This year's Mid Ulster Film
Festival, which runs this weekend at An Creagán, is packed with more than 50 films plus entertainment and workshops over the course of the three-day event.
Last week saw the coming together in Manu's Creperie in Omagh of sponsors funders, press and invited guests to preview what looks like the best line-up of features, documentaries and shorts from all over the world, to ever have been shown in the Mid Ulster area.
An Creagán is a fantastic venue situated in a wood halfway between Omagh and Cookstown. It is transformed into a film village for the duration of the festival and is a wonderful 'homely' event.
The Opening Gala this Friday evening at 7.30pm will see the great and the good of the Irish film industry in attendance, including one of Omagh's famous actors, Gerard McSorley. Stephen Rea is also expected to attend.
Features at the festival include the world premiere of Transformers – The Movie and the European premiere of 'Proud' which tells the story of the crew of the USS Mason, the only African-American sailors to take a warship into combat during WW II. The Last King of Scotland tells the tale of a Scottish doctor on a Ugandan medical mission who becomes irreversibly entangled with one of the world's most barbaric figures: Idi Amin. 'Bobby' focuses on the ordinary people whose lives intersected in the hours leading up to the death on June 5, 1968 of Senator Robert F Kennedy.
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Documentaries include With Much Love and Kisses, from Russia, about the Slovetskii Islands where in 1937 more than 1,000 famous philosophers, scholars and writers spent the last days of their lives before being taken to the mainland and executed. However, their letters were preserved by a miracle.
Shorts not to be missed are The Undertaker, Missing Jib, Boletos por Favor and Victor and the Machine. Local shorts include Shadow on the Sun by Ronan Kelly, a young filmmaker from Sixmilecross who is now resident in Spain; Messages for Maria by Chris Baugh from Omagh and Missing Link, a sci-fi written and directed by Cecilia McAllister and produced by Bronagh McCartan.
Other entertainment includes a film festival Pub Quiz and a Karaoke based on popular theme tunes 'Filmoke.'
Workshops at this year's festival are filling up fast, but there are still a few places available on Barry Devlin's Art of Scriptwriting Workshop which is a one-day workshop held on Saturday from 10.30am. Barry, a founder member of seminal Irish group Horslips, is back by popular demand as his workshops at previous festivals were hugely oversubscribed.
New York writer and director Mary Pat Kelly will attend the festival and introduce her film 'Proud.' She will be accompanied by Lorenzo DuFau, a World War II veteran of the USS Mason, about whom the film is based. They will then give a seminar on Sunday, May 6 at 2pm about the making of the film 'Proud', (produced by Ally Hilfiger), Mary Pat will also discuss some of the challenges women filmmakers face.
Mary Pat Kelly made her feature film debut in 2005 with 'Proud' starring Ossie Davis and Stephen Rea (Castle Hill and Lionsgate – see proudthemovie.com). The movie, the last to star Ossie Davis (Lorenzo DuFau), tells the story of the crew of the USS Mason, the only African-American sailors to take a warship into combat during WWII. Their first foreign port was in Derry where they received a warm welcome. An African-American newspaper of the time carried this headline 'Irish first to treat US Mason crew as Americans.'
Mary Pat has had a distinguished career as a documentary filmmaker and author. Her documentary and book, Home Away From Home: The Yanks in Ireland, with Walter Cronkite (1993) played to acclaim on over 300 PBS stations, as did her earlier program, To Live For Ireland: The John Hume Story, narrated by Mike Farrell. It was nominated for an Emmy and was winner of the Special Jury Prize at the San Francisco International Film Festival.
* Full details of the film festival can be
viewed at www.midulsterfilmfestival.com
and also on Page 11 of The Scene.
