Illustration: Adeline Pericart

Igloo Animation are looking for an Animation Director that has experience working on Pre School TV series.

For further details please email info@iglooanimations.com

First-time director Denise Pattison’s short film Macalla featuring Aoife Nic Ardghail will screen at the Sunday film club, Lost Society, South William Street, Dublin, on 12th Feb at 6.00pm.

Wrapped in grief a woman makes a nightly pilgrimage to the lake that took her lover; her thoughts echoing across the dark water.

Check out Macalla‘s facebook page

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IFI Ireland on Sunday presents the World Premiere of Lorg na gCos – Súil Siar ar Mise Éire, Colm Bairéad’s documentary celebration of George Morrison’s landmark Irish film Mise Éire.

1pm Sunday 12^th February 2012

More than fifty years on, Lorg na gCos – Súil Siar ar Mise Éire tells the story of Ireland’s most significant historical documentary film and the first wholly Irish language feature, Mise Éire, through the eyes of its director, George Morrison, key creative personnel behind the production and ordinary Irish people who experienced the film upon its theatrical release in 1960.

Tens of thousands of Irish people, including many who had participated in the Easter Rising, thronged cinemas across the country in the early 1960s to see the Gael Linn film which explored a period of intense political activity in Ireland from the 1890s to 1918. For many, it was the first time they had been presented with their own history in visual form. The film was a roaring success, breaking all previous Irish cinema box office records and becoming a key cultural moment in the history of the Irish State.

Directed by Colm Bairéad and produced by Cleona Ní Chrualaoi, Lorg na gCos follows the film’s director, George Morrison, as he retraces the steps he took in the creation of the film and visits many of the locations where the production took shape. Weaving a rich tapestry of archive and location footage with analysis from a wealth of contributors including the only two other surviving members of the Mise Éire production team, Louis Marcus and Catherine O’Brien; relatives of the Easter Rising leaders executed in 1916; and Gael Linn staff, Lorg na gCos paints a vivid social, cultural and psychological portrait of the country into which Mise Éire was released.

Ireland on Sunday is the IFI’s monthly showcase of new Irish film and includes opportunities to engage with filmmakers and producers. Following this premiere screening Colm Bairéad and George Morrison will take part in a post-screening Q&A.

Illustration: Adeline Pericart

Brown Bag Films are looking for a talented Visual FX Artist to join their.

Applicants should have compositing and FX experience in Maya and a good knowledge of particle effects.

Click here for more details about the role (and other open positions.

Independent Irish Skateboarding Documentary Hill Street is to receive its world premiere at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2012.  The film tells the story of the evolution of skateboarding culture in Ireland from its early roots the 1980s.

The initial driving force behind the scene was a proprietor of a unique skate shop in North Dublin inner city – ‘Clive’s of Hill Street’.  From here Clive Rowen progressed the scene through the building of primitive ramps at the shop before graduating to a temporary skate park in the Top Hat Ballroom in Dun Laoghaire, South Dublin.  Clive even managed to convince a Powell Team, including the legendary Tony Hawk, to visit the park for a now historic demo.

Soon after his continuing efforts resulted in a leg of the European Skate Championships being held in the Point Depot in 1991.  Skaters from Hill Street eventually opened their own full time private skate parks starting with ‘Simons Park’ on Sir John Roberson’s Quay in Dublin. This troubled park soon closed but not before a visit from the then ‘Deathbox’ Team (now Flip Skateboards) including cult skater Tom Penny.

The film follows the rise of skateboarding to the present day and features in depth interviews with Irish Skate forefathers and future hopes including: Clive Rowen, Mike Keane, Rich Gilligan & Keith Walsh and also features never before seen archive footage of icon Tony Hawk in Dun Laoghaire and legend Tom Penny skating a the south quays skate park in Dublin.

The film features a bespoke soundtrack from Dublin native Gareth Averil as ‘Great Lakes Mystery’ and includes tracks by Jogging and Redneck Manifesto.

