13/10/2003

Swedish animation, a special screening of To Be and To Have, an introduction to the short film are all part of the film education programme at the 48th Cork Film Festival being held this week (October 12-19).

Partner to Cinedays 2003, the Cork Film Festival was inaugurated last night with the screening of Song For a Raggy Boy, starring Aidan Quinn. The event offers great opportunities for its core audience of young, educated and culturally aware people to enjoy, discuss and learn more about film.
This year, the festival programme offers Irish children from primary schools, aged between 7-11, the opportunity to discover Swedish animation films presented in association with the Swedish Film Institute. Youngsters aged between 12-18 will be able to attend ‘Meet the filmmaker’ post screening sessions, workshops exploring animation techniques, film appreciation seminars and classic film screenings on the representation of the adolescent in film. The films presented as part of the Education programme include Nicolas Philibert’s To Be and To Have, Alejandro Agresti’s Dutch-Argentinian co-production, Valentin [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Nicki Caro’s Whale Rider and Peter Weir’s Witness.
To cater for its 30,000 crowd of film lovers who attend the event every year, Cork will also offer the world premiere of David Gleeson’s Cowboys and Insects, a special tribute to John Hurt, an international competition of eight short films and forty new Irish shorts competing for the Jameson Short Film Award, a special section called Europe in Shorts. As part of the lead-up to 2005 –the year of the festival’s 50th anniversary and the celebration of Cork as the European Capital of Culture - there’ll be a programme of shorts called City Symphonies. The festival will close on the 19th with the screening of David Blair’s The Mystics for a star studded event featuring the best of Irish acting talent.

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