The Guth Gafa Film Festival 2012 has been postponed until 2013 due to budgetary issues. The international documentary festival will now run in partnership with Derry-Londonderry City of Culture 2013, when it will relocate to Inishowen and Derry as part of the official City of Culture lineup.
The festival has been dogged by funding issues since last year, with one festival director David Rane admitting last year’s event was pulled off on “a wing and a prayer”. Rane said the festival’s sponsors understood the budget for this year’s festival, which would have made it the seventh annual festival, was simply not there to pull off an industry standard event.
The seventh festival will now be held in a new location in Inishowen in April 2013, having hosted the six previous years in Gortahork in Donegal. A series of satellite and industry events are scheduled to run in Derry for 2013’s celebrations.
A new festival programme is being developed, with a new strand of documentary and fiction films being introduced. The festival will also run a number of music documentaries for the first time, with plans underway to attract recent films made about The Doors, Bob Marley, George Harrison and Bob Dylan.
The festival’s organisers are confident 2013’s events will attract the same high standard of professionals of previous events, with 2011 attendees Patricia Finneran (Sundance Documentary Fund), Cynthia Lopez (POV/American Documentary), Elizabeth Radshaw (Hot Docs Forum) and Ryan Harrington (Tribeca Film Institute) all returning in 2013 as part of Guth Gafa’s advisory committee.
Festival director Neasa Ní Chianáin said the Guth Gafa crew plan to pull off “an even bigger and better event [in 2013], and also support the people of Derry in their most exciting year as UK City of Culture”. For more details on the City of Culture visit www.cityofculture2013.com, and for Guth Gafa Film Festival updates visit www.guthgafa.com.
