Totally Dublin

From today until to Sunday some of the most innovative artists, performers and film-makers will converge on Dublin’s Smithfield for the Darklight festival, an annual celebration of art in its various forms. Here Programme Director Derek O’ Connor introduces this year’s diverse schedule of events, explains how the festival has progressed in the decade since its establishment and why it’s more significant now then ever.

In what ways do you think the Darklight festival has evolved in the years following its foundation?

I think that it’s constantly evolving. We’re always looking forward. This year we’ve given the festival the title of ‘New World Order’ which refers to a comment Gordon Brown made earlier this year in one of his speeches about how the political and financial landscape has drastically changed. Similarly the landscape of film, art and performance has taken a huge shift. Every year there are new trends and we’re constantly trying to stay ahead of the crowd and gage what they will be.

Most festivals tend to focus on one particular discipline but Darklight celebrates the convergence of art, film, theatre, performance and technology making it the only festival of its kind in Ireland. Why do you think it’s important for us to have a festival like this?

I think that’s the answer. It’s an important festival because it’s the only one of its kind. People always ask us what exactly Darklight is and that’s a question we ask ourselves all the time. It’s mainly about celebrating art, film, technology and their convergence. We’re very dedicated and passionate about we do and the festival is a way of bringing people together who are driven by a similar enthusiasm. A key focus of ours is to encourage creativity wherever possible. We’re a very artist-friendly event. We’re interested in the successful artists of the modern age but also try to encourage and support the next generation of artists. Darklight is as much about the people who aren’t as well known and providing them with a platform to showcase their work.

Do you think that the festival caters for a very specific community or that it’s accessible for all?

I think in the past there was some concern that it might be seen as something for the cool kids. If anything we cater for geeks of all ages and sizes. We’re actually having a geek lounge on Saturday which is basically a chance for media, technology and design enthusiasts to hang-out and get excited about new applications and technologies. It would be inclusive if we confined ourselves to traditional spaces but we take art and film out onto the streets. We’re trying to reach out to everyone. I think ultimately the festival appeals to anyone who’s into fun, interesting and experimental work. We get the most eclectic crowd imaginable, where film-makers and artists are part of the audience as well as contributors.

Darklight is a festival concerned with cutting-edge technology and its incorporation into various artistic mediums. How do you think that advances in technology have affected the festival?

Ultimately what technology provides is freedom for people to create imaginative work un-tethered by financial constraints. Technology is no longer a means unto itself. People are using it to create new and exciting work. There’s a whole new generation of artists who are constantly coming up with interesting artistic concepts and figuring out new ways to present them. We have created a forum where people can view and appreciate that work but we also try to showcase the new approaches to media and technology behind it, for example we’re showing a lot of shorts and animated film this year which there have been some incredible progressions in.

Darklight is all about innovation, experimentation and pushing at the boundaries. Are these things that you’ve tried to reflect in the programme that you’ve chosen?

I think so. We have two-time Turner prize nominee Willie Doherty doing an installation on one of the empty shop fronts. His piece is a commentary on urban living spaces and our relationship with them. The screenings of course are a core element but we’re also excited about our Straylight programme, which is the visual arts strand of the festival. Amanda Coogan, one of the most exciting visual artists around at the moment, will be working with an artist called Niamh Murphy and together they’re co-ordinating a performance weekender. It will be a really concentrated, intense session for people who are interested in performance art.

We’re also organising a series of forums and seminars this year, one of which is with Pirate Party member Anna Troberg who represents a very valid, forward-thinking ideology about the freedom of copyright, which is a topic that’s generated a lot of discussion of late. Una Mullally is doing a pop culture seminar which we’ve called Has pop eaten itself? It’s about how pop culture has accelerated and morphed to the point that there’s no reality or authenticity in it anymore.

We’re also showing an REM film that was shot live in Dublin’s Olympia theatre by Vincent Moon. He’s famous for organising jam sessions in really strange places. He once got The Arcade Fire to do a show in a lift. It’s a fantastic concert movie.

The centre-piece of the festival is Niall Sweeney’s spectacular show Revolver on Saturday night and it’s performance-based which has never been the case before with a main event.

In the middle of all of this is our main international guest, Mark Romanek. He’s a hugely influential film-maker who has done features such as One Hour Photo, but his music videos like Johnny Cash’s Hurt and Jay Z’s 99 Problems are also stunning. His work is truly as good as that medium gets. We’re doing a film-making session with him, a general Q&A and retrospective of his career so far where we’ll show his greatest work.

