The Cork Film Festival has today released preliminary details of the 2014 programme, due to run from 7th November to the 16th November, including early information on features, documentaries, dramas and the Grand Prix Irish short finalists, two new additions to the festival; the Gradam Spiorad na Féile (Spirit of the Festival Award), a major international award for feature films, and new event series ‘Illuminate’ which uses film and discussion to explore mental health issues, presented in partnership with Arts and Minds and the financial support of the HSE.
Commenting on the early announcement, James Mullighan, Creative Director of the Cork Film Festival said: ‘I’m so excited about the amazing films we have for Cork audiences this year - and some fresh innovations for the Festival - that I wanted to make mention of some of them now. I can’t wait to share the full programme with Cork, Irish and international audiences on Tuesday 7 October’.
‘2014 has been a big year for movies, and we have some wonderful ones lined up. I’m especially gratified this year to have attracted some new partners to the Festival, who share my vision that the Festival is this wonderful city’s flagship cultural event. Alongside the continued and invaluable support given to us by the Arts Council Ireland, Cork City Council and Fáilte Ireland, and the expansion of our relationships with Screen Training Ireland, Culture Ireland, University College Cork and St John’s College, we are proud to have secured new partnerships with the Irish Film Board, RTÉ Cork, Nash19, the Cork Institute of Technology, Cork County Council and the Port of Cork, and an even deeper engagement with our invaluable media partners’.
The first five features playing in the festival are announced with ‘Standby’, directed by Rob and Ronan Burke and starring Brian Gleeson (‘The Stag’) and Jessica Pare (Mad Men) a highlight. Another notable feature showing at the festival is John Boorman’s ‘Queen and Country’, having its Irish premiere after being chosen for the Director’s Fortnight section of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. It stars David Thewlis, Richard E Grant, Sinéad Cusack and Pat Shortt.
Irish filmmaker Tadhg O’Sullivan’s debut feature hybrid documentary ‘Yximalloo’, and Ukranian writer/director Myroslav Slaboshpytskly’s radical ‘silent’ film ‘The Tribe’ will battle it out, among others, for the newly announced Gradam Spiorad na Féile Award.
On the documentary side, the Festival has secured ‘Björk: Biophilia Live’, which captures the human element of Björk’s multi-disciplinary multimedia project: ‘Biophilia’.
Emmy Award winning filmmaker John Kastner’s documentary ‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind’ will also be shown at the festival as part of the ‘Illuminate’ section and gives an account of four patients of Brockville Mental Health Centre, a forensic psychiatric hospital for people who have committed violent crimes.
The Festival also announced the award for Irish short films, the Grand Prix Irish, is to be presented for the first time by RTÉ Cork. Details of the 36 films announced, with ten from Cork, are available at corkfilmfest.org.
Contenders include David Tynan’s ‘Rockmount’, about an eleven year old Roy Keane, and David Holmes short ‘I Am Here’, starring Liam Cunningham and Michelle Fairley and filmed on location at the Crom Estate in Co. Fermanagh.
Mullighan concluded: ‘there been a lot of ink spent recently discussing the quality of Irish films, and their resonance to local and international audiences. The programme of indigenous films we have in the Cork Film Festival simply and elegantly responds – this is a very good year and era for Irish filmmaking’.
The full programme will be announced on Tuesday 7 October. At 10:00 Wednesday 8 October, tickets become available for Festival Friends for 48 hours, with full public access starting 10:00 Friday 10 October. The best way to guarantee access to these screenings and other key events at the Festival is to become a Festival Friend, details of which are at corkfilmfest.org/friends.
For the full early release information on this year’s festival see corkfilmfest.org.
