On The Town Catherine FoleyThis year the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival (Diff) will show 109 feature films, including the German masterpiece, Metropolis, the Irish-made Sundance World Cinema Audience Award winner, Once, and the festival's first Irish-language feature film, Cré na Cille. The organisers hope to attract 35,000 viewers to screenings during the 10-day event.
One of the key players in the film industry who attended the programme launch in Dublin this was Redmond Morris, executive producer of Notes on a Scandal, which opened in cinemas nationwide this week. The film, starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench, has picked up four Oscar nominations.
Michael Dwyer, who is preparing to step down as festival director after five years - making way for Grainne Humphreys, of the Irish Film Institute - said selecting the films was "a labour of love . . . I was like a boy lost in a sweetshop".
Among the festival highlights, he added, will be the presence of Gabriel Byrne at the screening of Jindabyne, which opens Diff on Friday, February 16th.
"It's one of the finest performances of his career," said Dwyer.
Winners of a short-film competition, run by Jameson, were announced at the launch party, with first prize going to Donna Boileau, second to Vincent Gallagher and third to Aaron Reilly. The films of all three will be shown on the opening night of the festival.
Others at the party included director Jason Forde, who, using the industry vernacular, said he has "a slate of projects in development"; screenwriter Shane McCabe, who is off to Los Angeles next week to discuss a script; and actor David Herlihy, who features in the pilot of a new drama, Single-Handed, due to be screened on RTÉ on St Patrick's Day.
The festival's budget exceeded €1 million this year, said its chief executive officer, Rory Concannon. The highlight for him, he added, will be the British film, Sparkle which will close the festival on Sunday, February 25th.
"It's a beautiful story. All the cast and crew are going to be there. It's a gentle story about people interacting," Concannon said.
The fifth Jameson Dublin International Film Festival will run from Fri, Feb 16 to Sun, Feb 25. For tickets and information, see www.dubliniff.com or call 01-672 8861
Winning a break from creative isolation
Cecelia Ahern, Claire Kilroy and Paul Howard (aka Ross O'Carroll Kelly) were among the writers who broke their self- imposed isolation to attend the announcement of those whose books have been shortlisted in the expanded Irish Book Awards 2007. They were joined by booksellers, publishers, agents and editors at the Westin Hotel, Dublin, to hear the shortlists in the nine categories.
"I'm kind of an all-or-nothing person," said Ahern, whose book, A Place Called Here, has been shortlisted in the Galaxy Irish Popular Fiction Book of the Year category, which will be voted on by the public. "The last few days I've been really into it. When I'm writing, I'm quite intense."
Howard, whose book, Should Have Got Off at Sydney Parade, has been shortlisted in the same category, was also taking a break from a creative burst.
"It's been pretty intense for this entire month," he said. "Some days you are not in a funny mood and yet you know that you have to write 2,500 words."
John Boyne was there because his book, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, has been shortlisted in the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year category. Other shortlisted writers in attendance included Anna McPartlin, Eddie Lenihan, Sinéad Moriarty, and Shane Hegarty of this newspaper, whose The Irish Times Book of the 1916 Rising, co-written with Fintan O'Toole, is shortlisted for the Eason Irish Published Book of the Year Award.
The awards "celebrate the journey that these books are the culmination of", said novelist and playwright Dermot Bolger. "It's time to praise booksellers, who have for years and years made this happen . . . We celebrate genius but we are not inclined to celebrate different kinds of books."
Others supporting the Irish Book Awards included Treasa Coady, publisher of Lifelines; literary agent Marian Gunn O'Connor; and broadcaster Ryan Tubridy, with his radio show's series producer, Sarah Binchy, on behalf of RTÉ Radio 1's The Tubridy Show Listeners' Choice Award. Seven of the categories will be judged by the newly established Irish Literary Academy, while two categories will be voted on by the public.
For detailed information on the awards in all nine categories, go to www.irishbookawards.ie
Contradictory Casement showcased
New music to commemorate Roger Casement, written by Dublin composer Andrew Hamilton, was given its Irish premiere at the National Concert Hall this week. It was the revolutionary's "strange, ambiguous" nature, which inspired Music for Roger Casement, explained the Dublin-born, Berlin-based composer.
He was "contradictory" and "full of contrasts", he said. "Also, I admire his humanism and the compassion he showed." The 24-minute piece "is leading to an opera I'm planning to write", Hamilton added.
"It's very energetic, enthusiastic," said Jan Willem van der Ham, bassoonist with the Ives Ensemble, from the Netherlands, who were playing the piece. "It's frantic and there are big contrasts at unexpected moments."
"It's strong and rhythmical," said Fokke van Heel, who plays the French horn, of Hamilton's new work.
Music by Irish composer Gerald Barry and the British composer, Geoffrey Hannan, who were both at the premiere, was also performed. Music by Kevin Volans, Morton Feldman and Igor Stravinsky featured on the programme as well.
Music for Roger Casement was performed as part of the NCH's Contemporary Music Festival, which provides an opportunity for composers to showcase their skills and put their own work into context, as well as revisiting the music of major composers of the 20th century.
Among those who gathered to hear the new work by Hamilton were artist Fergus Martin, choreographer and director of Dance Ireland Paul Johnson, composer Roger Doyle, and Dermot McDermott, who is doing a masters in composition at Dublin Institute of Technology.
Hamilton's parents, Frances and Graham Hamilton, were also in the audience.
Others who attended the Irish premiere were Daniel Carthy, from Paulstown, Co Kilkenny, and Paul Melia, from Enniscrone, Co Sligo, with his girlfriend, Beata Pelc.
The final concert in the Contemporary Music Festival will take place on Monday, March 5th, featuring the work of Ailís Ní Ríain.
Surviving to tell the tale
Peter Shaw, who was held captive in a hole in the ground for five months in rural Georgia, was described as being "very good-humoured, very musical and a man with a tremendous depth of courage". Shaw's book, Hole: Kidnapped in Georgia, was launched this week in European Union House, Dublin, by former taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald.
"Most people would not have survived," he said. "He kept going, he never gave up. He showed extraordinary courage and determination."
"He's a strong character and he was tough," said Denis Corboy, the EU's special envoy to Georgia, who was sent out to find Shaw and "if possible to negotiate his release".
Corboy, who knew Shaw as a friend long before he was captured in 2002, said "he's got great resilience. He had an inner strength that carried him through".
Shaw, who was working with the EU Commission as a banker for six years before he was kidnapped, recalled the worst days of his captivity "when the enormity of the fact that I would probably die in this hole struck me and I became almost suicidal. I experimented with various ways of ending it all".
Shaw, a Welshman, said he still gets nightmares occasionally "when I get the heebie-jeebies". But, he added, when he wakes up and his wife is sleeping next to him and the cat is lying on the bed, "then I think what a lucky chap I am".
According to his former boss, Michael Boyd, executive chairman of Landell Mills, the UK development consultancy group, Shaw is "a very committed, dedicated banker who was working very hard in trying to ensure that EU aid was well-spent in Georgia". What his book reveals, said Boyd, is a courage so deep that, "in horrible circumstances he was able to stay alive and defeat the intention of his kidnappers".
Hole: Kidnapped in Georgia, by Peter Shaw, is published by Accent Press. See book review, W11