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VIEWfinders Film Festival returns to Ballyvaughan with a Certified Copy


The VIEWfinders Film Festival, which opened in Ballyvaughan for the first time in March of this year, is to return for one special screening this month in preparation for a new schedule in 2013.
The festival, organised by Kerry resident and Burren College of Art graduate Róisín McGuigan, is due to return in August next year and not March as planned. In preparation there will be a special screening on Saturday, August 25, at 8pm in the Burren College of Art giving the public a flavour of what to expect in 2013.
The film being shown is Certified Copy and it is the first European film from Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami.
Speaking about the change of dates and about the festival itself Ms McGuigan said this special screening will help to mark the festival on the calendar ahead of next year’s event as well as being a nice thing to see during the inclement summer weather.
She explained the reason for the change in time is that some of the international film festivals happen early in the year and over the summer period so they would nearly be a year out of date by the time it came to screening them as part of The VIEWfinders Film Festival.
“The International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal happens in March and the Cannes Film Festival is in May so it is within our programming interest to move to August. The timing is good too as it comes after the Galway Film Festival and a number of other Irish film festivals,” Ms McGuigan outlined.
She said that following the initial festival screenings during March and April, there was a substantial amount of amount of interest in the festival and she was very pleased with the reaction.
“I was quite pleased with the turnout and, in fact, of the nine feature films screened, we had seven of the film directors who came to the festival. I had invited them to introduce their films and themselves. To have that was really great,” she said.
Ms McGuigan, who is also the chairperson of the Kerry Film Festival, explained her reasons for bringing the festival to Ballyvaughan and why she thinks the new festival date and the event itself will be suited to the people of Clare.
“I live in Kerry but I lived in Ballyvaughan when I was studying there. I just really felt the location is ideal with the set up in the Burren College of Art, it has a nice atmosphere and the village is lovely even though you feel remote from everything, you are just 40 minutes from Galway and 30 minutes from Ennis so it is very accessible,” she said.
Her vision for the festival is one focused on the medium of documentary and documentaries that predominantly focus on visual arts.
“It’s about showing documentaries from around the world, which wouldn’t get seen in other film festivals because it’s such a niche area. I brought it to the Burren College of Art because the venue is perfectly suited to the festival and there really is no other film festival in the Clare area,” Ms McGuigan continued.
Speaking about the film screening, she explained it is a narrative feature, rather than a documentary because during the festival, she was allocated a slot that focuses on the visual arts as a topic.
“Certified Copy was screened in Cannes in 2010 and I saw it there. It is such a great film and I didn’t want to make it a documentary for this one screening so I wanted to choose something that would be open to all interests, to broaden the audience.
“The film is set in Tuscany so it is also nice to have some sunshine even if it is on the screen. The film does talk about art and philosophy but it is about love and will appeal to a lot of people. This is something you wouldn’t get to see anywhere else. It is a film you will have to seek out and it has an interesting story,” she said.
The film stars Academy Award winner Juliette Binoche and William Shimell and is centred on two characters James Miller a middle-aged English art historian, whose new book Certified Copy deals with the nature of fakes, copies and artistic authenticity, and the unnamed ‘She’ is a gallery owner in an idyllic Tuscan town.
Meeting up after his book launch, their conversations and activities reveal fascinating and contentious opinions on originality in art, truth and authenticity, which bleed into more personal ruminations on love and beauty, and eventually on what happens to a relationship over time.
Tickets for the screening are available online or from 086 7393704.

 

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