THE Government should establish a Screen Commission to strengthen employment in the Irish film industry says Bord Scannan na hEireann (BSE) in its third Review and Annual Report, which was published yesterday. While Section 35 incentives offer opportunities for investment in film, these attractions need to be intensely marketed abroad, says the report, and a service provided to facilitate the making of offshore and indigenous films here.
The review points to the need for investment in infrastructure, including digital technologies, marketing and distribution initiatives and support for production into the next century. The report notes "a stable growth" in the year's film making here with nine new feature films completed, many of them prize winners on the international festival circuit - Some Mother's Son, Trojan Eddie, The Boy From Mercury, and Louis Lentin's controversial documentary, Dear Daughter.
Commenting on the growth in production, BSE chief executive Rod Stoneman welcomed "the emergence of a body of work that can be discussed and disputed over the past three years, since its re establishment in 1993, the board has supported over 30 new Irish feature films in production, 10 documentaries, 15 shorts and seven animations." The board's investment in product ion totalled £2.5 million in 1995, which yielded production budgets of £22 million, with an additional £200,000 devoted towards feature development.
A most welcome addition to the cultural life of Cork, the city's new art house cinema - the Kino on Washington Street - opens to the public today with Cork Film Festival programmer Mick Hannigan at the helm. The opening presentations at the 190 seater venue will be Brassed Off starring Pete Postlethwaite and Ewan McGregor, and Cathal Black's Korea. In the first in a series of occasional - special events, Cathal Black will give a workshop on the making of Korea at Kino on December 7th.
A variety of international cinema will be shown at the cinema in the months ahead, including Jude, A Summer's Tale, Shine, The Pillow Book and When The Cat's Away, along with reissues of The Big Sleep, Withnail & I and Touch Of Evil. Late night movies will run at Kino on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from next week, and among the early attractions will be Trainspotting, Fargo, Beautiful Thing and The Usual Suspects.
THE Australian director Mark Joffe, who visited the Dublin Film Festival with his film, Spots wood, in 1992 - and whose latest movie, Cosi, is reviewed in the London Film Festival report on this page - is back in Ireland filming his new movie, provisionally titled The Matchmaker, on location in Roundstone, Co Galway.
Described as a romantic comedy with a lot of twists along the way, The Matchmaker stars the American actress Janeane Garofalo - who was so engaging in The Truth About Cats And Dogs earlier this year - as a political activist sent to the west of Ireland by a Boston senator (Jay O. Sanders) to find his long lost Irish relatives. The cast also features David O'Hara, Denis Leary, Milo O'Shea, Rosaleen Linehan, Maria Doyle Kennedy and Paul Hickey. For its final week of shooting, the production moves to Inis Mor next week.
WITH the new nine screen UCI complex in Blanchardstown, Co Dublin, set to, open to the public on December 20th, the cinema's chief projectionist, Des Broe, has been in Munich, and Paris on a training trip. Des, who is from Walkinstown, has been a projectionist for 18 years and has experienced several major strides in technology in his time, but even he says he was surprised at how far advanced is the equipment at Blanchardstown.
"That only two places in Europe can provide training for the new projection system says a lot about how advanced it actually is," he says. "With this new system the sound quality can be even better than the most modern cinemas of today - which is quite hard to believe."
THE annual Voices From The South Festival opens tonight at the IFC with Guantanamera (8.30 p.m.), the final movie from the late Cuban director, Tomas Gutierrez Alea, and codirected by Juan Carlos Tabio with whom Alea made Strawberry And Chocolate. In both its theme and humorous approach Guantanameru recalls Alea's classic satire, Death Of A Bureaucrat, though the humour is less jagged in this tale of a former schoolteacher whose plans to bury her aunt are complicated by an absurd new state plan advocated by her petty bureaucrat husband.
Voices From The South also offers a rare opportunity to see the internationally acclaimed Abbas Kiarostami trilogy of films set in his native Iran. The theme of adults' unthinking cruelty to children underscores the 1987 Where Is My Friend's House? (4 pm. today) which was shot in a region devastated by an earthquake three years later. In the 1992 And Life Goes On (2 p.m. tomorrow) a film maker and his two sons go there to find out what happened to the two boys in the previous film. Kiarostami's exploration of the overlap between film and reality continues in the 1994 - Through The Olive Trees (8.40 p.m. tomorrow) as a film crew travels to the same area to shoot a fictional film in the earthquake's aftermath.
THE relaunched EAVE initiative programme for the development of small and media sized production companies has finalised its next training programme to bridge the gap between the established world of film and television and the fledgling world of multimedia. The deadline for applications is December 12th. For further information, contact MEDIA Desk Ireland on 01 679 5744.
And the 18th Celtic Film and Television Festival will be held in St Ives, Cornwall, from March 19th to 22nd next year. Irish entries should be sent to Padhraic O Ciardha at T na G, 4 Cearnog Oirear Gael, Domhnach Broc, Baile Atha Cliath 4.
