Irish Films and Events at IFI Stranger Than Fiction Film Festival
The world premiere of the Irish documentary Pyjama Girls will open the Stranger Than Fiction Film Festival next Thursday April 15th and will be followed by a weekend of documentary screenings and events in the Irish Film Institute (IFI) in Dublin.Along with Pyjama Girls, other IFB funded documentaries Broken Tail, A Prayer For the Wind Horse and Horses are also set to screen.
Pyjama Girls, directed by Maya Derrington, tells the story of the phenomenon of girls who wear pyjamas as daywear, and traces the intense and explosive micro-dramas of teenage life against the bleak backdrop of Dublin's inner city flats. The film was produced by Maya and Nicky Gogan for Still Films, who will both be in attendance for a Q&A session afterwards.
Two documentaries, Broken Tail and A Prayer For the Wind Horse, both produced by John Murray for Crossing the Line Films will also screen. Broken Tail directed by Colin Stafford-Johnson follows a wildlife cameraman as he travels through India, piecing together the extraordinary last journey of Broken Tail - the tiger he helped to transform into one of the worlds most famous before it fled and went on the run.
A Prayer For the Wind Horse was filmed on the Tibet-Nepal border as the director/producer John Murray follows Kharma Tshering, a man who is guiding he wife and children through one of the most hazardous human endeavours on the planet. They must escape their mountain home before the winter snows cut them off without enough food to survive until spring. On foot and yak, their journey is a race against time and weather.
Liz Mermin's Horses is a challenging documentary which follows three promising, charismatic horses over the course of one rather difficult racing year. Beautiful, unusual, and highly entertaining, the film combines the drama of a sports movie with the exploration of an ancient human obsession, offering a subtle critique of humanity's quirks on the side. It was produced by Aisling Ahmed for West Park Pictures.
Other documentaries screening over the weekend include Space Tourists, Videocracy and The Bill Hicks Story as well as a shorts programme.
A number of panel events are set to take place in Cinema 3 in the IFI on Friday April 16th two of which discuss ethics and funding.
Alan Maher, IFB Production Executive will chair the panel event The Honest Truth: Ethics in Documentary which will include Maya Derrington (Pyjama Girls) and Harvey O'Brien (TCD) as panelists discussing the issues that many documentary filmmakers face while trying to balance ethical responsibilities, creative narrative and practical considerations when making their films.
Alan will then be a panelist along with John Murray (Broken Tail) and Andrew Freedman (His & Hers) on a panel called Feature Docs: The Funding Process. Chaired by Martha O'Neill, this panel will take a detailed look at the funding process of documentaries.
The 9th IFI Stranger Than Fiction Film Festival is four days of documentaries that promise to entertain, inform and inspire. It takes places from the 15th-18th April.
To find out more about all the films that will screen over the weekend, when they are on and the events that are taking place, please see the Stranger Than Fiction programme on http://www.irishfilm.ie/