Forget Cannes... try a film festival with genuine craic
A SCARLET, floor-length gown slashed thigh-high might turn heads at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. But I’ll be packing an Aran sweater for Ireland’s Fastnet Film Festival at Schull.
Booking to fly Ryanair, in preference to private jet, will find me sweeping along the spectacularly rugged Wild Atlantic Way within an hour of landing at Cork, stopping only to refuel at Kinsale’s Fishy Fishy restaurant to savour their Taste Of The Sea platter before swinging along to that glittering showcase for bold, short film making: Schull.
West Cork is full of artistic creativity and the area is beautiful. Schull nestles on a natural harbour boasting a view to equal any in the Med. A mackerel sky sits over Roaring Water Bay and beyond to Fastnet rock. Fastnet is familiar from the comforting Shipping Forecast, falling between Shannon and Lundy in the Irish Sea, but I hadn’t known it has its own film festival.
Now in its ninth year, the festival’s motto is Our Village Is Our Screen. Hotels, village halls, pubs and cafes are transformed and retitled as pop-up cinemas: The Palace, The Adelphi, The Carlton and, yes it’s true, The O’Regal.
No networking is required to secure a place at a premiere here. Over a leisurely long weekend, about 300 short films from 30 countries are presented in this picturesque village of paint-box colours, all celebrating the power of storytelling and making music, a talent the Irish have in spades.
This is a small festival with a big heart where most of the events are free. Choose from a collection of innovative short films shown in roughly hourlong programmes and, with the luck of the Irish, your screening venue may be serving seafood chowder, Guinness or crab sandwiches. Result! You’ll never eat popcorn again.
No festival is complete without an opening party. But instead of bodyguards, paparazzi and supermodels, at Fastnet it’s a garden party overlooking the bay with music, wine and canapes.
Irish writer and director Juanita Wilson is screening Tomato Red, based on the novel of the same name by author Daniel Woodress, who wrote the searing Winter’s Bone, made into one of my favourite films.
I’m hoping Tomato Red will hit the same nerve and have a similar impact. You can keep Cannes and the thigh-high gowns. Mine’s the craic, a cagoule and a pint of Guinness.
This year’s Fastnet Film Festival takes place from May 24 to 28.