of laughs will be accompanied by "Cluck," a short about a disgruntled battery-hen factory worker who goes postal at work one day and decides to blow the place up.

"The Disappearance of Finbar" takes us farther North, to Finland, on a trek through the frozen tundra to find the missing character of the title. Finbar Flynn vanished from sight late one night after climbing an unfinished motorway flyover in Dublin, and a mysterious phone call from Scandinavia three years later sends his concerned friend, Danny, off to that part of the world to track him down. Finbar is played by up-and-coming Irish actor Jonathan Rhys-Myers, seen recently on New York screens as a lecherous Victorian fop in "The Governess" and a Bowiesque androgyne popstar in "Velvet Goldmine." The cast also includes Sean McGinley, who appeared in John Boorman’s "The General" with Brendan Gleeson, and Lorraine Pilkington, star of Neil Jordan’s "The Miracle."

"The Disappearance of Finbar" has been favorably compared with the works of the eccentric Aki Kaurismaki, as much for the off-beat, whimsical style of its director, Sue Clayton, as for its Finnish locations.

"Seed," etc.

The features cited thus far will all have their New York premiere at the Fleadh. But the lunchtime screening on the 13th will mark the world premiere of Irish-American filmmaker Bobby Sheehan’s docudrama "Seed."

Sheehan’s elegiac movie follows his lead performer, John Michael Bolger, on an odyssey across America in search of spiritual truth. Sheehan also wrote the screenplay and produced the film himself, and will be present at the screening to answer questions from the audience.

The Fleadh offers more than cinematic entertainment. The program promises an educational aspect as well, in the form of a seminar and panel with filmmakers and guest speakers from the world of academia.

"Reel Irish’, a breakfast seminar on Saturday the 13th, will be moderated by distinguished film academic and NYU Visiting Professor Luke Gibbons and NYU History lecturer Marion Casey. Ireland’s identity on-screen will be reviewed by the moderators and a panel that will include Paul Quinn, Conor McCourt and Stephen Bradley. Veteran Irish-American filmmaker George Stoney will be present to discuss his work, and show clips from his documentary about Robert Flaherty’s 1934 classic "Man Of Aran."

The gravity of this early morning academic analysis will be balanced with a little late-night levity, when audience and guest speakers adjourn to select watering holes after the evening screenings. Among the venues listed for invasion by thirsty film fans are Connolly’s on 47th Street, and Pageant and Solas on East 9th Street in Manhattan.

Filmgoers at the Fleadh will be given an opportunity to put one of the new Irish films from the Fleadh program on the map, courtesy of the audience-participation ballot system in operation after each screening.

The votes for best film will be tallied up after the final show on Saturday the 14th and a prize-giving ceremony will be held. The lucky winners will receive a check for $1,000 from Kodak, a Waterford Crystal trophy, and a voucher for post-production services from The Shooting Gallery. A party afterward, in McGee’s bar on West 55th Street, will bring the entire proceedings to a close.

For ticket and further information, visit the DGA box office, at 110 West 57th St., NYC, or telephone (212) 966 3030, ext. 225.

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