Spotlight on French Female Filmmakers
Céline Sciamma’s achingly beautiful 18th-century love story ‘A Portrait of a Lady on Fire’, was the winner of the Best Screenplay at Cannes and Queer Palm 2019.
The film follows Marianna (Noémie Merlant) an artist commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). Marianna’s challenge is that Héloïse refuses to pose, objecting to the arranged marriage she is being forced into. As Marianna observes the defiant Héloïse while painting her in private, she becomes increasingly captivated by her subject.Every frame is immaculate with beguiling lead performances, it is a film that confirms Sciamma (‘Water Lillie’s, ‘Girlhood’) as a major force in world cinema.
18:30 | Saturday 16th November | The Everyman Theatre
Second Chance Screening: 12:15 | Sunday 17th November |
The Gate Cinema
The acting career of Delphine Seyrig is celebrated worldwide, her activism is something of which many are not aware.
Together with filmmaker Carole Roussopoulos, Seyrig became amongst the first to use video to document the protests by the French women’s movement. Together they created video art using humour and subversion to highlight the sexism and dominant representation of women in film, television and elsewhere. In Callisto Mc Nulty’s timely documentary ‘Delphine and Carole/Delphine et Carole, insomuses’, it places Seyrig and Roussopoulos, together with their important feminist actions, deservedly in the spotlight.
18:30 | Saturday 16th November | The Everyman Theatre
Second Chance Screening: 12:15 | Sunday 17th November |
The Gate Cinema
All the world loves lovers, and in ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ Geneviève and Guy created two of cinema’s most memorable lovers.
Impossibly handsome they may be, Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve) and Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), but our young lovers have been given a story of real weight, one that will melt the frostiest heart.They inhabit a world that sears itself on your retina, a happy Edward Hopper world coloured by Mondrian. It is a musical without spoken dialogue and is driven by the exquisite continuous score of the great Michel Legrand.
13:00 | Saturday 16th November | The Everyman Theatre
Illuminate Film and Mental Health Programme: ‘The Sweet Hereafter’
This year, we are thrilled to welcome writer and director Carmel Winters (‘Float Like a Butterfly’, 2018 CFF Audience Award) as our special Illuminate curator. We invited Carmel, as an established director and outspoken activist, to chose a film that has inspired and influenced her.
Carmel Winters will present an extended introduction to her chosen film, Atom Egoyan’s classic ‘The Sweet Hereafter’. Winters, selected this film for ‘the intricate and subtle connections it makes between public and private grief”.
A small mountain community is devastated by a school bus accident that leaves many of its children dead. The arrival of big-city lawyer Mitchell Stephens sparks more pain and division as Stephens begins to manipulate the parents into a class-action suit, whilst dealing with his own private trauma of a drug-addicted daughter.
12.00 | Saturday 16th November | Triskel
Feature Highlight: ‘Greener Grass’
Comedians Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe collaborate to deliver one of the most distinctive debut features of the year, ‘Greener Grass’. From the Official Selection at Sundance Film Festival 2019, it is a film that confidently displays a true gift for satirical insight and bizarre black comedy.
As she dutifully witness her child attempting to play football, Lisa Wetbottom (Luebbe) notes that her fellow soccer mom Jill Davies (DeBoer) has a new baby. ‘Do you want her? She’s great!’ Jill proffers, proceeding to hand over the child to her friend. So begins this electrifiying absurdist comedy, a weird and wonderful dayglo portrait of fear and self-loathing in American suburbia.
20:45 | Saturday 16th November | The Gate Cinema
Second Chance Screening: 15:00 | Sunday 17th November |
The Gate Cinema
Meet the Makers at #CFF2019
Julia Parnell and Rob Curry’s documentary ‘The Chills: The Triumph and Tragedy of Martin Phillipps’ enables Phillipps’ own darkly comical humour and eccentric lifestyle to make for a fascinating, cautionary tale, whilst his musical talent shines bright through tragedy.
