Sir, - I realise it's bad from for the reviewed to bite back at the reviewer, but a seemingly central point of Michael Dwyer's piece "Festival misses the mark" (Vision, April 21st) begs a response. As this year's Dublin Film Festival programme director, I'll happily carry the can for the perceived quality or otherwise of the event, but on the linked matter of its "significance" (presumably the "mark" in question), I feel rather more combative.
The event avowedly does not seek "status in the crowded world festival calendar", but relevance to and within Dublin and Irish film culture. Its outlook is indeed internationalist, not parochial (which is as well, given that the makers of one of the "missing" native films cited by Mr Dwyer declined to screen in the "ghetto" of the Irish Film Centre); but its impact is intended to be local. Ambitions of audience-building (or rebuilding, in the current cultural climate) are primary; a knock-on, sustained effect on the institutions of film distribution and exhibition a secondary goal. Competition with Cannes is neither remotely nor realistically on our agenda; a more modest - and accessible - celebration of cinema and its potential connections to Dublin audiences is. - Yours, etc.,
Paul Taylor, Programme Director, Dublin Film Festival. Suffolk Street, Dublin 2.
Michael Dwyer writes: My reference to the festival's "status in the crowded world festival calendar" had to do with its importance in the eyes of international producers and distributors who have the power to withhold their films from the Dublin event - as they clearly did this year.
I certainly was not suggesting that the Dublin festival should go into "competition with Cannes". But by taking place four weeks before Cannes, it will inevitably be denied very many films.
£25