Irish Film Festival (Ottawa Canada-March 31-April 2, 2017)

[Johann]

It's about time I started writing about movies, so this weekend I'm going to the Irish film festival (3 days, 6 films) seems like a good way to begin again.

It's put on by the Arts Court in downtown Ottawa. Tickets are $10 per film, or a pass for all six for $45.
I will be buying a pass. I'm half-Irish, so I feel obligated. The films are:

"A Date For Mad Mary" (dir. Darren Thornton)

"War of the Buttons" (children's film from 1994)

"Atlantic" (doc on fish and oil by Risteard O'Domhnaill)

"the Young Offenders" (dir. Peter Foott)

"Dance Emergency" (dir. Dierdre Mulroney)

"Handsome Devil" (dir. John Butler)

Http://www.artscourt.ca/events/irish-film-festival

[Johann]

A Date For Mad Mary (2016/ dir. Darren Thornton)


The third annual Ottawa Irish Film Festival opening night was tonight, and the first film was wonderful.
"A Date For Mad Mary" is a film that Ireland can be quite proud of.
I thoroughly enjoyed this slice of modern Irish life by Darren Thornton, who joined the audience Live via Skype for a Q&A afterwards, along with gorgeous actress Tara Lee, who was a special guest on this opening night.

The film is intimate, following a one Mary, who just got out of jail.
She is beautiful, has similarities to Scarlett Johannsen in the looks department, and I found this film to be very charming and engaging. Mary's best friend Charlene is getting married, and Mary is asked to be the Maid of Honor. Long story short, this film chronicles Mary's worldview from being released from prison to erotic awakenings to contemplating life itself. To detail what happens to her and her "exploration" of all that follows would spoil a wonderful treat at the cinemas. This is slice-of-life, played/acted flawlessly. The story is perhaps "Chick-Lit", as they say, but as a man I found it very humourous and charming. Dublin Ireland has REAL people living there, folks. And this film shows us in technicolor how real an Irish girl's life is. She's Maid of Honor, but a date is a problem...a key scene is when she's denied the opportunity to speak at her friends' wedding. There is nuance here, and this is a film that requires attention paid, as one can get lost in the Irish accents. (Have no fear- not as bad as the Scottish accents in
Trainspotting).

Afterwards the director told us that he was very happy with his cast and that the film had a nice 4 month box office bonanza in Dublin last year.
Big thumbs up from me.
What can I compare it to?
It's like an Irish Chungking Express...not quite as polished, but in that arena.
Enjoyed it. Loved the interplay and contemplative scenes...it seemed very real, not staged.

[Johann]

The arts court theatre was full last night, I wasn't aware of the festival's existence until 2 weeks ago. It seems popular. There is a green program, with Mayor Jim Watson's words of encouragement and blurbs about each of the films. "A Date for Mad Mary" was introduced by Jim Kelly, Ambassador of Ireland.

Here's a few Irish film facts:

-the first fictional film shot in Ireland was Kalem Company's "THE LAD FROM OLD IRELAND" (1910), which was also the first american film shot on location outside the USA.

- the first cinema in Ireland (the Volta), was opened at 45 Mary street, Dublin in 1909 by the novelist James Joyce.

- Ardmore Studios was the first Irish studio, opening in 1958 in Bray, County Wicklow.

-in 2005 a Jameson Whiskey-sponsored poll selected the top ten Irish films:

The Commitments
My Left Foot
In the Name of the Father
The Quiet Man
The Snapper
Michael Collins
The Field
Intermission
Veronica Guerin
Inside I'm Dancing

[Chris Knipp]

Go for it Johann! Sounds like a great series. I'm part Irish too.

[Johann]

War of the Buttons (dir. John Roberts/1994)

I knew of War of the Buttons, but had never seen it prior to today. It's a good movie, with really interesting Irish kids, kids with quirky faces and ambitions, who have made somewhat of a kids classic here.
Despite some heavy "social" commentary, this is lighthearted for the most part.
In Cork Ireland two "gangs" of boys (one poor, one middle class) battle it out for local supremacy, culminating in a hilarious "fight" where one group strips totally starkers nude and surprise attacks the other group. Each group has a leader, and the poor boys are led by Fergus (Gregg Fitzgerald), who everybody follows. He has a funny scene later on when he strides into battle on a horse...

