Irish Film Festival Leaps In, Feb. 29
By • February 22, 2024 0 1039
How many Irish films can you name?
Sorry, but “How Green Was My Valley” and “The Quiet Man,” American classics directed by John Ford (born John Martin Feeney), don’t count. A handful come to mind, for instance: “My Left Foot,” “The Crying Game,” “Michael Collins” and “Waking Ned Devine.” Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” produced by Northern Ireland Screen, is a recent high-profile example.
But that’s only scratching the surface. A four-day opportunity to go deeper arrives on Leap Day, Feb. 29, when the 18th annual Capital Irish Film Festival opens at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring. Seventeen feature films will be screened at the festival, produced by Solas Nua, “new light” in Irish, a D.C.-based organization dedicated to promoting contemporary Irish arts.
“This is a zeitgeist moment for contemporary Irish culture in general, but specifically for Irish filmmakers and filmmaking in Ireland,” said Maedhbh (pronounced “may-ev”) Mc Cullagh, who became the festival’s director in 2022. “The volume of work coming out of our little island right now is staggering.”
Ten of the 17 features — most having their East Coast premieres and several their North American premieres — were written or directed by women, including the festival’s opening and closing films. On Feb. 29, the screening of “Lies We Tell,” set on a rural estate in 1864, will include a Q&A with director Lisa Mulcahy and writer Elisabeth Gooch. Likewise, there will be a Q&A with director Patricia Kelly at the March 3 screening of “Verdigris,” set in today’s inner-city Dublin. Post-show receptions sponsored by the Embassy of Ireland will follow on both nights.
Government support is a major factor in the filmmaking boom, according to Mc Cullagh, who cited “successive Irish governments’ strategic investment in Irish arts, and our current Minister [for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media] Catherine Martin’s commitment to supporting Irish artists … and the Irish screen industry,” along with “the work of Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland.”
One of the festival’s highlights, a second feature on opening night, Feb. 29, will be a screening of “Crock of Gold,” Julien Temple’s 2020 documentary about Shane MacGowan, lead singer and songwriter of the Pogues, who died last November at age 65.
Three programs of short films will also be presented during the festival: on March 1 (six films, including Shane O’Callaghan’s “Making Waves,” a documentary about LBGTQ+ community members in County Clare); on March 2 (six films, including Tom Berkeley and Ross White’s “The Golden West,” about feuding sisters fleeing the Great Famine for the Gold Rush); and on March 3 (seven films, including Hannah Mamalis’s “Baby Steps,” about a pregnant woman whose father sends her an instructional tape on connecting with one’s unborn child).
“The Silent People,” winner of the 2024 Norman Houston Short Film Award — which celebrates the legacy of the longtime director of the Northern Ireland Bureau in Washington, D.C., who died in 2021 — will be screened on March 1 with “Lie of the Land,” a feature-length thriller. A Q&A with Joan Burney Keatings, head of Belfast’s Cinemagic Festival, and the two directors, Keith O’Grady (“The Silent People”) and John Carlin (“Lie of the Land), will be followed by a reception with Andrew Elliott, the Northern Ireland Bureau’s current director.
Attention Puffin Lovers! One of the North American premieres, on March 3, is of the first animated feature produced in Northern Ireland, Jeremy Purcell’s “Puffin Rock and the New Friends,” based on the award-winning TV series for preschoolers. The pitch: “When the last Little Egg of the season disappears under mysterious circumstances, Oona and her new friends race against time to bring the Little Egg home before a big storm hits Puffin Rock and puts the entire island in danger.”
Tickets for individual screenings, available via the Solas Nua and AFI Silver websites, are $13 ($11 for seniors and $8 for children). All-access festival passes are $150.
“There’s a story for everyone and you don’t need to be Irish to experience and enjoy these films,” said Mc Cullagh. “They are rooted in Ireland but are global in reach.”
