Busy young Dublin actress Dominique McElligott was in Helsinki this week for the world premiere of Dark Floors, a Finnish horror film in which she stars with heavy metal band Lordi, who won the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest.
While in secondary school, McElligott landed the recurring role of Cora, the rebellious daughter of the Sean McGinley character, in the RTÉ series, On Home Ground. Since then, she has featured in Harry Hook's Sudan-set TV mini-series, Whiskey Echo. She also joins Amy Huberman and Adam Fergus in Rick Larkin's Satellites and Meteorites, and Adrien Lester and Russell Tovey in Being Human. And she has just been cast opposite Sam Rockwell in Moon.
A placed called home in Mosney
Seaview, a feature-length documentary set to have its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival next Wednesday night, charts the experiences of asylum seekers living in the former Butlin's holiday camp at Mosney while they await the outcome of their applications.
Nicky Gogan, who directed the film with Paul Rowley, says: "It's incredible to see this familiar setting now used for a different purpose. The residents of Mosney each have their own story to tell, from the tragic to the heart-warming."
Writers may call it a day
After three months on strike, the members of the Writers Guild of America will meet in New York and Los Angeles tomorrow to discuss proposals that may well bring an end to the dispute. The meeting, which will be followed by the announcement of the guild's annual screenplay awards, comes just eight days before the Oscars ceremony.
Kerryman brings Bacon to Berlin
John Flahive has left the British Film Institute (BFI) after 19 years to set up his own sales company, Wavelength Films, which will handle arthouse releases and documentaries. The Kerryman is at the Berlin festival with his first project, Bacon's Arena, a documentary on Francis Bacon set for DVD release in 2009, the centenary of the Irish painter's birth.
Coincidentally, while working as film sales manager at the BFI, Flahive handled John Maybury's 1998 film, Love Is the Devil, starring Derek Jacobi as Bacon and Daniel Craig as his lover, George Dyer.
The place to be if you're a short
Along with seeking out discoveries at this week's Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in France, Mick Hannigan and Una Feely of the Cork Film Festival are promoting Irish shorts there. The event is the most important in the world for short films, and the Cork organisers have curated a DVD of 13 new Irish titles, which will be distributed to international festival programmers and film buyers.
Conor Ferguson's The Wednesdays is showing in competition at the festival, which is also screening Ken Wardrop's Useless Dog.
3D tweener mints money for Disney
The tongue-twistingly titled Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert surpassed all expectations by topping the US box-office chart last weekend. It took more than $31 million, even though it's only playing in 683 US cinemas equipped for digital 3D.
Miley Cyrus is a 15-year-old TV performer who plays herself and her alter ego, Hannah Montana.
Targeting tween girls as its primary audience, Disney cleverly released the movie as counter- programming to the Super Bowl, and as a limited seven-day release, which not surprisingly has now been extended. The film opens here on March 14th.