Check out www.hillstreetdocumentary.com

DIR/WRI: Sean Durkin • PRO: Antonio Campos, Patrick Cunningham, Chris Maybach, Josh Mond • DOP: Jody Lee Lipes • ED: Zachary Stuart-Pontier • DES: Chad Keith • Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson, John Hawkes

Sean Durkin’s debut feature Martha Marcy May Marlene won him an award for direction at the Sundance Film Festival last year and since then the film has accumulated shelf-loads of trophies from festivals and critics’ circles all across America. Now arriving in Europe, its slow, sombre tone and pitch-perfect acting are likely to win it similar praise around the world.

The film opens on a farming commune in northern New York State; a sort of idyllic escape for young school drop-outs who don’t feel the world “gets” them. One morning, Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) rises from her bed and runs away. Reuniting with her well-to-do older sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson), whom she has not spoken to in over two years, and Lucy’s yuppie husband Ted (Hugh Dancy), Martha struggles to adapt to life with regular people. Delaying a return to society as a whole by waiting out the weeks at her sister’s holiday home, Martha reflects on her life at the commune.

Through a series of well-connected flashbacks we quickly come to realise the commune was a highly seductive though seemingly unambitious cult, led by a charismatic snake-charmer of a man named Patrick (John Hawkes). We see how Martha, known to the cult as Marcy May, came to be indoctrinated and how the unapparent danger of the cult began to escalate.

The crowded farmhouse, home to more than a dozen cult members, contrasts brilliantly with Lucy and Ted’s vast, near-empty country home. The film uses its flashbacks to compare the soullessness of modernity to the communal bliss that seems to be at the core of Patrick’s cult. As Martha clashes with her sister and her husband over the morality of the real world, she is left wondering if she was perhaps better off remaining with her fellow outcasts.

Shot with ponderous long-takes and minimal camera movements, Durkin’s film has an airy quality that works well with the uncertainty of its central character. Young Elizabeth Olsen, in her debut performance, is simply outstanding; equal parts strong and determined, and weak, lost and petrified. Former Winter’s Bone Oscar nominee Hawkes also stands out, giving a chilling performance as a crooked man with more power than he ought to have.

While its ending will undoubtedly divide audiences, Martha Marcy May Marlene is an interesting study of an unlikely form of post-traumatic stress disorder, held together by one superb performance. Its slow pace will not keep the attention of all viewers, but it is a welcome start for a director and actress who will likely bring some more great films in the near future.

David Neary

Rated 16 (see IFCO website for details)

Martha Marcy May Marlene is released on 3rd February 2012

Martha Marcy May Marlene - Official Website

DIR:  Roman Polanski • WRI: Yasmina Reza • PRO: Saïd Ben Saïd • DOP: Pawel Edelman • ED: Hervé de Luze • DES: Dean Tavoularis • Cast: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz

Roman Polanski’s first feature film Knife in the Water, which is 50 years old this year, is a masterpiece of power plays and claustrophobia. Carnage is not that, but it does play on the same ideas as Polanski’s debut, and succeeds to a large degree.

The film begins with a scuffle between children in a Brooklyn park that results in one child swiping at the other with a large stick. As the film’s drama opens we are in the apartment home of the victim, and the parents of both parties are hashing out an agreement about responsibility for the incident.
The victim’s parents, nouveau riche and secretly uncultured Michael (John C. Reilly) and his pretentious, politically correct wife, Penelope, scuttle the amicable proceedings when they passive-aggressively imply that the parents of the young aggressor, stressed pacifist Nancy (Kate Winslet) and disinterested corporate lawyer Alan (Christoph Waltz), should pay to repair the damage done to their son’s teeth. Arguments ensue.

What should have been a simple meet-and-greet turns into a day of drunkenness and verbal violence as hosts turn on guests, husbands turn on wives and men and women turn on one another.

Based on Yasmina Reza’s play God of Carnage – a winner of both the Olivier and Tony awards for best play, perhaps the highest honours any theatre piece can achieve – Carnage suffers from its one location structure. While the play can hold the four characters in the apartment for the story’s duration, using that subconscious theatrical device that implies if a character leaves the stage they will somehow cease to exist, the film forces all four to remain in the apartment unnaturally. This is not 12 Angry Men! At one stage Alan refuses to get into the elevator to leave in case he loses phone reception for an important call, and subsequently they stay another hour. There’s only so much disbelief a film audience can be expected to suspend.

