The 15th Dublin Film Festival will go ahead next April, the board of the directors has decided, despite the resignations of its two key staff members. The recent departure of Maretta Dillon as programme director has been followed by that of Anne Burke, the festival manager, who advised the board last week that she will be leaving at the end of next month. Her decision is for "personal reasons", she said.
Lewis Clohessy, who is chairman of the festival board, told Reel News this week that the 15th Dublin Film Festival will take place from April 6th to 16th next. "We decided at the board meeting that we would seek to put appropriate arrangements in place for the programming of that festival," he said. Asked if this would involve advertising for a programmer, he replied, "We would like to keep our options open. We advertised last year, so we know who's in the field."
As for Maretta Dillon's resignation, he said there was no question of any interference from the board with the programming of the festival.
Edgar Reitz's magnificent German epic, Heimat, which was the centrepiece of the first Dublin Film Festival in 1985, will be screened in 11 instalments on Monday nights at 8 p.m. from September 20th to December 6th at the Goethe-Institut, 37 Merrion Square, Dublin 2. Running 15 hours and 24 minutes in total, the film spans three generations in the lives of a rural German family from the end of the first World War to the early 1980s. Admission to the screenings is free of charge.
The Irish director Paddy Breathnach, who made Ailsa and I Went Down, has assembled a strong cast for his third feature, Never Better, which started shooting in England this week. Natasha Richardson, Alan Rickman and Rachel Griffiths take the leading roles in a cast which also features Bill Nighy, Josh Hartnett and Rachel Leigh Cook. The movie, a comedy set during the World Hairdressing Championships, has been scripted by Simon Beaufoy, who wrote The Full Monty.
Fresh from working with Tom Cruise and Anthony Hopkins on the Australian set of John Woo's Mission Impossible 2, Brendan Gleeson takes the starring role in Thanks For the Memories, which has started shooting on location in Northern Ireland. Based on an original screenplay by Divorcing Jack writer Colin Bateman, the film features Gleeson as a sleazy TV chat show host whose life is turned upside down after he loses his memory.
The cast also includes Amanda Donohue, Cheers actor George Wendt, Adrian Dunbar and the ubiquitous James Nesbitt. The director is Declan Lowney, who is from Wexford and directed all the episodes of Father Ted. Meanwhile, David Kelly follows his success with Waking Ned by joining Helen Mirren, Clive Owen and Natasha Little in Joel Hershman's Green Fingers, which has been shooting in the Cotswolds and in Surrey. And Aidan Gillen, after his uninhibited performance in Queer As Folk on television, takes the lead in the movie, The Low Down, now shooting in London under writer-director Jamie Thraves.
The Danish director Lars von Trier has demanded the recall of his film The Idiots after discovering producers made changes which breached his code of using only natural light film-making. The film was made under the Dogma '95 Manifesto which prohibits tripods and artificial light, and allows only natural sound.
"He has only just found out and he's furious," Alexander Seiler from the Zentropa film company said. "He has demanded the film be recalled but this is impossible. There are too many copies out and the film has already been released on video."
Von Trier's next film, Dancer in the Dark, does not adhere to the Dogma principles. It is a large-scale musical composed by singer Bjork and featuring the singer and Catherine Deneuve.
