Club Scannáin - Film Clubs

Ballina Arts Centre

Ballina Civic Offices, Arran Place, Ballina, Co. Mayo.

T: 096 73593

E: ballinaartscentre@gmail.net

W: www.ballinaartscentre.com

 

Let the Right One In (Dir: Tomas Alfredson, Sweden, 2008)

Tuesday 6th April, 8pm

Starring: Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar and Henrik Dahl

Let the Right One In is an angular and lusty teen horror movie based on John Ajvide Lindqvist’s bestseller in which lonesome 12-year-old Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) becomes smitten by a young, female vampire named Eli (Lina Leandersson). After initiating an adorable romance in the snow-coated forecourt of their glum housing complex, they soon realise that both of them are baying for blood. He’s privately fantasising about stabbing up his schoolyard tormentors with a pocket knife and she needs to sate an appetite for the red stuff that keeps her from dropping dead… again.

Alfredson’s light, subtle direction makes the courtship elements all the more tender and the staccato scenes of extreme violence all the more disturbing. The bashful, impassive hue of the central performances also gives the film an anything-could-happen edge: feelings of anger and desire don’t provoke hysterical outbursts but remain bewildering within the minds of the juvenile cast. Adm: €7 (seasonal membership rates available).

 

Tony Manero (Dir: Pablo Larrain, Chile, 2008)

Tuesday 20th April, 8pm

Santiago, Chile, 1978: with the country in the grip of Pinochet's oppressive dictatorship, Raúl Peralta (Alfredo Castro), a man in his 50s, indulges in the fantasy that he is disco king Tony Manero, John Travolta's white-suited, fleet-footed ladies' man in Saturday Night Fever. Inspired by repeated viewing of the film at his local fleapit cinema, he forms and choreographs a low-rent dance troupe, performing at a rundown bar on the outskirts of the city. His fantasy is already becoming a sinister fixation, as he seems incapable of keeping nefarious activities in check, when national television announces a Tony Manero impersonating competition.Raúl cannot be distracted from the prize he feels pre-destined to win, even when the murderous secret police start to pay interest in the inhabitants of the bar and his fellow dancers. Tony Manero is at once an absurd black comedy; an unsettling thriller with surprising twists; a confrontation of dark days in Chile's recent history; and a horribly believable, realist portrait of obsession. Adm: €7 (seasonal membership rates available).

 

 

LINENHALL ARTS CENTRE

Linenhall St, Castlebar, Mayo. 

T: 094 9023733

E: linenhall@anu.ie

 

Tuesday 27th April @ 8.00pm

Blue Eyelids (Párpados azules)

Mexico  2007  98mins    Spanish with English subtitles

Director: Ernesto Contreras

Starring: Cecilia Suárez, Enrique Arreola, Ana Ofelia Murguía, Tiaré Scanda, Luisa Huertas

Directed with maturity and delicacy, Ernesto Contreras’ charming debut feature gently explores solitude and the quest for love between two needy but awkwardly independent Mexico City singles. Self-contained twentysomething Marina works at a uniform factory, and one day wins a trip to a beach paradise. But she doesn’t have anyone to go with her. That is, until Victor unexpectedly presents himself to her as an old friend from high school, an old friend she doesn’t remember. But then she doesn’t seem to remember much as she quietly wanders through her daily life as it passes her by. Original and cliché-free, this often touching and occasionally very funny film is underpinned by a great central performance by Cecilia Suárez and Enrique Arreola.Adm.: 5 euro plus Film Club membership

 

Tuesday 13th April @ 8.00pm

Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country                                                                   

Denmark 2008  85mins  Language: Burmese / English

Director: Anders Østergaard                

Director Anders Østergaard brings us close to Burma’s video journalists in this remarkable documentary. Filming covertly, and risking their lives in the process, the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) smuggle their footage out of the country and have it broadcast back into Burma via satellite, providing free images to international media outlets. When, in September 2007, Buddhist monks lead a massive uprising, VJ Joshua is thrown into the role of tactician, coordinating a group of undercover reporters. With foreign TV crews banned from entering the country, it is left to Joshua and his crew to document the events, keeping the revolution alive on TV screens all over the world. - Irish Film Institute

Adm.: 5 euro plus Film Club membership

 

 

WESTPORT FILM CLUB

Westport Cineplex

7th of April 2010 at 8.45 pm

Sin Nombre 

Revisiting the same thematic and geographical territory as in his 2004 short Victoria Para Chino, it is with uncompromising crudity that director Cary Fukunaga depicts the brutal reality of Mexican gang culture in this acclaimed drama thriller.

The roughness of street life blends delicately with the infinite hopelessness of the people in La Bombilla, a location along the railway tracks where illegal immigrants stow away while waiting for a train to arrive to take them to a new, better life in the US . Among the many people hiding alongside the gang-patrolled tracks is Sayra, a Honduran girl traveling with her father and brother. Eventually, they manage to hide on top of a train, but pelting rain and savage robbers makes traveling all but pleasant.

Skillfully shifting genre modes, blending western and thriller tropes, Sin Nombre still remains a deeply understated film, characterized mainly by the respect it shows the characters it portrays. There are no grand gestures here as the characters search for, not so much a dream, as a mere chance of survival. - Elina Weissman / Stockholm Film Festival 2009