Cork is offering a very strong line-up of features including the first Irish screening of Lars Von Trier’s 'Dancer in the Dark' and a new Australian hit 'Chopper'.
Chuck & Buck
Having proved itself popular with audiences at Sundance earlier this year, Chuck & Buck has steadily amassed a cult following. A somewhat unsettling comedy, you sometimes don’t know whether to laugh or be appalled. A film that will make an audience talk after a screening, it is honest to life’s more complicated friendships.
Chopper
A newcomer to the festival circuit, with only one screening in Europe so far, Chopper has been Australia’s biggest hit having just been released in the last month or so. One of those controversial films that has divided commentators and critics alike, Chopper takes a direct, and often hilarious, approach to its violent material balanced with a level of satire and sarcasm that only Australian humour can provide. The film concerns a real and notorious Australian criminal who has become celebrated through a series of books he wrote such as How to Win Friends and Kill People.
Dancer in the Dark
A must-see at any festival this year, Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark has outdone The Idiots for notoriety even though its story seems more tame. The award-winner at Cannes this year, Best Actress for Björk and the Palme D’Or for Von Trier, is an alternative approach to the traditional format of the musical genre. Björk plays Selma, slowly succumbing to blindness and fighting for an operation so that her son escapes the same fate.
Faithless
A new film written by Ingmar Bergman and directed by his long-term partner and acclaimed actress, Liv Ullman, Faithless focuses their attention on long-term relationships themselves. Casting a veteran screenwriter’s eye over the nuances of love, fidelity, and the prospects of long term commitment.
Gohatto
The first film in 14 years from Nagisa Oshima is one that doesn’t remove itself from his attraction to taboo subjects. Focusing on the homoerotic elements of warfare and centreing its attention on the relationship between a Samurai captain, played by ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano, and an adrogynous new Samurai recruit during the last days of the Shogunate.
Girlfight
Another festival favourite this year, Girlfight first made an impression at the Sundance Film Festival when it shared the award for Best Feature. Produced by long-time John Sayles partner, Maggie Renzi, Girlfight brings us an amazing new talent in the film’s young director, Karyn Kusama. Girlfight concerns the trials and tribulations of an inner-city Latin-American teenage girl as she takes up boxing in the face of a turbulent private life.
Harry, A Friend Who Wishes You Well
Described by the film’s director, Dominik Moll, as ‘part cliffhanger, part black comedy,’ Harry… is an irreverent film in the funniest and blackest of senses. When a couple’s intentions to leave for a well-deserved holiday is interrupted by the arrival of a long lost friend, this initial faux pas proves to be the tip of the iceberg as Harry doesn’t let anything get in the way of his good intentions.
The House of Mirth
Most of Terence Davies’ films are considered a treasured gift to cinema by film festival attendees, The House of Mirth is no exception. By far his most accessible feature, the linear narrative following Edith Wharton’s tale of Lily Bart and her successes and failures in early American urban society is ravishingly produced with Davie’s meticulous direction and played by an excellent cast – led by a revelatory performance from Gillian Anderson.
In the Mood For Love
This long-awaited follow-up to Happy Together from Wong Kar-Wai has been impressing audiences in a couple of festivals since its first screening in Cannes. Now in its final print, In the Mood for Love will no doubt garner an even wider audience for Wong Kar-Wai’s films since Chungking Express. An exquisite film about longing and unconsummated love, it is none other than an excellent example of filmmaking craft, a poem to unrequited love.
The Low Down
Another short filmmaker, who has previously screened at the Cork Film Festival, returns with a feature starring Aidan Gillen and Kate Ashfield. A new British film that was one of the most talked about, at the recent Edinburgh festival. Concerning the life and times of a couple of twentysomethings, the handheld camera and original editing style provide for a lot more than an easily definable Friends agenda. More Breathless than Human Traffic.
Memento
Memento is the new feature from Christopher Nolan and is a thriller that promises to be a surprise hit with festival-goers. Stylish and elaborately plotted, the film focuses on a man who, rescued from death, gets the chance to find the murderer of his wife and avoid becoming a murderer himself.
The Nine Lives of Thomas Katz
Having won an award in Cork for a short film, Ben Hopkins returns with his latest feature. The Nine Lives of Thomas Katz wowed audiences in Edinburgh recently, as a unique example of British surreallism. A bizarre black comedy that begins with a man, dressed in costume from another century, arriving in modern day London through a manhole. The Toronto catalogue described it as ‘the funniest comedy about the end of the world ever made.’
Northern Skirts
An award winner at last year’s Venice Film Festival, this ensemble piece set in Vienna in 1995, draws together an immigrant community, in their twenties, setting up a life in a new country. Coming from the Yugoslav war, or part of the migrating populace of Romania, the scenario is one that is often associated with film and television culture in the West - a group of fine young things talk about life, romance and high ideals. However, this film takes its angle seriously, an angle where the high ideals are far more credible than in the café society of western capitalism.
Purely Belter
The new film from Mark Herman, like his previous two films, Brassed Off and Little Voice, is more of an intimate approach to filmmaking and screenwriting than most of his British counterparts. Purely Belter is an endearing and entertaining tale of boyhood friendship and, in particular, their escapades in an attempt to raise money for a season ticket to the year's games of Newcastle United – with a camoe from Alan Shearer.
Small-Time Crooks
The new film from Woody Allen, hot on the heels of the recent release of the critically acclaimed Sweet and Lowdown, Small-Time Crooks is, in comparison, more of a broad farce. A satirical rendition of slapstick humour beginning with a group of bumbling would-be bank robbers and leading to a broader canvas concerning a bickering couple with new-found wealth.
Sozhue River
A Chinese homage to Hitchcock with definite parallels to Rear Window and Vertigo, the style of Sozhue River is independently distinctive. It twists and turns at its own pace, mirroring the plot's movement with the symbolic flow of the river in the title. The film centres around the tragic love affair between a videographer whose subjective camera-work inflects the style of the film, and the daughter of a black marketeer.
Woman on Top
A new comedy starring Spain’s most popular actress Penelope Cruz in one of her first leading roles in an American produced feature. This film definitely has a Latin feel given its approach to humour and its grounding in dramatic credibility – no matter how surreal. Having moved to San Francisco, after she proves too much for her husband – always requesting to be on top, the often motion-sick Isabella finds herself the toast of the town as a celebrity chef.
The Werckmeister Harmonies
The Werckmeister Harmonies is the new film from the highly regarded Bela Tarr. Having received a standing ovation, at Cannes earlier in the year, The Werckmeister Harmonies is a film not to be missed in this year’s festival. Concerning the fable of a revolutionary movement in a Hungarian town, Tarr uses his unique allegorical and mystical style to bring the film to an apocalyptic conclusion. Already deemed a masterpiece.
www.corkfilmfest.org
