IRELAND’S OLDEST film festival opened to a packed house last night as cinema lovers braved torrential rain and the threat of flooding on Leeside to attend the gala opening of the 55th Corona Cork Film Festival.
Minister for Tourism, Mary Hanafin, performed the official opening and paid tribute to all those involved in organising this year’s festival, which will showcase over 300 films from more than 30 countries at a number of venues in the city.
“I think it is marvellous that the Corona Cork Film Festival has entertained generations and expanded enormously over the last 55 years, and it is a wonderful testament to previous organising committees and to the current one that this has happened.
“There is an excellent programme scheduled for the next seven days and nights, with a wide-ranging and interesting mix of big budget pictures, world cinema, innovative independent films, documentaries and short films from all over the globe.”
Ms Hanafin was speaking before the opening gala showing at the Cork Opera House, Mark Romanek's film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's highly acclaimed novel Never Let Me Go, starring Keira Knightly, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield.
Earlier, filmgoers gave an enthusiastic reception to American documentary makers David Mueller and Lynn Salt for their dramatic and absorbing account of American Indian Movement co-founder and activist Dennis Banks.
Interspersing archive footage with interviews with Banks and fellow AIM activists, A Good Day to Diebuilds purposefully to tell of the stand-off between AIM activists and the FBI at Wounded Knee in 1973 and was well received by filmgoers.
Festival director, Mick Hannigan, said he was very pleased with bookings for the festival to date, with some 10,000 tickets sold prior to last night, and he expected total bookings would reach 25,000 by the end of the festival.
Maureen O'Hara will be the guest of honour for the gala screening next Friday of a documentary on the making of The Quiet Man, directed by John Ford, in which she starred with John Wayne.
The documentary contains the first-hand testimony of Maureen O’Hara, along with contributions from Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich and Ford’s biographer, Joseph McBride.
The closing gala features this year's Venice Golden Lion winner, Sophie Coppola's Somewhere.
Full programme of screenings and tickets is at www.corkfilmfest. org.
