A young director, vodka-stricken, staggers late into the lobby of the Town Hall Theatre. A swan ate his pass last night. Yes, he was teasing it on the slipway behind the Galway Rowing Club, where the Film Fleadh folk mingle with fishermen and other Ordinary People. Sorry. He needs a new one.
The bold headline to the 10th Galway Film Fleadh's schedule reads "Day-By-Day Breakdown". Many have taken this too literally and, having peaked too soon, will be attending no more morning screenings this week. You have to pace yourself for six days of events, debates, lunches, parties, markets (and over 60 movies).
The coming of cinema to Ireland has had a rather similar impact to the coming of Christianity. Rival sects of true believers abound. Documentary-makers self-flagellate in the streets of every town. Old monastic animators wrestle with the heresy of computer graphics in their bedrooms. For them, the Galway Film Fleadh is a Holy Week, as they gorge themselves on finger food at every party, trying to build up reserves of fat for the long winter ahead.
You can recognise them by the triangular sandwiches sticking out of their pockets, as they attend some of the 10 world premieres at this year's fleadh and dream of their own. World premieres don't come any more informal than in Galway. Successful directors find themselves robbing the beers from their own launch parties, caught up in the general atmosphere.
Hooligans will probably be retitled Crush Proof for its commercial release, but it's Hooligans tonight for its world premiere. A young urban cowboy film set in Dublin, Hooligans is described as "gritty" in the programme. Hmm. Director Paul Tickell calls Hooligans "gritty" again in his introductory speech. We brace ourselves. The opening line is "F**k off you prick". It starts with a violent beating and ends with a pile of corpses. With a raven pecking at their eyes. The acting is terrific, the director's vision is interesting and uncompromising. Watching it is, however, like being kicked in the head for 90 minutes. You'll love it or hate it. As I spent several minutes of my last weekend in Dublin being kicked in the head for real by characters startlingly like the emotionally crippled stars of Hooligans, I was probably not in the ideal mood to feel their pain. I can, though, certainly vouch for the splendid realism of the many, many brutal fights that comprise the narrative. "Gritty" is the word for it all right. Cement Roadstone could quarry this movie.
Afterwards, at the Galway Film Centre's 10th birthday party, a giant video projector blasts the alternating heads of Ming the Merciless and Frank Fahy, TD on to a screen 20 feet high. Dancers cower and flee the dance floor. The party abounds with the splendid grotesques of the Irish Film Industry. It's a pity to have to leave before the fighting and orgies begin.
Back at the Town Hall Theatre, the 11 p.m. screening of Nick Bloomfield's Kurt & Courtney is a total sellout, with people overflowing into the aisles. A documentary about Kurt Cobain of Nirvana that mutates into a totally different documentary about his widow Courtney's attempts to stop the project, it's a rich, thoughtful and warm film about fame and emptiness. The way Courtney takes over and erases Kurt from his own documentary is eerie to watch. The parallel with her role in his life is unavoidable. A dark film. Afterwards, in a friendly, impromptu session, Nick Broomfield answers questions in the bar until nearly half one in the morning.
Thursday's Fleadh Debate is on the role of the critic. It gets the kind of audience one would expect to turn up at 10 of a Thursday morning to watch five balding men and a woman talk about the job of talking about movies. A select, but intense, audience. Very, very intense. It rapidly becomes Fellini-esque (which is value for money at 10 a.m.). Questioners are required to identify themselves before addressing the panel. This rapidly splits people into declaring themselves (rather along the lines of the Northern Ireland assembly), as either "Film Critics" or "Ordinary People". An "Ordinary Person" declares that at a recent screening of Lolita in Galway, the audience was largely composed of paedophiles. A "Film Critic" makes an interesting and reasoned reply. The Ordinary Person walks out. Now the Ordinary People get excited and attempt to outdo each other. "I'm a Very Ordinary Person" is brutally trumped by "I'm Nobody". In the face of this, the Film Critics begin to add wildly to their CVs. "I've reviewed for Film Comment, for Internet film sites, for . . . "
It is fine entertainment, but this is only the phoney war. The real fun begins today, as the heavy-duty financiers, actors and directors fly in for the week end, as the Beastie Boys drink in Mick Taylor's bar and people start to fall into the river out the back of the Rowing Club. Let the Day-By-Day Breakdown begin.
The 10th Galway Film Fleadh runs until Sunday July 12th in the Town Hall Theatre and the Omniplex, Galway.
