Tiger Tales of New Irish Cinema

Irish Voice Entertainment

Tiger Tales of New Irish Cinema

November 7, 2007

By Cahir O’Doherty

AT the ninth annual Magners Irish Film Festival this week in Boston one rule seems to apply — each new Irish film must explore the complexities of modern Irish life.

In this ambition the organizers have succeeded admirably. Screenings of important new feature films like director John Boorman’s controversial Celtic Tiger satire The Tiger’s Tale will receive their first U.S. screenings at the festival. Starring Brendan Gleeson, Ciaran Hinds and Kim Cattrall of Sex and the City fame among others, Boorman’s latest is a withering take on Ireland’s new love affair with crass materialism that divided and even outraged Irish audiences in equal measure when it opened there this June.

Adding major film star wattage to this year’s festival lineup is Irish American actor and recent Emmy Award nominee Aidan Quinn, who will receive the 2007 Excellence Award annually given to acknowledge the contributions of an individual talent to the Irish film and television industries.

In celebration of Quinn’s achievements, the festival will screen his 2003 hit Song for a Raggy Boy, featuring one of the actor’s most acclaimed film performances. The screening will be followed by a brief retrospective of Quinn’s career before he takes to the stage to answer questions from the audience. Previous winners of the award have included Gleeson, Gabriel Byrne, Jim Sheridan and Fionnula Flanagan.

Founded in 1999 by Dubliner Peter Flynn and Jim Lane, the Magners Irish Film Festival has quickly become a hot ticket, with UCD Film Studies graduate Flynn acting as festival director.

Each year the festival has grown in size and this year it has become the largest event of its kind held in the U.S. Originally set up to celebrate and promote global Irish cinema, as it has grown it has expanded its reach to provide essential exhibition and distribution opportunities for Irish filmmakers.

Speaking to the Irish Voice, Flynn said, “The Irish Film Festival exists to acknowledge the very best of contemporary Irish cinema. Consequently the films we show really capture what’s going on in Ireland today, and all the current forces that are shaping the Irish culture. Issues like globalization, immigration, the increasingly cosmopolitan nature of Irish society, all of these are captured in various ways by the new films we’re showing.”

Critical buzz is particularly strong about Boorman’s film, which has been described variously as very satirical to very unforgiving in its portrayal of modern Ireland as greed is shown to take over communal values.

Other anticipated features include the Irish-Swedish co-production The Front Line, a fast paced heist film where an African immigrant security guard turns the tables on some of Dublin’s nastiest criminals when they force him to be the inside man on a bank robbery.

Each of the films being screened at the festival are particularly interesting for consistently showing that while Ireland is racing ahead and embracing dramatic social change, there’s also a very strong impulse felt by many to embrace and hold on to the best aspects of the older culture and values. The fear of loss, tangible and intangible, haunts every frame of the festivals main offerings.

“Ireland’s at a crossroads. We can see it reflected time and again in this year’s film picks,” said Flynn.

“We didn’t initially choose that theme, but as the new films arrived it became obvious and inevitable. There’s definitely a strong engagement on the part of Irish filmmakers to grapple with the new realities and, as you’ll see, they’re not always pleasant or above board.”

In the week that a new EU study showed that that the Irish go to the cinema more than any other nation in Europe, it’s also worth noting that filmmakers from Ireland and the Irish diaspora are increasingly turning to filmmaking to express themselves and their culture.

Within the last 10 years alone Irish cinema has emerged as an important and vital global phenomenon, expressing a culture focused on the island of Ireland but spread out to all four corners of the globe.

The Magners Irish Film Festival runs from November 8-11. For tickets and venue information visit www.irishfilmfestival.com.

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