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Film Fleadh provides platform for best of Irish and the world
“Providing a platform for some of the best new and established Irish filmmakers as well as bringing films and talent from all over the world to the west of Ireland,” is the ongoing aim of Galway Film Fleadh, according to its Programme Director Gar O’Brien as he launched details of this year’s event which will run from July 5 to 10.
More than 150 films from all 30 countries around the world will be screened this year, as well as a special selection of archive material relating to Galway.
The Fleadh’s opening film – one of 16 world premieres – will be Creative Control, which is set five minutes in the future. A mix of drama and science-fiction, it directed by Benjamin Dickinson from a screenplay written by Micah Bloomberg and Dickinson.
The programme features full-length films from debut directors, including Richie Smyth’s stunning The Siege of Jadotville, which sees Jamie Dornan as Irish Commandant Pat Quinlan who leads his Irish battalion in a tense stand-off against local troops and French and Belgian mercenaries in the Congo in 1961.
The Young Offenders is a comedy inspired by Ireland’s biggest cocaine seizure – a €440 million haul off the coast of Cork in 2007. It follows two Cork inner-city teenagers as they embark on a 160km road trip on stolen bikes in the hopes of finding some unrecovered bales of coke. Darren Thornton’s debut A Date for Mad Mary, meanwhile, is a snapshot of modern Ireland about weddings, dating and youthful mistakes.
Another world premiere is Property of the State, which tells of the circumstances surrounding a harrowing triple murder on the Clare-Galway border in 1996. The story of murderer Brendan O’Donnell and how the State failed him in childhood forms the basis of this drama, as seen through the eyes of his sister Anne Marie.
The Fleadh’s closing film is the Galway-produced Sanctuary. Set in a world of people with intellectual disabilities, this is a touching and funny love story about Larry and Sophie, two people who long to be together in a world that does everything to keep them apart.
Special screenings include The Duel of Wine, an Argentinian comedy about a world-famous sommelier who has fallen from grace and his wife’s attempts to rehabilitate him into this rarefied world. The film features sommeliers, winemakers and chefs from Italy and Spain. Its producer and director will attend the screening in the Radisson, where they will also introduce new wines which the audience can sample.
The Duel of Wine is part of a special menu of films exploring food and drink around the world.
The fine documentary strand includes the world premieres of It’s Not Yet Dark, which tells the inspiring story of film director Simon Fitzmaurice. Having been diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease in 2008 and given four years to live Fitzmaurice has defied the odds. He has continued to work and his crowd-funded film My Name is Emily was the opening film of last year’s Fleadh.
One of Ireland’s finest documentary makers, Ken Wardrop of His & Hers, will present the Irish premiere of his latest film Mom & Me, which explores men’s relationships with their mothers in the US’s ‘manliest state’ of Oklahoma.
Closer to home, director Brendan Byrne explores Bobby Sands’ legacy in Bobby Sands: 66 Days. Based on material drawn from his hunger-strike diary, it documents the life and legacy of the IRA hunger striker and MP who died in 1981.
Archive of a different kind can be found in the Irish Film Institute’s archive, a mix of amateur and professional films from the 1930s to the 1970s, all of which relate to Galway. They include one on Dr Noel Browne and the building of TB sanatoria, including Merlin Park, in the mid-1950s, and a Welsh-made documentary on the scourge of emigration from Carna and other parts of the Gaeltacht. These films will be screened on Wednesday at 4pm.
This year’s Fleadh is focusing on female filmmakers with some 30 films directed by women directors being screened.
They include Deargdhúil: Anatomy of Passion, an Irish-language, subtitled film about the poetry of Máire Mhac an tSaoi. It’s directed by Australian Paula Kehoe, who has become a fluent Irish speaker since settling in the Connemara Gaeltacht some years ago.
The Fleadh will also focus on Finnish Cinema, which “like Ireland, boxes well above its weight when it comes to the international film scene”, according to Gar O’Brien.
Screenings will include topics from cave-diving and cheerleading in, to Sweden’s 17th century “queer Queen Kristina and her lady love”.
There’s a Fleadh showcase of the best cinema made in, by and about Galway; a set-list of the finest music documentaries from around the world, and a selection of the best in Short Films, New Irish Films, and World Cinema.
The subject of this year’s public interview in the Town Hall Theatre is director Jim Sheridan, whose CV includes My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, The Field and In America. That’s on Sunday, July 10, at 3pm in the Town Hall Theatre.
This year’s Actors’ Masterclass will be given by Ruth Negga, who is being tipped for an Oscar for her performance in Loving and critical acclaim for her role in the series Preacher. Screenwriter Kirsten Smith (Legally Blonde, 10 Things I Hate about You) will deliver the Screenwriters’ Masterclass.
For full details on screening, masterclasses, Q&As, panel discussions and musical accompaniments, go to galwayfilmfleadh.com
Significant state investment is required to address ‘shocking’ inequalities that leave cancer patients in the West at greater risk of succumbing to the disease.
A meeting of Regional Health Forum West heard that survival rates for breast, lung and colorectal cancers than the national average, and with the most deprived quintile of the population, the West’s residents faced poorer outcomes from a cancer diagnosis.
For breast cancer patients, the five-year survival rate was 80% in the West versus 85% nationally; for lung cancer patients it was 16.7% in the west against a 19.5% national survival rate; and in the West’s colorectal cancer patients, there was a 62.6% survival rate where the national average was 63.1%.
These startling statistics were provided in answer to a question from Ballinasloe-based Cllr Evelyn Parsons (Ind) who said it was yet another reminder that cancer treatment infrastructure in the West was in dire need of improvement.
“The situation is pretty stark. In the Western Regional Health Forum area, we have the highest incidence of deprivation and the highest health inequalities because of that – we have the highest incidences of cancer nationally because of that,” said Cllr Parsons, who is also a general practitioner.
In details provided by CEO of Saolta Health Care Group, which operates Galway’s hospitals, it was stated that a number of factors were impacting on patient outcomes.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
On the eve of completing his 150th marathon, an odyssey that has taken him across 53 countries, Loughrea’s Marathon Man has announced that he is planning to hang up his running shoes.
But not before Jarlath Fitzgerald completes another ten races, making it 160 marathons on the occasion of his 60th birthday.
“I want to draw the line in 2026. I turn 57 in October and when I reach 60 it’s the finishing line. The longer races are taking it out of me. I did 20 miles there two weeks ago and didn’t feel good. It’s getting harder,” he reveals.
“I’ve arthritis in both hips and there’s wear and tear in the knees.”
We speak as he is about to head out for a run before his shift in Supervalu Loughrea. Despite his physical complaints, he still clocks up 30 miles every second week and generally runs four days a week.
Jarlath receives injections to his left hip to keep the pain at bay while running on the road.
To give his joints a break, during the winter he runs cross country and often does a five-mile trek around Kylebrack Wood.
He is planning on running his 150th marathon in Cork on June 4, where a group of 20 made up of work colleagues, friends and running mates from Loughrea Athletics Club will join him.
Some are doing the 10k, others are doing the half marathon, but all will be there on the finishing line to cheer him on in the phenomenal achievement.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
