The acclaimed Cork Film Festival, now in its 61st edition, started last Friday and comes to a close this Sunday. Before it all wraps, there are some great events and screenings in store, so if you’re down that side of the country this weekend, here’s some stuff worth checking out.
Doc Day is the biggest event of the weekend. It is a new flagship Documentary Industry Day and takes place on Friday 18th November from 11am to 5pm. It features panels, case studies and talks from major Irish and international industrial figures.
Aimed at directors, producers, writers, and anyone serious about growing their career in documentary, Doc Day’s presentations on festival programming, the changing landscapes of commissioning and distribution, and unique productions are unmissable.
Speakers include filmmaker Kim Longinotto, Luke W Moody (Director of Film Programming, Sheffield Doc/Fest), Laure Bonville (Documentary programmer, BFI London Film Festival), Oli Harbottle (Head of Distribution, Dogwoof), and Mike Lerner (prod./dir., Roast Beef Productions, The Russian Woodpecker, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer).
The conference is taking place at the River Lee, which is the principal accommodation partner of the festival. The luxury hotel is Irish-owned and part of the Doyle collection. The River Lee also presents the audience award during the festival.
Another big event on this weekend is fLux. Taking place at St Fin Barre’s Cathedral on Friday evening, the event is a multi-media experience featuring electronic music, live performance of the newly restored organ, a light show, and 3D mapped projections.
A selection of national and international shorts, features and documentaries will be also screened over the weekend.
Some of the films screening include The Birth of a Nation, a big winner at last year’s Sundance which is based on the life of American-born slave Nat Turner. It screens on Friday and later that evening, a unique stop-motion animation about American soldiers in the final days of World War I, called And We Were Young, is also screening.
Highlights on the Saturday include a documentary about Mumford & Sons, as well as Between Land and Sea, a documentary about Ireland’s surfing community from the director who was behind 2014’s critical hit Unbreakable: The Mark Pollock Story.
If you want to check out something more classical, two iconic films will be shown during the day on Sunday – Gene Wilder starrer Blazing Saddles is showing at 12pm and Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard is screening at 3pm in the Everyman Theatre.
Aside from the Awards ceremony (which is free to attend), Sunday will also see the screening of Life, Animated, a multi award-winning doc about a boy with autism who learns to communicate through Disney movies. The festival’s closing film is the highly-anticipated A United Kingdom, starring Rosamund Pike and David Oyelowo, about an interracial marriage which comes under fire.
For bookings and more information, see corkfilmfest.org