 
What Polanski and Reza, in their adaptation, lose in believability they win back in the performances. Reilly is a keg full of rage just waiting to crack open. Waltz is the manipulative snake we haven’t seen since Inglourious Basterds. The ever-reliable Winslet goes fluidly from repressed to outright hostile as the drinks flow, while Foster gives her best performance since Silence of the Lambs in a role seething with bitterness and resentment.

 
The film uses its top-notch performers well to bring out the dark comedy and carry the film’s satirical content; the moral here is man is, at heart, a selfish, amoral beast. The savagery of the personal attacks mirrors the childish scuffle they have condemned. Characters seem to care more for their personal belongings than the wellbeing of those around them. Alan is more concerned that a pharmaceutical company he represents may have its reputation damaged than the fact its faulty medicine is killing people.

Unfortunately, all the strengths of this film are largely undermined by the sudden and pointless ending. What possessed Polanski to end the film with an infantile punchline instead of the source material’s acceptance of mankind’s universal failings is beyond comprehension. The ultra-PC conclusion is totally out of keeping with the core of the film, and leaves a bitter aftertaste from what was an otherwise enjoyable adaptation.

Carnage, for all its successes, is a hard film to recommend due to its ending, but it should still be lauded as an entertainment and for its fine performances.

David Neary

Rated 15A (see IFCO website for details)

Carnage is released on 3rd February 2012

Carnage - Official Website

DIR: Asger Leth • WRI: Pablo F. Fenjves • PRO: Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian • DOP: Paul Cameron • ED: Kevin Stitt • DES: Alec Hammond • Cast: Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks, Jamie Bell

Man on a Ledge has a different take on the standard heist movie format. Sam Worthington plays an ex-cop who breaks out of prison maintaining that he was framed by a diamond seller and an all round heartless capitalist (Ed Harris). After his escape, he checks into a Manhattan hotel and climbs out on to the ledge threatening suicide. We soon learn that this is a rouse to distract the city from his brother and his girlfriend who are attempting to steal a diamond from Harris’s building across the road.

This is an interesting premise but the plot doesn’t have many surprises. The twists are revealed quickly and it doesn’t take long before we are told who wronged who. There’s a lot of background information needed to tell the story as the entire plot derives from events in the past. When we do get background information about the characters it is heavy handed and we don’t really get to know them. It was pleasing to see the negotiator played by a female (Elizabeth Banks) and watching her battle against the man’s world is enjoyable. Sam Worthington and Ed Harris play out their roles well (even though Worthington does lose his American accent at particularly stressful times on the ledge) but ultimately their characters are quite two dimensional. The brother (Jamie Bell) and his girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) are an attempt to bring comic relief from the intensity of the ledge but this doesn’t work because their dialogue falls flat. In particular, the girlfriend character is truly tiresome. To be fair, the actress does not have much to work with and the purpose of her role is pretty clear with excessive shots of her breasts and a scene dedicated to her changing into a PVC outfit. The funny moments in the film arise from the depiction of media and the reaction from the enthusiastic and cynical New Yorkers who look on.

Faults with the characters and plot aside, the film does look impressive. There are some truly nerve-wracking moments that will have you reeling if you are uneasy with heights. The camera is constantly veering up and around the building and this really creates the sensation for the audience (without the need for 3D). The dramatic tension comes from this rather than the storyline but is impressive enough to make the film an enjoyable watch.

Soracha Pelan Ó Treasaigh

Rated 15A (see IFCO website for details)

Man on a Ledge is released on 3rd February 2012

Man on a Ledge - Official Website

DIR: Jason Reitman • WRI: Diablo Cody • PRO: Diablo Cody, Lianne Halfon, Mason Novick, Jason Reitman, Russell Smith, Charlize Theron • DOP: Eric Steelberg • ED: Dana E. Glauberman • DES: Kevin Thompson • Cast: Charlize Theron, Patrick Wilson

A film about a woman returning to her hometown to win back a childhood sweetheart isn’t a new idea. In fact, it’s something of a cliche. But with this in mind, Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody team up again and go at it, anyway. The results are, much like the titular character, varying wildly between sweet, cute – near saccharine – to searingly honest and frighteningly real. Charlize Theron plays Mavis Gary, a thirty-something divorcee who is living a charmed life in Minneapolis. After receiving an e-mail about her teenage sweetheart (Patrick Wilson) and his first-born child, she drops everything and returns to her hometown in an attempt to win him back. There’s one catch – he’s happily married.

