The independent short film Getting Air by Mark Noonan has been selected to screen in competition at the Sapporo Short Fest 2011 in Japan. The film is the only Irish film in the Official Selection and is one of just 78 films chosen from 2,291 short films submitted from 88 countries. Getting Air will screen twice as part of the ‘Bittersweet’ programme at the festival which runs this weekend from the 5th to the 10th of October.
Written and directed by Mark Noonan and produced by Clare Creely and Pete Moles, the film is an urban drama about three teenage basketball-playing friends struggling to connect with each other and the adults in their lives. When they meet two members of the police, relationships with their family and the law take a turn. The cast includes newcomers Jamie Maher, Jasmin Huysmans and Dylan Byrne along with Fiona Browne, Elga Fox and John Currivan. DoP on the shoot was Stevie Russell with original music by Gavin O’Brien.
Previous work by Mark Noonan includes the award-winning short film Questions (Best First Short at the 2009 Corona Cork International Film Festival). Mark was recently selected for the Berlinale Talent Campus 2011.
Getting Air has screened at a wide range of festivals at home and abroad including the Galway Film Fleadh, the Corona Cork Film Festival, the Kerry Film Festival, the Chicago Irish Film Festival, the Indie Spirit Film Festival in Colorado and the Lewiston-Auburn Film Festival in the US. The film was recently included in a selection of the top ten best Irish short films from the Kerry Film Festival 2011. This selection will screen in film clubs across the country as part of an initiative between the festival and access>CINEMA – the film also recently screened in Finland as part of this programme. It will next screen in Poland as part of FRSF’s Polish Film Review 2011.