Martin Phillipps led his band The Chills from being the darlings of the Dunedin scene in New Zealand to the world stage and major label releases. So how did he end up back in his home town, plagued by debt and coping with years of drinking and drug addiction? Following some alarming medical results, and facing his own mortality, Phillipps must realise his musical ambitions before it is too late. Julia Parnell and Rob Curry’s documentary enables Phillipps’ own darkly comical humour and eccentric lifestyle to make for a fascinating, cautionary tale, whilst his musical talent shines bright through tragedy.
There will be a post-screening Q&A with Rob Curry.
‘Meet the Makers’ Deal: Get 2 tickets to this screening for only €12.
21:00 | Saturday 16th November | Triskel Arts Centre
Cork on Camera
Cork Film Festival in partnership with the Irish Film Insititute (IFI) presents Cork on Camera, a programme of Cork-themed films from collections at the IFI Film Archive. Proudly supported by Cork Chamber of Commerce.
This year’s programme includes Silent Art (1958), a portrait of sculptor Séamus Murphy by Oscar-nominated documentarian Louis Marcus; Travels Through Erin (1978), a US homage to the Aran jumper taking a trio of models around Cork on a photo shoot; Dark Moon Hollow (1972), following an elderly gentleman as he meanders from Roches Point to Gougane Barra in a film directed by then BBC film editor Colin Hill; and silent rushes from Car Touring (1965), Jim Mulkern’s uncompleted travelogue of two young couples touring the country.
The IFI is supported by the Arts Council. The programme will be introduced by Sunniva O’Flynn and silent films will be accompanied by acclaimed improvisational pianist Paul G Smyth.
Limited tickets still available.
15:15 | Saturday 16th November | Triskel Arts Centre
#CFF2019 Industry Days
Our final Industry Day event is Focus: Filmmaker Forum.
The forum offers attending filmmakers an opportunity to take part in an informal networking event comprising a series of round-table sessions aimed at guiding participants through the entire process of making their short or feature film. Participants will take part in five 15-minute group sessions which will take them through development, financing, production, festival strategy and distribution. Key Irish and International film industry players will take questions and give advice on their field of expertise, imparting attendees with guidance and knowledge to help efficiently produce and exploit their film.
Focus: Filmmaker Forum is presented in partnership with Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland. Visit our website for full details on the day’s schedule and speakers.
13:00 | Saturday 16th November | Republic of Work
Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland World Premiere Shorts
Following our Focus: Filmmaker Forum, we are delighted to present the World Premiere of ten short films produced under Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland’s Focus Shorts and Real Shorts schemes.
We will see the link between the routes of migratory birds and refugees and migrants, a cinematic portrait of the worlds most hardcore gym, a documentary on Oona Doherty an award-winning dancer and choreographer, a chance to explore a dystopian neo-steampunk world, an idyllic reality stimulated by a machine called Maya, the life of 16-year-old dropout Christy, how shame affects two sisters, a dangerously unstable man who starts to see monsters all around us, an affable cat who is new in town and wants to make friends, and finally three successful female athletes explore how to unlock a freedom to really occupy your own skin.
Please note some of the content in this shorts programme may not be suitable for children. Limited tickets still available.
15:30 | Saturday 16th November | The Everyman Theatre
Closing Weekend Family Highlights!
Keep the kids entertained this weekend with two fun family films which can be enjoyed by kids of all ages and in multiple venues! In ‘Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom‘ you will be transported to Bhutan (Eastern Himalayas), which is said to be the happiest country in the world.
For Ugyen, an aspiring singer living with his grandmother in the capital, he dreams of getting a visa for Australia. But before he can do that, he must finish his final year of government teaching service in Bhutan’s most remote village school. More yak dung than people and an altitude of nearly 5,000 metres, it’s a shock to the city slicker’s system!
13:00 | Saturday 16th November | The Gate Cinema Cork City
Where were you in 1992 when the adventures of Ossie and Tito first hit our cinema screens?
Now in a glorious 4K restoration, the Irish family classic ‘Into the West’, written by Jim Sheridan and starring Gabriel Byrne & Ellen Barkin, makes a return to cinema screens in the Gate Cinema Midleton and Mallow. First-time viewers will love the captivating tale of two boys who escape the harsh reality of their life with the aid of a magical horse and adults can take a trip back in time to 1992.
18:30 | Saturday 16th November | The Gate Midleton and Mallow
