The 14th Dublin Film Festival will begin and end with world premieres of new Irish films, it was announced last night. The festival will open on April 15th with the premiere of Cathal Black's Love and Rage, which deals with James Lyncheaun, an inspiration for The Playboy of the Western World, who in 1894 attacked an English land-owner, set fire to her house and escaped from Portlaoise prison to the US. It stars Daniel Craig, Greta Scacchi and Stephen Dillane.
The closing film on April 25th will be Deborah Warner's version of Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September, set in Co Cork in 1920 during the War of Independence and the demise of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. Adapted for the screen by John Banville, it features Fiona Shaw, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon and Jane Birkin.
Two other Irish films will have their world premieres at the festival, John Carney's and Tom Hall's Park, and Making Ends Meet, directed by Declan Recks. And the programme includes three films made abroad by Irish directors, Neil Jordan's psychological thriller, In Dreams, and Martin Duffy's The Bumblebee Flies Anyway, both filmed in the US, and Eoin Moore's Break Even, made in Germany.
This year's major festival retrospective programme will be devoted to the work of the Oscar-winning Italian film-maker, Bernardo Bertolucci, who will participate in a public interview on the closing day. The festival will screen eight of his works, among them The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, The Last Emperor, and his latest, Besieged.
The festival will also mount a tribute programme to the French writer and director, Olivier Assayas, who will travel to Dublin for the event. The festival's international guest list also includes the actor Ian McKellen and directors Mike Figgis, Chris Menges and John Shea.
Major directors represented by their latest work in the festival include David Cronenberg with Existenz, Emir Kuturica with Black Cat, White Cat, Stephen Frears with The Hi-Lo Country, Sam Raimi with A Simple Plan, Woody Allen with Celebrity, and Theo Angelopoulos with Eternity and a Day, which received the Palme d'Or for best film at Cannes last year.
The festival will feature special sections devoted to new Spanish cinema, American independent productions, films from first-time European directors, Hollywood icons, Irish and international documentaries and short films, and representations of disabled people on screen.
This year's festival, the first to be programmed by Ms Maretta Dillon, will move away from the traditional venues of the Screen at D'Olier Street and the Savoy, and the new principal venue will be Virgin Cinemas in Parnell Street, with additional screenings at the Irish Film Centre and the city's three UCI multiplexes.
Booking for the festival opens this morning at Arthouse, Eustace Street, Temple Bar.