Irish Film Festival 2007
Enjoying varieties of Irishness
The warmest of welcomes - or as the Irish say céad míle fáilte, a hundred thousand welcomes - to the inaugural University of Otago Irish Film Festival 2007. Adrienne and I are delighted to be able to bring you a selection from the best of recent Irish film. None of the films we have chosen, to our knowledge, has been seen on the big screen in New Zealand.
What we are offering you in this Festival is enjoyment and variety - films that take radically different approaches to dramatising varieties of Irishness.
Mickybo and Me looks at 70s Belfast via two boys re-enacting Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It's a riveting, high-energy film with strong roles and a brilliant sound track that gives a fascinating glimpse into the links between masculinity and violence.
Again set in the North, The Mighty Celt, is also about masculinity and violence, though this is a coming-of-age film where a boy becomes a man through training a dog and an ex-terrorist becomes a father by finding a son.
The next four films we have chosen are all set in Dublin. Spin the Bottle, based on the highly successful television series, Paths to Freedom, is a light-hearted comedy about opportunism, celebrity television, and the local music scene.
Adam and Paul traverse some of the same streets, but in a black comedy that hauntingly reveals the silent desperation of the drug dependent.
To go from there to the metrosexual trendy world of Goldfish Memory - a gentle rom-com satire on the middle-class topping up their life-styles with the right partner - is to wonder if you are in the same city.
Inside I'm Dancing gives the kaleidoscope another twist; how do you achieve self-fulfilment in Dublin when you are wheel-chair bound and severely disabled? How do you realise and affirm your humanity?
Contrast again comes with Song for a Raggy Boy, a powerful, intense film set in Cork where the emotionally, sexually and spiritually disabled are the carers rather than the cared for, until respect and understanding force regime change.
Finally, all the realistic, narrativised worlds are turned topsy-turvy by Short Order, an entrancing art-house all-singing all-dancing revenge comedy about food, sex, service, and 'paying the bill'.
We are indebted to many people who have assisted us in many ways, but we would particularly like to thank Aoife Coughlan, Karen Wall, and Sunniva O'Flynn of the Irish Film Institute; the Management and Staff of the Auckland and Dunedin Rialto Cinemas; Eamon Cleary; Vice-Chancellor David Skegg, Ruth MacKenzie-White, Kathy Young, and Peter Scott of Otago University; Tony Wheatley and Friends of Ireland - Otago; Rodney Walsh, Honorary Consul for Ireland; The Irish Film Board; the Irish Film Institute; and Culture Ireland for their generous support through the Reel Ireland programme.
We hope you enjoy the films!
Peter Kuch - Director
Eamon Cleary Professor of Irish Studies
University of Otago
Adrienne Molloy - Assistant Director
Head of the Auckland Centre
University of Otago