Jason Reitman is working with familiar material here, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In the hands of another director, this film could have been a schmaltzy comedy with Reese Witherspoon and Matthew McConaughey. Instead, it’s an honest appraisal of adolescence unfinished and what it means to be a fully-rounded adult. Young Adult may be that loathsome thing, a dramedy – but it is very much a real film and a real story.

Brian Lloyd

Rated 15A (see IFCO website for details)

Young Adult is released on 3rd February 2012

Young Adult – Official Website

Commenting on the sponsorship renewal Anna Malmhake, Chairman and CEO, Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard said: ‘cinema is an intrinsic part of our global marketing strategy for Jameson and the Dublin festival is a high point in our marketing calendar.  We are particularly pleased to support the hugely talented creative team behind the festival in Dublin.’

DIR: Joe Carnahan • WRI: Joe Carnahan, Ian Mackenzie Jeffers• PRO: Joe Carnahan, Mickey Liddell, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott • DOP: Masanobu Takayanagi • ED: Roger Barton, Jason Hellmann, Joseph Jett Sally • DES: John Willett • Cast: Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney

We have a lot to thank Luc Besson for. Before casting Liam Neeson in Taken, the actor was well known for his Oscar®-worthy performances, but afterwards he was seen as a legitimate ass-kicker. Unlike certain other tanned and ab’d ‘action stars’ of late, Neeson’s raw edge makes you absolutely believe he could beat the living daylights out of anybody.

And here we have The Grey, with Neeson reuniting with his A-Team director Joe Carnahan. But The Grey does not have any of the over the top antics from their last pairing, and nor does it have the giddy approach to violence that made Taken fun. No, The Grey is not fun. It is brutal and it is punishing and it will chill you to the bone.

Neeson is Ottway, a man hired by an Alaskan oil drilling company to keep their men safe by shooting any wolves that may wander on to their site. On a flight back home with the crew, an insanely tense and scarily real plane crash finds the few survivors facing off against the weather, hunger and the wolves. The movie has been primarily promoted as ‘Liam Neeson Punches Wolves’, but the film goes deeper than that, touching on some very primal fears of the modern man, and director Carnahan brings some of the same art-house touches that made his debut feature Narc stand out from the crowd.

Aside from Neeson, the only other vaguely recognisable face is Dermot Mulroney, with the rest of the cast all good in their annoyingly clichéd roles. But this is Neeson’s movie; he owns and commands every scene, even when he’s just in the background observing other people’s conversations, your eye is drawn to him. Had it been released a few months earlier, it’s not ridiculous to think he might’ve been in with an Oscar® shot. That’s how good he is in this movie, and it is him that elevates this from ‘That Wolf Punching Movie’ to something so much more.

Rory Cashin

Rated 15A (see IFCO website for details)

The Grey is released on 27th January 2012

The Grey - Official Website

18 FEB 2012

New Theatre, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

DUBLIN FILM QLUB: NEW SEASON: ‘AROUND THE WORLD IN THE 80s’

3.30 pm (Doors open at 3.00)

Free tea & coffee

Screenings are followed by an open discussion.

Waiting for the Moon

Dir. Jill Godmilow, 1987, 88 min. English.

