Celtic Cult Cinema: Familial Grotesques

Friday, 6 July 2007

Czech Karlovy Vary A-List Film Festival's World Premiere of RTE Drama 'Damage' (2007) by 'Song for a Raggy Boy' (2003)'s Irish Director Aisling Walsh

Pictured above: Steaming geysers nourish the lush red rose hedges along the icy mountain river in the center of Karlovy Vary's castle-lined boulevards, where once a year Hollywood goes 'Bohemian' at the world's most fabulous A-List Film Fest.

And this year, it's party time for the Irish in Bohemia!

42nd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

Irish Director Aisling Walsh's new film Damage (2007) has its World Premiere at the 42nd Karlovy Vary Film Fest in the Czech Republic, which is among the top ten A-List Film Fests around the globe each year.

The Karlovy Vary IFF is one of the oldest film festivals of all time (the first year took place in 1946). For more than 40 years the festival was organized under the pressure of the political situation in socialist Czechoslovakia.

Aisling Walsh entered the public stage with her short films (such as Hostage, which was shot while she was studying at the National Film School and which won her awards at the Chicago Film Festival and the Tours Film festival).

She successfully made her way in television (with the serial Trial and Retribution, (1997), the homosexual love story Forgive and Forget, (2000), the story of emancipated mothers in the 1960’s, Sinners, (2002), and the drama Fingersmith, (2005), nominated for the BAFTA award, among others).

The talented director found success off the small-screen with the movie Joyriders (1989) and in particular with the dramatic tale of the fortunes of an idealistic teacher in a boy’s reform school set in 1930s Ireland, Song for a Raggy Boy (2002), in which the lead role was played by Aidan Quinn, and which was screened in competition at Karlovy Vary in 2003.

Colour, 35 mm
Ireland, 2007, 95 min
WP – World premiere
Section: Horizons

Director: Aisling Walsh
Screenplay: Aisling Walsh
Dir. of Photography: Simon Kossoff
Music: Niall Byrne
Designer: John Hand
Editor: Stephen O’Connell
Producer: Tristan Lynch, Dominic Wright
Production: Subotica Entertainment Ltd.
Contact: Subotica Entertainment Ltd.

Cast: Nathalie Press, Olivia Williams, Brendan Coyle, David O’Hara

Irish Director Aisling Walsh Damage (2007) Trailer (download from KVFF site):

Damage (1 x 90 mins or 2 x 1 hour) - produced for RTE - is a tense and pacy drama directed by Aisling Walsh (BAFTA-nominated Fingersmith, Trial & Retribution) in which a family's seemingly perfect life is shattered when the daughter, Emma, is raped by a family friend at her 21st birthday party.

With the key suspect released on bail, and dark family secrets coming to the fore, Emma's life begins to freefall until a chance meeting with her rapist convinces her that she needs to go to court and confront him before she can move on with her life.

Synopsis:

The Cahills would pass for a normal, happy, and all around successful family. Emma continues in the lifestyle of her father Aidan and mother Michelle, and begins trying to make it as a model.

Hardly anyone suspects that the husband and wife live separate lives, the most important people in which are actually Aidan’s secretary and their family friend John Ward, the father of their daughter’s friend Laurel.

The outward image of the socially well-positioned family changes however when the Cahills hold a party to celebrate their daughter’s 21st birthday in their home in an elegant Dublin suburb, and Emma is raped.

The girl refuses to silently reconcile herself with her traumatic experience. What chance does she have against her antagonist and his lawyers?

How will she find a way to come to terms with what happened to her? And will her friends and family be capable of banding together to help her?

This psychological drama by director Aisling Walsh tells of the dark shadows cast on the private and public image of one successful family.

Written and directed by Aisling Walsh, "Damage" stars Nathalie Press, Olivia WIlliams, David O'Hara and Brendan Coyle. International Sales are through Minotaur.

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

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American Twilight: Politics, Sex and TV Dinners

Friday, 25 May 2007

"One day, you'll win the Ohio Welsh Eisteddfod!" my Grandma shouted.

Pictured to the right, Salvation Army Cadet Wilma Jean Poorman Woods, the 'Heralds' class of 1947.

As the third day of January snow silently fell on the grey steel mill stacks in the valley below our wood-frame house in Youngstown, Ohio, out of my bedside transistor radio roared the rock band, Three Dog Night singing, ‘Joy to the World, All the boys and girls!’

It was 1971. I was a pimply and awkward adolescent with a high IQ and thick, industrial-strength geek glasses. Can you say ‘bully-target?’

My mother, the stern, under-nourished Salvation Army Officer, showed up at PTA meetings in a red cape and heels, looking like a character out of Guys and Dolls.

My older brother traded in his uniform and trumpet for leadership of the ghetto gang, the same year I decided it was safer in my family and neighbourhood to stay ‘in the closet’ for a few more years.

My plan was simple: I would wear nothing but hippie ‘Earth Shoes’ and blue jeans and get a macho, racing bike, to prove I was not a piano-playing, slide rule pushing gay-boy freak. I dropped subtle hints to my Mom, who was scrubbing floors by day and going to college by night, when she wasn’t leading prayer meetings.

The wintry day had arrived, my 12th birthday — I was sure I would get my bike. My Mom lead me into the tattered but immaculate, lace-covered living room, where my Welsh Grandma sat, next to the matriarchal sewing machine and family Bibles, to unveil my gift.

What’s this? Not an athletic, pump me up and make me butch bike? There, beside Grandma’s cane sat the Polish neighbour lady, Mrs. Szlowkowsky, sipping my Mom’s strong coffee, while smiling and extending her hand.

My church lady Mom and Mrs. Szlowkowsky waved their pasty white hands, like angels guarding the Biblical Arc of the Covenant, over a large, scratched case with broken brass snaps.

Barely breathing, I popped the snaps and caught a vivid vision of my inevitable years of coming persecution: A refurbished, 12-Bass ‘Festival’ Accordion.

The smell of musty billows and mouldy leather made me choke.

“Mrs. Szlowkowsky has agreed to give you lessons, if you agree to help her clean the choir loft at Saint Stanislaw’s Catholic Church on the corner of our street, once a week,” my mother said.

Mrs. Szlowkowsky smiled and offered me a plate of sliced walnut ‘placek’ (Polish coffee cake).

“It’s a ‘festival’ accordion; you’ll like that!” my Grandma said, as I thought to myself, “Whatever ‘festival’ means . . .”

"One day, you'll win the Ohio Welsh Eisteddfod!" my Grandma shouted.

“Thank you, Mrs. Szlowkowsky,” I heard myself saying, as I drifted away, not knowing this quirky, portable polka-playing keyboard was about to doom me to an adult life suspended somewhere between John Candy’s Rustbelt humour and Liberace’s Las Vegas tastes.

And since I mentioned ‘Candy’, have I told how I once knew this girl . . .