Six IFB docs to screen at Stranger Than Fiction
Six Irish Film Board funded feature-length documentaries will screen at this years Stranger Than Fiction documentary film festival, which takes place this weekend from Thursday 13th September- Sunday 16th September at the Irish Film Institute, Temple Bar.The festival, now in its sixth year, will open with THE UNDERTAKING which was directed by Cathal Black, on Thursday 13th September at 8.45pm. The film profiles the life of the American-based undertaker and poet Thomas Lynch, whose family hails from Moveen, Co. Clare and who was the primary inspiration for the HBO television series Six Feet Under. The documentary looks at life and death through Lynch's eyes.
On Friday 14th September at 1.00pm, Barrie Dowdall's EXILE IN HELL will screen. This documentary uses dramatic reconstructions to tell the story of Monaghan native, Alexander Pearse and seven other convicts who escaped imprisonment in the most notorious and brutal penal colony of the British Empire, in Tasmania in 1822, where they had to resort to killing and eating their companions in order to survive.
George Morrison's DUBLIN DAY is a lifelong work that celebrates James Joyce's Dublin in all its aspects. Joycean scholar and man of many words David Norris takes the audience on the 24-hour journey through James Joyce's ‘Ulysses', beginning and ending in the vicinity of Martello Tower overlooking Dublin Bay. The screening on Friday 14th September at 3.20pm will be followed by Q&A with George Morrison and David Norris.
This will be followed at 5pm by Nicky Gogan and Paul Rowley's MOSNEY which gives an insight into this former family holiday destination 30 miles north of Dublin which is now a holding centre for asylum seekers. Over three years, the filmmakers lived in Mosney gaining the trust of the residents allowing them to gain an unprecedented insight into lives spent in constant fear of deportation.
Ross Whitaker and Liam Nolan's debut documentary SAVIOURS, which recently picked up a prize at the Galway Film Fleadh, follows the lives of three boxers from the inner city Dublin boxing club over a two year period. It will screen on Saturday, September 15th at 12.00 noon.
Finally, A VERY BRITISH GANGSTER, will screen on Saturday at 5pm. Donal MacIntyre, Britain's best known investigative journalist, wrote, directed and produced this film which follows Dominic Noonan, a member of Britiain's most dangerous criminal families, over three years as he lurches from criminal trial to criminal trial.
Of the 24 feature-length documentaries which are to screen at the festival, eleven of the films featured are produced by home-grown talent.
For more information see www.irishfilm.ie