Fergus is poor, lives in a trailer with mom and dad, & has troubles at home. He leads the "Ballys" against the "Carricks"- the wealthy boys, who're led by Jerome, nicknamed Geronimo. These boys fight to steal buttons as war trophies, and anyone they defeat has their buttons popped off their clothes, neckties sliced, shoelaces cut or belts severed. Collecting buttons is their way of elevating their gang as Victors. Eventually some crazy things happen, everything from hijacking a tractor to being rescued by helicopter off a cliff-face. This is a drama, but the humour kept coming. I marvelled at how good these very young actors were...cute faces, cute accents, and the director appears to have gotten them to do it all with ease. It's a great children's film, with being true to yourself being a theme.
Gregg Fitzgerald is particularly strong as Fergus. He stands out.

The audience was treated to 4 very young girls doing Irish dancing beforehand...very nice.

[Chris Knipp]

This apparently is based on the French novel by Louis Peregaud, which has been by French directors twice, once in 1962 and once in 2011, with the Irish one in between. The first one takes place around the time of WWII. I think I saw the 2011 French one, I can't really remember, to tell the truth. I never heard of the Irish one and it sounds really interesting. I'm enjoying your reviews.

I'd agree with you that A Date for Mad Mary is a great new Irish film. I just saw it on a screener from the SFIFF and it will be included in my SFIFF coverage. The actors are all excellent, especially the lead but I loved Tara Lee who plays the videographer musician/singer she becomes involved with. There was something very authentic and natural about the acting. I think they consider it the hit of the year in Ireland and justifiably so.

[Johann]

ATLANTIC (2016 documentary by Risteard O'Domhnaill)

This was an eye-opener, a real wake-up call.

"Atlantic" deals with the serious issue of sustainability with regards to oil and fishing on this planet, focusing on one ocean. The director lets us peer into three seperate sides of the same issue: Ireland, and how she's being "raped" financially because of the offshore fishing. Canada, specifically Newfoundland, and how cod fishing was basically destroyed by the Canadian government. And Norway, who realized how important fishing was to it's resource management and serves as an example of how to protect your countries' sovereign rights to natural resources, keeping it out of the clutches of multi-national corporations.

Narrated by great Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, this film is chock-full of insight, glorious cinematography and most importantly, how protecting your nations' rights are Paramount.

We see (and hear) first-hand witness testimony from longtime fishermen about just what insanity has gone on and still goes on with regard to offshore fishing. Super-Trawlers haul in incredible amounts of fish off the coast of Ireland and no one holds them to account. We see one small-time Irish fisherman who is
being made an example of- someone saw his tiny boat haul a salmon (one-one dead salmon!) in on his bait net and reported him, when super-trawlers haul in tonnes of fish and only keep the big ones...they dump thousands of pounds of dead fish back into the sea! The seagulls love it, but real fishermen shake their heads...Super-Trawlers from other countries like Lithuania and Germany are literally fishing the hell out of Irelands' waters, with no penalty and no profit margin to Ireland, all because politicians did not care. That's the main thrust of this devastating doc- without enforcement from the government, it's a free-for-all. This film also exposes the big oil companies and what they're up to too, but it's mainly the fishing epidemic. The fishing takes a financial toll that is HUGE, and this film is a clarion call to all countries who have resources to protect. Politicians MUST protect these resources. If not, who will?
The footage in this film is both arresting and gorgeous. The director was with us on Skype again tonight, and he mentioned that he shot most of it himself, but he did rely on footage from other sources, underwater footage and Greenpeace lent him footage of super-trawlers with their OBSCENE fishing nets.

All I can say is SEE IT.
Be blown away. No doc has been made on this subject in this way before.

[Johann]

Yes Chris- "War of the Buttons" is based on the French novel "la guerre du Boutons"- I've never heard of nor seen the other adaptations...but the story is a beautiful "coming of age" treatise...
The Irish version may very well be a children's classic. See it. I think you'd love it. The audience in Ottawa did- they clapped afterwards.
This Irish film fest is tiny, but I have really enjoyed it.
Tomorrow is two more films. I skipped "The Young Offenders" tonight simply because it's the only trailer they had, and they showed it 3 times before I made the decision not to see it. If the trailer can't elicit a response from me, then the movie won't either...lol

[Johann]

Awesome that you saw "A Date For Mad Mary" already...no one can say you're not cinema savvy...