Why did you decide to change locations this year?

Normally the festival is more Dublin-wide. We decided to pool our resources and concentrate our efforts on one place this year. What’s interesting is that Smithfield was originally intended as one thing and now has become another. The area was a bright, shining paragon to Celtic Tiger Ireland but we’re in a post-boom phase now and because of the cheap rent and available space there it’s become a haven for artists. There’s this curious dynamic to the district. I think it’s in a fantastic state of flux at the moment and we’re seizing that moment.

Research has shown that people embrace artistic mediums such as the cinema and theatre for escapism in times of economic instability. Do you think that the success of Darklight and other celebrations of the arts is a testament to that fact?

I think that financial success doesn’t necessarily correlate with creativity. The last ten years have been one of the most inspired and creative times in Irish history. The next couple of years will be very interesting because of the current political and financial extremities. I think the reaction to what’s happening will be a swell of creativity in Ireland. There’s very little money to be made in artistic endeavours so the people who pursue them will be involved purely for love of the work. It’s an interesting time, a tough time but we have to try and derive some positives and I think one positive is that people will be inspired and create great work.

For more Darklight coverage, including an interview with savage Savage director, Brendan Muldowney, have a look here.

Words Aoife O’Regan

It appears that there may be some substance behind recent rumours that Lars Von Trier’s ‘Antichrist’ is to be made-over in computer game format. The film has inspired widespread division with many hailing it as the eccentric Danish director’s finest achievement to date, while others condemn its appalling misogyny.

Evidently aiming to cash-in on the publicity generated by the controversy surrounding the film, game developers Zentropa have announced their bizarre intentions via Danish website Politiken. The game, to be entitled ‘Eden’, is being likened to a night-marish version of ‘Myst’ that challenges the player to confront their darkest desires and fears. William Dafoe has agreed to lend his voice to the project which is still in the early stages of development and reportedly being undertaken by ‘Hitman’ series writer Morten Iverson. Eden will be released pending the approval of the finished product by Mr Von Trier himself, who is allegedly an avid computer gaming fan.

A zealous Antichrist review here.

This week the IFI pays tribute to one of the most pivotal periods in the history of cinema, the French New Wave. The movement, this year celebrating its 50th anniversary, began as a reaction against the generic, creatively stagnant content that had become pervasive in Hollywood cinema. The interests of famed New Wave directors such as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Goddard lay in the condemnation of the practices that had come to dominate cinema as a whole through radical stylistic innovation. Truffaut’s semi-autobiographical ‘The 400 Blows’ is the perfect manifestation of this aim, and is allegedly the film that initiated the entire movement. As a young boy in working-class Paris Antoine struggles with parental neglect and victimization at school, eventually resorting to delinquency to fill the void. ‘The 400 Blows’ is an interesting portrait of how anti-social behaviour is shaped that still manages to be quite jovial despite its bleak content. Antoine’s is more than just characteristic attention-seeking behaviour, but a rebellion against what he perceives to be a grave injustice in society.       

 The film contains many of the hallmark features of French New Wave cinema that have endured to contemporary times, including a preoccupation with the expressive potential of the face. The inability of words to communicate efficiently is an idea that also frequents and long, lingering shots of the characters aspire to demonstrate that unspoken sentiments are far less restrictive. While the experimental techniques employed are not as instantly recognizable as in the later New Wave work, what does link these films is a very prominent rejection of classical cinematic form. The extensive festival programme offers an opportunity to watch this notion evolve through ten key films, which created an immeasurable influence that still reverberates in the film world. 

And the rest? The programme still has some of New Wave’s most iconic films to come.

Paris Belongs To Us (Paris nous appartient)                            July 11^th 2.20 p.m.
Vivre sa vie                                                                                      July 11^th 5.00 p.m.
Last Year in Marienbad  (L’Année dernière à Marienbad)       July 12^th 2.30p.m.
The Girls (Les Bonnes femmes)                                                   July 12^th 5.10pm
Jules and Jim (Jules et Jim)                                                         July 18^th 2.40 p.m
Contempt (Le Mépris)                                                        July 19^th 1.00 & 7.00 p.m.
Band of Outsiders (Bande à part)                                               July 25^th 3.00 p.m.

