The Underground Cinema has announced its line-up for the 5th Underground Cinema Film Festival, to be held in Dun Laoghaire from September 11th to 14th. The festival will feature a host of home-grown talent, Irish feature films and a large selection of shorts (with six short programmes in all) from around the world.
The festival opens with the beautiful ‘A Nightingale Falling’, which recently premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh. Directed by Garret Daly and Martina McGlynn, the historical drama is set against the backdrop of a turbulent, war-torn Ireland in the early 1920s. Two sisters’ lives are changed forever when they care for a wounded soldier. Starring Tara Breathnach, Muireann Bird and Gerard McCarthy, it was filmed entirely on location in Co. Offaly.
The festival closes with Jeff Doyle’s dark comedy ‘Jack and a Ralph Plan a Murder’, which sees the writer/director/producer play Jack, a timid office worker, who after being repeatedly bullied by a colleague at work teams up with his imaginary friend to exact revenge. The film had its world premiere at the LA Comedy Festival.
The festival will screen a number of Irish feature films including Van Poynton’s ‘The Late Men’, Michael McCudden’s ‘Sodium Party’, Patrick Ryan’s ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’, Tom Ryan’s ‘Trampoline’, Ray Hyland’s ‘Riffed’, Donal Nugent’s ‘North Circular Road’, and ‘Limp.’ from director Shaun Ryan. Michael Rob Costime, Mark Gaster and Brian O’Neill’s award-winning romantic comedy ‘How To Be Happy’, which stars Brian Gleeson and Gemma Leah-Devereux, will also be shown, as will Paco Torres’ ‘Saol’, which was filmed in an incredible 14 hours and one minute.
International features include Kerri Kutcha’s ‘Maidens of the Sea’, ‘Bittersweet Monday’ from Jaimie Lee, ‘Indigo’ from John Hawthorne Smith, and Uri L. Schwarz & Jason A. Sankey’s ‘Stories Forlorn’. The Underground Cinema will also be bringing their Drive-In Cinema to the Ferry Terminal in Dun Laoghaire, which will be showing cult classics throughout the period of the festival including ‘Pulp Fiction’, ‘The Terminator’, ‘Blazing Saddles’ and ‘Fight Club’ among others (see more here).
For the second consecutive year, the festival will feature the Underground Cinema Expo. This event offers guests the chance to meet and make contact with some of the film industry’s service providers. The Expo will run from 2pm to 5pm on the opening day of the festival with free admission.
The festival will also features various workshops and panel discussions. This year’s workshops will be held by Ciaran Creagh, Len Collin, Debs Leonard, Stunt Media Services, Sean MacGabhann, and Paco Torres Admission and all workshops are free. The panel discussion, which takes place in the Laurel Suite of the Royal Marine hotel, features an extraordinary collection of Irish filmmakers, including Garret Daly (‘A Nightingale Falling’), Ciaran Creagh (‘Parked’), Terry McMahon (‘Patrick’s Day’), Conor Horgan (‘One Hundred Mornings’) and Mark O’Connor (‘King of the Travellers’). The subject of the panel is ‘low budget doesn’t not mean low quality film making’.
Another highlight for this year’s Underground Cinema Film Festival is a special 20th Anniversary Screening of Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire. A Q&A with Neil Jordan will follow, with the director looking back of his successful 30 year career which has included unforgettable films like ‘The Butcher Boy’, ‘The Crying Game’, ‘Michael Collins’, ‘Breakfast on Pluto’ and many more.
The programme is available to download here.