[Johann]

I can say more about Atlantic.
One scene that struck me was of my own Canadian government, in 1991, telling Newfoundlanders that all cod fishing is halted. Wow. Fishermen stormed the press conference, pounded on the doors to be let in to speak.
I never saw that footage in my life. The ban was to be only for two years. 25 years later, communities are gone- entire communities. They never kept their word.
The armada of illegal unchecked fishing boats is insane. A local small boat fisherman has to measure each lobster before keeping it. Those lobster not up to scale are tossed back, to be fished in a year or two.
Meanwhile big or super ships are literally raping and pillaging. One ship we see has a unique practice of freezing their fish, so there's no real way to know exactly how much they caught.
We see a great man speak who tells us the books were routinely doctored, and he managed to copy out the ship's logs and whistleblow. His ship was hauling in 9000 KG of fish a day yet writing in the logs that it was only 5000.

[Johann]

Dance Emergency (dir. Dierdre Mulrooney/2014)


This was a revelation.
Dance Emergency is a 52-minute documentary that highlights a little-known part of Irish dance history.
It reveals to us a wonderful enigmatic lady: Bohemian dance legend ERINA BRADY.

Erina is Irish/German, like me, so I was riveted hearing her story.
The director joined us via Skype afterwards for a Q&A.
Erina Brady was a liberal bohemian artist who struggled to bring modern dance/German Ausdruckstanz to conservative Ireland during the 1940's. Woven with interviews (some with her former students! Who're now in their 70's...), archive news clippings, and even actual footage of Erina teaching dance, which the director told us was pure happenstance. I loved hearing that she got it from the military, as Erina was suspected of being a spy. She was nothing of the sort, but she had an agent tracking her every move and a very thick file. It was because she was friends with prominent non-Irish politicos. She was highly suspicious to Irish officials. But all she was doing was advancing the art of dance. She saw Isadora Duncan dance and she knew instantly what her vocation would be. The director gives us beautiful recreations of her fluid and sublime dancing, showing how she moved and how she taught her students. She was immersed in it, even slept at her dance studio.
The director told us this film was shown last year at Lincoln center in new york and that she had well-heeled experts in dance tell her they were amazed that they had never heard of Erina Brady.
Irish dance is not known for progressive bohemia, which is what Erina embodied. Irish dancing is primarily step-dancing, not free-flowing artistic extentions of "The Dancer".

Knowing zero about this subject allowed me to just be in awe of who Erina Brady was.
This doc should pave the way for a killer biopic on a forgotten German woman who made a huge artistic mark on Dublin, even mastering the Irish language. It's short, but a helluva primer for finding out more about this mysterious bohemian woman who struck me as insanely sexy.
The title refers to the war- in Ireland during WW2 the situation was generally referred to as "the emergency", so Erina was conducting her own "dance" emergency...what I truly loved seeing in this was the bohemian spirit alive and well. Those would've been my people during the war...

[Chris Knipp]

I also saw another of the films in your Irish series in the Mostly British series in San Francisco some months ago. We'll see if we agree on it.

[Johann]

Let me guess: Handsome Devil?
I'm formulating my review now...will post tonight

[Chris Knipp]

You got it.

[Johann]

Handsome Devil (dir. John Butler/2016)

This was a crowd-pleaser. I loved it, and I'm pretty sure everybody in the audience loved it.
A very human movie. Surprisingly brilliant. The only gay film I've seen that impressed me as much as this was gus van sant's Elephant. Or Total Eclipse with Leo DiCaprio and David Thewlis. There's nothing graphic here, just a dramatic story about Ned (Fionn O'Shea) and Conor and their headmaster Walter and teacher Dan and rugby.

The director was on skype afterwards- it's a great way to interact with the crowd. I asked him a question. Will talk about that in a minute.(My only question to all the directors). This film has a chariots of fire quality, an Irish ivy league emotional drama, with humour. We were told that the actor who plays Conor (Nicholas Galitzine) was deemed "too beautiful" and the director almost didn't hire him. What surprised me was seeing that portraying youth struggling with sexuality can be done with great taste and sensitivity. In such a way to strip prejudice. You feel empathy for what's going on, gay or straight. It's human, it's well acted, it's effective and very dramatic. It's well shot, with a fabulous soundtrack. Which is what my question was about. I asked about the poster on Ned's wall. It was a provocative image from the band Suede, which I like. A character rips the poster off the wall. I asked the director if it was a rare Suede poster. He said yes, and that the band agreed to let him use it. He said he badly wanted to use the Smiths, but he was turned down. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. This festival was only six films, but it was great.

[Johann]

Chris, what did you think of the homophobic coach?

