The great Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann will be the guest of honour at the First Annual Women's Film Festival organised by Women in Film and Television. Best known for her work in nine films directed by Ingmar Bergman, she received Oscar nominations for her work in Jan Troell's The Emigrants in 1972 and Bergman's Face To Face in 1974, and has gone on to direct several films in recent years.
The three-day festival will open at the IFC in Dublin on December 12th with Private Confessions, the latest film directed by Liv Ullmann, who will discuss it with the audience afterwards. Her previous film as a director, Kristin Lavransdatter, will also be screened over the weekend.
The attractive programme includes two films from Australia - Shirley Barrett's quirky-humoured Love Serenade, which won the Camera d'Or at Cannes last year, and Samantha Lang's The Well, selected for competition at Cannes this year. British director Carine Adler will attend the festival screening of her Under The Skin, a prize-winner at Toronto this year, and the line-up also includes Katja von Garnier's German production, Bandits. The festival will present a seminar on the theme of Images Of Women, and will hold an awards ceremony honouring contributions by women in industry and craft. The organisers insist that the festival is not a women-only event.
Four films will be screened as part of Cork Arts Fest this month. Tom Collins's Bogwoman will be shown at Kino on November 14th; Bigas Luna's Golden Balls at Triskel Arts Centre from the 15th to the 18th; Vincent Ward's The Navigator at Cork RTC Theatre on the 19th; and Todd Solondz's Welcome To The Dollhouse at Triskel from the 22nd to the 24th.
The Eighth Junior Dublin Film Festival will run from November 23rd to December 5th, opening with the Irish premiere of Disney's George Of The Jungle, starring Brendan Fraser, which has been one of the biggest surprises at the US box-office this year, taking over $100 million. This year's festival family gala will be Peter Hewitt's film of The Borrowers, starring John Goodman, Mark Williams, Jim Broadbent and Hugh Laurie.
A showcase of Irish cinema includes the 1959 Mise Eire; Robert Dawson's adaptation of Frank O'Connor's short story, My Oedipus Complex; and the late Bill Miskelly's charming The End Of The World Man. Screenings of films on the 1998 English Leaving Certificate course include Alfred Hitchcock's 1930 Juno And The Paycock, Orson Welles's 1952 Othello and Jack Clayton's 1974 The Great Gatsby - but the programme will not include the recent Irish movie, How To Cheat In The Leaving Certificate!
Information from the festival office, 6 Eustace Street, Dublin 2. Tel: (01) 671-4095. Fax: 670-3074. E.mail: jdff@indigo.ie
`The magic's back," declares the publicity for the Cinemagic International Film Festival for Young People which runs in Belfast, Derry, Antrim and Bangor from December 4th to 14th. New movies on the programme include Charles Sturridge's Fairy Tale - A True Story, featuring Paul McGann (who will introduce the Belfast screening), Harvey Keitel and Peter O'Toole; the Australian canine comedy, Paws, with Billy Connolly; and two films showing on the Dublin Junior programme, The Borrowers and George Of The Jungle.
There's also the Oscar-winning Czech film, Kolya; from Canada, the animated Pippi Longstocking; and, from Norway, Chasing The Kidney Stone in which a young boy is shrunk to microscopic proportions and enters his grandfather's body where, with the help of a friendly white blood cell, he sets out to destroy the kidney stone which has made his grandfather ill.
Cinemagic promises a number of notable master classes - with Jimmy McGovern on screen writing, Christopher Eccleston on acting, and Dave Borthwick and John Wright on animation, all taking place in Belfast; and Paul McGann on acting, in Derry.
For further information, contact Cinemagic at 38 Dublin Road, Belfast BT2 7HN. Tel: (1232) 311900; fax 319709.
The Celtic Film and Television Festival returns to Ireland next year and will be held in Tralee from April 1st to 4th. Celebrating the best of broadcasting and film-making from the Celtic countries, the festival brings together producers and directors from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Brittany for screenings, debates, seminars and workshops.
The festival is competitive with awards in nine categories - short drama, feature-length drama, drama series, documentary, current affairs, entertainment, young people under 12 and animation. There is a special £1,000 cash prize, the Frank Copplestone First Time Director Award, for the best debut production. The closing date for Irish entries is November 28th.
Information from the festival office at RTE, Donnybrook, Dublin 4. Tel: (01) 2084530. Fax: 208-3483. Website: http://www.rte.ie/celtic/98/