Script: Mark Magill

Starring: Linda Bassett, Linda Hunt, Jacques Boudet

A beautiful film about married life ‘in illness and in health’, based on the relationship between the poet Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

Paris in the nineteen twenties: a bunch of rich expatriate lesbians were having a blast. In their spare time between parties, salons, and picnics, a handful of these women wrote some of the most exciting and radical books ever published. One of them was the poet and art patron Gertrude Stein, a close friend of Picasso, Hemingway, and Apollinaire (all of them appear in the film), who made a formidable team with her partner Alice B. Toklas. Together they created a home and became the most famous lesbian couple in the world, together they revised Gertrude’s experimental poems, and together they faced her cancer diagnosis. Stein had an exquisite command of the written word, but when it came to talking about her feelings, she was reserved and uncertain, so Alice had to teach her what ‘sharing a life’ truly meant. Although it is a bit annoying that the script eliminates any signs of physical affection between the couple, we are left with a moving portrait of unshakeable love and devotion, and with the magnificent performances of the perfectly cast Linda Bassett and Linda Hunt.

Fergal Rock, a Dublin-based writer/director (Henry & Sunny, Tom Waits Made Me Cry) has been named a semi-finalist in Francis Ford Coppola’s 9^th annual American Zoetrope Screenplay Contest with his screenplay Calvin & Skye. The finalists and semi-finalists, chosen from over 2,500 screenplays, were announced this morning (01/02/12) on the Zoetrope website.

(http://www.zoetrope.com/contests/2011finalists.htm)

In 2011, Calvin & Skye received the BlueCat Fellini International Screenwriting Award from screenwriter and BlueCat founder Gordy Hoffman (Love Liza). (http://www.bluecatscreenplay.com/past-winners-finalists/)

Calvin & Skye charts the unlikely friendship between hypochondriac Calvin and terminally-ill teenager Skye. Comic and poignant, it is a feel good tale in the vein of Harold and Maude and Lars and the Real Girl.

It is 70 years since Michael Curtiz’s wartime romance Casablanca (10^th – 16^th) starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman was first released and their characters Rick and Ilsa unexpectedly became one of the most iconic screen partnerships of film history. The dialogue is snappy, the performances are mesmerising and the soundtrack lingers long after the movie ends. Whether you’re bringing a special someone or just enjoying a night of romantic indulgence with a friend Casablanca is a fabulous way to mark Valentine’s Day.

The re-release of L’Atalante (3^rd– 9^th Feb) is rare chance to see the masterpiece of French director Jean Vigo’s tragically short career. Handsome Jean Dasté runs up and down the Seine in the eponymous L’Atalante barge with his restless wife Dita Parlo. Her desire to revel the bright lights of Paris leads to a separation that both quickly regret, but that is not easily undone. Vigo enters the very psyche of these two lovers searching to be reunited, combining poetic speculation and naturalistic drama to vivid and timeless effect.

Otto Preminger’s Laura (from Feb 24^th) provides one of the 1940s most sophisticated thrillers with Gene Tierney in flashbacks as the devastatingly lovely femme fatale and Dana Andrews as the investigating cop who investigates her murder. This mystery classic has now been beautifully restored.

Back by popular demand are two of Woody Allen’s finest films Zelig (17^th-19^th Feb) and Hannah and her Sisters (24^th-26^th Feb). Zelig sees Allen as a 1930s human chameleon blending in to archive footage (quite an achievement for the pre-digital age) and supplying a host of one-liners along the way. Hannah and her Sisters is vintage Allen, an engrossing warm-hearted saga of wives, lovers and friends whose social interaction never quite allows a release of their true feelings delivered by a superb ensemble case including Oscar-winning turns from Michael Caine and Diane Wiest.

Martin Scorsese has delivered some expert music documentaries on Dylan, The Rolling Stones and George Harrison in recent years so it is a pleasure to be able to revisit The Last Waltz (10^th-12^th Feb), his pioneering musical portrait of The Band. Robbie Robertson and cohorts started as Bob Dylan’s backing before becoming legends in their own right. Guest contributions from special guests include Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters and Van Morrison – an unmissable concert from a musical golden age.

February Repertory Season Schedule

L’Atalante                                           3^rd-9^th Feb           13.00

The Last Waltz                                  10^th-12^th Feb       13.20

Casablanca                                         10^th – 16^th Feb    16.20, 20.50

Zelig                                                      17^th-19^thFeb        Times vary

Hannah and her Sisters                 24^th-26^th Feb       13.10

Laura                                                     Re-released from Feb 24^th