audience in bits, though I couldn’t be sure as I had something in my eye at the time. Ahem.
Closing out Friday was Kissing Candice, directed by Aoife McArdle and featuring a real breakout performance from Ann Skelly. Fresh off the heels of its European premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2018, having made its international bow in the Discovery section at Toronto last september. It’s a complex, fever-dream of a film sure to divide audiences (in the best possible way) and marks the feature debut of director McCardle, best known for her celebrated commercials in the US. On a limited budget it manages to deliver some of the most stunning imagery from an Irish film in recent memory and its brave narrative choices mark McCardle as a real talent for the future. It’s inclusion was a real coup for the festival and its surreal, almost magic-realist style provided a nice segue into Saturday’s first screening, the now-classic Into the West.It was once again hugely informative to talk to the Roman audience on their perspectives on the film, especially as for many it was their first time seeing it. By large they were as impressed with the robust and at times grimly social-social realist aesthetic as they were with the more fantastical elements.
Saturday’s next big screening was Stephen Burke’s Maze. Following the screening there was a thought-provoking Q&A with Burke, producer Jane Doolan and actor Barry Ward. By this point nothing the audience came out with would have surprised me but the knowledge and genuine interest in the nuance of Northern Irish history and Politics was impressive and made for a unique experience. This was followed by Nora Twomey’s gorgeous The Breadwinner which was preceded once again by Late Afternoon, and yes something inexplicably found its way into my eye again.
The Festival closed on Sunday 25 March with another strong selection of work. Pat Collins singular Song of Granite introduced by celebrated Irish singer and long-term Italian resident Kay McCarthy. The film’s focus on traditional singing was just the latest in the wide array of Irish culture celebrated through cinema at the festival. Similarly, My Astonishing Self: Gabriel Byrne on George Bernard Shaw was a canny inclusion as the RTE/BBC co-production hadn’t been seen in Italy and again showcased a core element of Ireland’s literary landscape in both Shaw and Byrne.
Before the festival closed with Padraig Conaty’s No Part for Billy Burns there was an award ceremony for the shorts competition which saw Conaty win for his very funny and surprisingly moving mockumentary You’re Not a Man at All . Louise Bagnall took home the animation award for Late Afternoon (Which was mercifully not shown again as by this point I would just have made a show of myself.)
On to the closer then. No Party for Billy Burns, which premiered in the Galway Fleadh last summer and stars Kevin McGahern as the titular character. Billy lives in rural Cavan, but imagines himself as an old-school gunslinger from the Wild West. Shy and quiet, Billy lives a lonely life with only his grandfather and his own imagination for company. It alternates from humour to tragedy throughout as Billy remains largely on the periphery of events going on around him.
The film may seem, upon first reflection, a slightly odd choice to close the festival but is in many ways a perfect encapsulation of a core aspect of modern ireland, with its focus on rural isolation. It’s also a wonderful example of the kind of grassroots cinema which plays a vital role in reflecting rural communities on screen, something that’s still all too rare in contemporary Irish cinema. The film took some six years to complete, costing somewhere between €7,000–8,000, and is clearly a deeply personal passion project on the part of the filmmakers. it was shot in their hometown of Cavan, and maintains a fierce sense of authenticity throughout, capturing both the humour and the paralysing isolation of many rural communities. Talking before the screening, director Conaty mentioned how the film had played for three weeks in the Odeon in Cavan with local audiences deeply moved to see their lives reflected on screen, arguably for the very first time. This kind of indigenous, independent cinema experience cannot be underestimated, either in the importance of showing lives we can connect with on screen or in showing an authentic portrayal of an underrepresented community. In this sense the film proved to be a clever closer and another canny move for a festival which aims to not just show a selection of Irish films but to really celebrate Ireland and its people through its cinema.
It was somewhat surreal then, having spent some 90 minutes in Cavan Town, to leave the screening (Again under the watchful eyes of Lelia, Fionnula, Bob et al.) and find ourselves once back in the surroundings of Villa Borghese in Rome.
Reflecting on a festival experience that showed a mad diversity of not just Irish Cinema but an astonishing array Irish life, society and culture on screen one can’t help but be impressed. Pellis and her team have not only brought a consistently potent selection of Irish films, filmmakers, actors, and industry professionals to Rome over the years but have developed and cultivated a smart, engaged and loyal Italian audience for Irish Cinema in the heart of Rome. It’s a remarkable achievement and one which helps remind us of the trojan work being done by the many Irish film festivals around the world, to showcase Irish Cinema and develop a passion for our cinematic output in new audiences.
More of this.
* Full disclosure, this correspondant is in a relationship with Ms. Collins and is more than likely related to O’Brien because, well, Ireland.
MAZE
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