[Johann]

The films varied from character study to children's fare to powerful documentaries to engaging humanist stories. I spoke with the organizers and I suggested they keep up the same quality of films, and maybe one year show Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. It would fit perfect with the Irish theme.
Before Dance Emergency was screened we were given some Irish language, and if anyone wished to learn to speak it could find out how after the movie.
You could buy cans of Guinness, and glasses of wine and overall it was great.
I intend to cover it every year if it's the same type of festival. If it happens to get bigger (and why not? The Irish are amazing!) then obviously the arts court theatre would have to go. Bigger digs would be required. Ireland may not be cranking out the cinema like other countries, but what they do put out is quality stuff.

[Johann]

I should add that the big scene where the teacher explodes on the students about "being someone else" was great. And having the revelation later...wowza. But that's life, isn't it.
Protecting yourself is a theme, and it's one that could be life changing.
I also couldn't stop looking at Ned's posters of Dita von Teese...

[Johann]

I have to thank two ladies who kindly introduced themselves and put on a great 3rd Irish film fest:
Eithne Considine Shankar and Michelle Branigan.

More info can be found here:
www.irishfilmfestivalottawa.ca

[Chris Knipp]

I'll keep in mind the Irish War of the Buttons, and Atlantic.
My review of Handsome Devil (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4277-MOSTLY-BRITISH-FILM-FESTIVAL-San-Francisco-16-23-Feb-2017&p=35246#post35246) was in my coverage of a pretty small film festival, the San Francisco Mostly British one. I liked the treatment of Get Real, another British gay coming of age story, a bit better. I notice I just rewatched The Perks of Being a Wallflower with its great perofmrnaces by Logan Lerman in the lead as the green straight freshman and Ezra Miller as the gay senior who befriends him - and that also incidentally includes the secondary plot line of a more out gay guy (Miller's character) who's involved with a closeted football star. It seems to have become a common trope.

The dance film made me think of one we saw in the Rendez-Vous Lincoln Center French film sereis this Feb., Dancer, (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4282-Rendez-Vouz-with-French-Cinema-2017&p=35294#post35294), about the turn of the century Paris star from America Loïe Fuller, who we also had never heard of.

Total Eclipse was amazing - Leo DiCaprio so completely fearless as shown there. But there are a number of good gay coming of age movies, my favorite being Davod Moreton's Edge of Seventeen (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4106-EDGE-OF-SEVENTEEN-(David-Moreton-1998-new-DVD-Blu-ray-2016)&p=34368#post34368) - not to be confused with a new movie The Edge of Seventeen, no connection. It came out in 1998, but it was reissued on Blu-ray last year. Moreton's film shows what the others lack. It fills in the whole period and milieu, the relation with the parents, and the support group at the local gay bar, and it realistically shows the sex - as does Andre Techine's excellent gay coming of age film of last year, Being 17. Sex is where straight treatments of gay coming of age usually draw the line. The Norwegian TV serie "SKAM's" great 3rd season gay love story is a global hit. And it's actors are hugely appealing and real. But while there's tons of kissing, nothing happens below the neck.

[Johann]

Thanks for the additional info. Always good.
About the tight-lipped-ness of the story of Handsome Devil...You're right.
I had no clue this was a gay film until what, 30-45 minutes in? I knew Ned was probably gay, with his "artistic" and actually cool wall adornments. I just thought Conor was a pretty boy Jock who might become friends with Ned, but not romantic with him. So, when I realized what it was I was surprised but not mad. I was just like "Oh, so that's where this is headed..."

There are some good scenes here, and that's why I loved it. The subject matter wasn't my thing, but I was amused and entertained by the whole enterprise. The director told us that for the rugby scenes he had a real rugby coach show the actors and actual school rugby players (who played the players in the movie) how to play, and that the first time they did a run-through the coach took 5 of the players off the field and told the director: "Those guys can't play. They are terrible. It won't show up onscreen" It turns out they were all the lead actors! So they had to be taught how to be "action-savvy" as rugby players onscreen...John Butler the director actually went to that school, so he had access to everything to film. Lucky Guy...He also said an old teacher wouldn't talk to him, gave him the cold shoulder...

[Chris Knipp]

I knew it was a gay film going into it and I had other gay films, especially the British one I mentioned, in mind, but this was a bit too buttoned down to me. It didn't have the emotional heft it could have had. Still we have to think of the target audience, in Ireland, where it may have considerable impact for some who need this story.

[Johann]

this was a bit too buttoned down to me. It didn't have the emotional heft it could have had. it may have considerable impact for some who need this story.

Agreed. And good point about the intended audience...