The programme for the 44th Murphy's Cork Film Festival marks such an expansion that the Gate multiplex has been added to the three regular screening venues, Cork Opera House, Triskel Arts Centre and the Kino cinema, the festival's director, Mr Mick Hannigan, said at the programme's launch in Dublin last night. The event will open on October 10th with the Irish premiere of the US drama, Limbo, directed by John Sayles and featuring the Oscar-nominated actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. The closing film, on October 17th, will be another American film, Sugar Town, directed by Allison Anders, who will attend the festival for a retrospective of her work.
The hottest ticket on the programme is likely to be the US horror movie, The Blair Witch Project, which was made on a budget of $60,000 and has taken over $135 million in the US.
The international features include the Belgian film, Rosetta, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year; the new Spike Lee movie, Summer of Sam; the German thriller, Run Lola Run; Ron Howard's satire on US television in EdTV; and Wes Craven's Music of My Heart, starring Meryl Streep. Two Cork sisters feature in different films - Eileen Walsh stars as a fantasising typist in the British comedy, Janice Beard: 45 WPM, and Catherine Walsh appears in Deborah Warner's The Last September, adapted by John Banville from the novel by Elizabeth Bowen.
Irish interest also includes the premiere of writer-director Fintan Connelly's first feature, Flick, along with screenings of Nichola Bruce's I Could Read the Sky, featuring an acclaimed performance from writer Dermot Healy; Liam O Mochain's The Book that Wrote Itself; Se Merry Doyle's documentary, Alive Alive O! - A Requiem for Dublin; and Luke, Sinead O'Brien's film on the life and music of Luke Kelly.