In a week of miserable weather, Tuesday night stood out as more miserable than most. So it was only the most die-hard of film buffs that made it to the IFC when the details of the Celtic Film and Television Festival were announced. The festival will be held in Tralee in April of next year, a place RTE's director general, Bob Collins, described glowingly as "the jewel in the crown of that great county" - before admitting that he was born there. The festival's director is Doireann Ni Bhriain, who recently returned to RTE after a three-year stint organising L'Imaginaire Irlandais in France. She had just come up from the Kingdom herself, and described a county in mourning after the resignation of Dick Spring. The chairman for the 1998 festival, which is in its 19th year, is Tim Mahony, chairman of Toyota Ireland. Although not a native speaker, Tim said he had been practising his Irish and promptly displayed the result - a missing tooth. Still, he said he was so inspired by the gaeilgeoiri ir i festival folk that he would soon have no teeth left at all. Other film folk who braved the floods were Rod Stoneman of the Film Board; Pat Collins of Film West; Philip Gray of Film Base and Ted Sheehy of Film Ireland magazine; Sarah Ryder of Cursai Ealaine, and Derry O'Brien of Network Ireland TV, an independent distribution company. Derry was already gearing up for the Film-makers' Ireland conference on Friday at which Bob Geldof talked about his new baby, Atomic TV.
All in all it was a successful launch for publicist Kate Bowe, who has been extremely busy working on Meteor, the film written and directed by Joe O'Byrne, which brings Mike Myers - the geeky star of cult film Wayne's World and Austin Powers, Man Of Mystery - to Ireland. Mike will be starring alongside Brenda Fricker, Alfred Molina, Ballykissangel's 's Dervla Kirwan and John Kavanagh, and filming starts on Monday.