Irish singer/actress Andrea Corr will launch the 18th Seagate Foyle Film Festival at the Queens Film Theatre in Belfast this week. Festival organisers have lined up over 300 films with nine Irish premieres, eight Northern Irish premieres and one world premiere for the festival.
The festival will open on the 11th of November with the Irish premiere of Michael Winterbottom’s comedy ‘Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story’, starring Steve Coogan, Shirley Henderson and Steven Fry. Other highlights include the Irish premieres of George Clooney’s acclaimed political drama ‘Goodnight and Goodluck’, Asia Argento’s ‘The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things’ and the world premier of Tom Collin’s Irish feature ‘Dead Long Enough’.
Andrea Corr will be in Belfast to launch the festival this week and will be back in Derry on the 19th of November to introduce the short film ‘The Bridge’ which she starred in earlier this year. The festival will also host the Northern Ireland premieres of Gillies MacKinnon’s ‘Tara Road’ and Stephen Bradley’s ‘Boy Eats Girl’.
This year sees the debut of the Stella Artois Film Awards which will see film makers from Europe, Asia, America and Africa pitching their short films and animations against each other in competition.
Low budget film makers who shoot in digital format will also be given an opportunity to showcase their talents in an ‘out of competition’ section.
One local event which is sure to draw large crowds will be the screening of the North West Film Archive. This is a rare digital collection of archive material from Counties Derry and Donegal which has been produced at the Nerve Centre in association with the Donegal and Derry Museum Services and the Letterkenny Arts Centre.
There will also be a forum – Framing the Past: Documenting History Through Archive Footage – involving Professor Des Bell, Head of Film Studies at Queen’s University, Belfast, Toby Haggith from the Imperial War Museum, Sunniva O’Flynn, Archive Curator at the Irish Film Archive and a panel of local documentary makers.
As well as numerous venues throughout Derry City, the Festival will reach out to Letterkenny Arts Centre and Century Cinemas and the whole programme will be launched in Derry, Belfast and Dublin.
Log onto www.foylefilmfestival.com or www.foylefilmfestival.org for the full programme of events. For bookings and further festival info telephone 028 7126 7432 or 028 7126 0562.
