As some of you will know Killruddery Film Festival is now a biennial event and will be held this year in September. Over the coming months we will be announcing some exciting guests and programming and will be filling these pages with news about classic film, looking back at the highlights of past festivals and much more, so please keep an eye out here and at Killruddery’s facebook page.
If you are interested in becoming involved with Killruddery Film Festival we would love for you to get in touch with us. You can contact Cathrine Agnew our production manager at cathrine@killruddery.com or call 01 2863405.
The 2011 festival was held in early March. Despite the freezing cold weather we we delighted to have sold out screenings and some really special events.
Kevin Brownlow was in attendance and he selected a number of wonderful film for our audience that included La Roue (1922) which runs for a challenging 273 minutes and Seventh Heaven a charming love story that would warm the coldest of hearts. Our director in 2011 was Daniel Fitzpatrick and he presented a programme of early avant garde masterpeices which were made even more beautiful by the musical accompaniment of Stephen Horne.
In collaboration with the IFI we showed a series of Lost Children’s Films from the archive which included a film called Seamus (1959) that we have had many inquires about since.
Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray were good enough to allow us to show A 19th Century Magic Lantern Spectacular in their wonderful venue. This was an example of the very earliest form of cinematic storytelling and an event that none who were in attendance will forget.
We were delighted in 2010 to have a number of wonderful guests that included Kevin Brownlow, Stepehen Horne, Matt Soller-Zeitz, Rebecca Miller and John Boorman. We screened a number of wonderful films including Sita Sings the Blues, The Paralax View, Ingeborg Holm and The Wind.
In 2010 we experimented with 2 screening venues putting the Cinebus in the Haggard. This was terrific in that it allowed us to screen more films but people found making the choice of what film to watch very difficult and so in subsequent years we have chosen not to screen films against one another.
We had a series of artist films curated by Eilis Lavelle from Mermaid Arts Centre that took advantage of a variety of spaces within Killruddery to add to the artists’ work. We also had Irish artist Jennie Moran in residence for the weekend with her work A Corner of the World. Her work presented specially considered gestures for the audience, each one designed in response to particular films being screened.
2009 was the inaugral year of the Film Festival. It grew out of a series of screenings curated by Killruddery’s Creative Director Fionnuala Ardee and Irish film director Andrew Legge. The popularity of these screenings convinced them that there was an appetite for a silent film festival in Ireland. In 2009 silent film was the sole focus of the festival and in later years the remit has expanded but the importance of quality silent film to the festival remains.
The first film that the festival ever screened remains one its most popular. Down Wicklow Way is a compendium of archival footage curated by Sunniva O’Flynn from the Irish Film Archive which features the area around Killruddery. Our audience that night included some of the people featured and their families, it was a real privilege to show it.
We also screened a wonderful documentary called Grass that has informed the theme for the 2013 festival. It tells the story of a persian tribe of 50,000 people who travel across a mountain range every year to grazing grounds carrying all their possessions, animals and all their families. It is a remarkable and beautiful film.