From the Bic pen of Aoife O’Regan

Is it better to live with a bullet lodged in your brain, even if it means you might drop dead any time? Or would you rather have the bullet taken out and live the rest of your life as a vegetable? Are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes? Is scrap metal worth more than landmines? Can you get drunk from eating waffles? Can a woman fit inside a refrigerator? What’s the human cannonball world record?
Confused? Yeah, me too. But supposely the latest creation, Micmacs a Tire-Larigot, from french cinema’s favourite, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, is a return to form after a brief hiatus which saw him delve into the world of epic cinema with his war themed A Very Long Engagement. The synopsis above seems to reference his two celebrated works Delicatessen and Amélie, pre empting similar success perhaps? Swapping Audrey Tautou for Dany Boon (he’s big in France), from what I can gather from the trailer the story surrounds some bloke who has been shot in the head. The trailer is in French, donc si vous ne le parlez pas il vous semblera plus confondre que le premier paragraph .

They seem to have the longest lasting love affair in Hollywood, and are currently midway through filming a dark and gloomy version of Alice in Wonderland. However, they’ve already made plans for a project once Alice has found her way back out the rabbit hole - a feature-length remake of the 60s TV show Dark Shadows. A script is in the works as we speak and Johnny is said to be “very excited” as he’s been a fan since early childhood. Don’t hold your breath though, Alice is unlikely to hit cinemas until mid 2010, so Dark Shadows could be another 2 years away.

Go to the very hub of Dublin film here.

In a highly presumptuous move (even by his standards), Quentin Tarantino has announced plans to jump onboard the bandwagon of the recent Hollywood trend towards origins tales. His latest film ‘Inglorious Basterds’ has not even enjoyed its eagerly awaited Cannes premiere yet and director Tarantino is already busily planning a prequel. ‘I have a half written prequel ready to go if this movies a smash’ he told The New York Times recently. The story we are told would expand upon a subplot featured in the first film. The always over enthusiastic director even goes so far as to suggest that his characters could take on the Ku Klux Klan once finished with their exploits in Europe. This is of course not the first time the director has threatened to tell the back-story of a character. His half baked intentions to create a ‘Pulp Fiction’ by-product featuring John Travolta’s character Vincent Vega came to nothing, presumably while Tarantino was off on another tangent.

A trailer for your viewing pleasure:

Francis Ford Coppola, famed director of “The Godfather” series, will present his new film Tetro at the festival which begins tomorrow as part of the “Directors Fortnight” which differs from the official programme. Tetro stars Vincent Gallo, who has recently been seen in the summer campaign for H&M, as the films name sake which tells the tale (some are surmising is somewhat autobiographical) of a fractious family with an omnious father and two brothers now reunited in Argentina where the drama then unfolds as past rivalries are relived. See the trailer for yourself:

More of our film scribblings over here.

Tetro’s official website, on the other hand, is over there.

Universal Pictures have made plans to resurrect the children’s film ‘Drop Dead Fred’. In a move that has divided original ‘Fred’ fans the world over they have announced the decision to cast flamboyant British comedian and notorious ladies man Russell Brand in the titular role of the troublesome imaginary friend, replacing UK comedian Rik Mayall (of ‘Bottom’ fame).

This news is the latest in a recent Hollywood trend towards remaking the nostalgic films of our childhoods. The early 90’s film tells the story of Lizzie, who loses her job and husband in the space of an hour and reluctantly returns to her parent’s home. It is there that she is reunited with Fred, a fictitious character she created during her childhood and whose attempts to help her out make life extremely difficult. The original failed to set the box office alight and was critically panned but developed a cult following in the years following its release.

Brand’s foray into acting includes a string of recent film appearances with parts in ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall‘ and ‘Bedtime Stories‘ with Adam Sandler. The news comes hot on the heels of recent rumours that Brand will play Captain Jack Sparrow’s brother in the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean 4. As his star appears to be very much on the ascent stateside, it is hoped that funny man Brand can successfully breathe new life into the role. The film we are told will not strictly adhere to style of the original. The plan is to create something in a similar vein to Tim Burton’s darkly comic ‘Beetlejuice’. Dennis McNicholas, a long-time writer on Saturday Night Live will pen the new script. The question remains whether or not this film actually warrants a remake. No word yet on whether or not Brand’s hair was a deciding factor in his casting.