Exciting mix of documentaries and events lined up for the 8th Guth Gafa International Documentary Festival
Bord Scannán na hÉireann/ the Irish Film Board (IFB) is delighted to announce its support for the 8th Guth Gafa International Documentary Film Festival.
The festival returns this year in not one, but two locations, in Counties Donegal and Meath. It will get underway on Saturday, October 25th and Sunday October 26th in the unspoilt 17th century village of Malin, Co Donegal. Over the following weekend, November 1st and 2nd, it will move to the Headfort House, a hidden gem close to the historic village of Kells in Co Meath. The objective of bringing a second location to the festival is about creating opportunities for as wide an audience as possible to see human rights and social issue documentary films.
Irish films screening include Sinead O'Brien's Blood Fruit, financed by Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board (IFB). Blood Fruit examines the events which led to Dunnes Stores workers striking after taking a stance against the South African apartheid regime by refusing to register the sale of two Outspan grapefruits in the 1980s. The film was awarded Best Feature Documentary at this year's Galway Film Fleadh and has been nominated for Prix Europe 2014.
Audiences can enjoy stories from other Irish documentary talent, including Dieter Auner's Dreams of a Clown. Produced by Siún Ní Raghallaigh and with finance from the IFB, this film rolls between villages and towns in rural Ireland for nine months of the year where Circus Gerbola becomes a place outside the ordinary world.
Also screening is Neasa Ní Chianáin's The Stranger which paints a portrait of Neal McGregor, an English artist, died alone, prematurely, aged forty four, in a stone hen-house that he couldn't stand up in, where he lived without water, electricity or heating on a remote Irish-speaking island. Neal left behind volumes of beautifully illustrated notebooks and secret diaries and this beautiful enigmatic film pulls together the jigsaw of missing pieces and paints a portrait of a man living on the edge, physically and mentally and the insular island community he lived amongst. This sensitive film which screened earlier this year at the prestigious Locarno Film Festival was produced by David Rane for Soilsiú Films with funding from IFB and Creative Europe.
As well as the rich line up of feature length and short documentaries audiences can also partake in a number of workshops taking place in both Malin and Headfort.
The festival welcomes Susanna Helke, an award-winning Finnish documentary filmmaker who will host a workshop entitled Story and Reality: Directing Documentary Film which will examine one of the most important parts of the documentary process; access. Susanna will use examples of her work which sit somewhere between ‘fly-on-the-wall' and ‘directed'. This workshop takes place on Sunday October 26th in Malin, Co. Donegal.
Matthias von Gunten, a Swiss born filmmaker whose work is almost exclusively in the long format will share his experiences as a producer/director of feature length documentaries during a workshop entitled Big Issues Small Communities - The Power of Cinema Documentary to make a Difference. Topics up for discussion include budget implications, balancing his cinema verité style against the need for grandscale, the difficulties of successfully communities and closed societies, working on highly sensitive issues, and the potential to have a major impact though your film, while keeping a poetic approach. This workshop takes place on Sunday 2nd November at Headfort House, Co. Meath.
Guth Gafa is supported by Council of Ireland, Bórd Scannán na hÉireann/The Irish Film Board, The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Honeycomb - Creative Works, Fáilte Ireland, Donegal County Council, and Meath County Council.