TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD
2h 4mins
7.30pm Phoenix
intro with Cecilia Peck
€15
Followed by festival closing reception in John Benny's Bar 10pm
Producers Panel - 'You got a question'
Cecilia Peck, Barbara Kopple, Ned Dowd & Anthony Wall
Phoenix Cinema - 12 noon
with funding from Bord Scannán na hÉireann/Irish Film Board
Anthony Wall on Dylan with screening of DYLAN IN THE MADHOUSE
12noon
Phoenix Cinema
€10Remarkably, Bob Dylan first visited Britain to take part in a BBC play.
It was the coldest winter on record: Britain was frosty and grey. Millions of milk bottles were buried in snow drifts, Cliff was number one, and there were two TV channels and three radio stations (all BBC). This was the world a 21 year old Bob Dylan entered when he visited London for the first time in December 1962, having never left America before.
Dylan had been spotted playing in a Greenwich Village club by enfant-terrible TV director Philip Saville. Saville felt he’d be perfect for the part of Lennie, the rebellious young lead in a high profile BBC drama Madhouse on Castle Street.
Despite his total lack of acting experience, Dylan was hired for a substantial fee, brought over to the UK and put up at one of London’s poshest hotels, The Mayfair. He was in London for three weeks. He introduced himself to the folk scene, which was a direct parallel of the one he’d left behind in New York. Both were leftish, vibrant, cultish affairs that would provide Dylan with the spring board to transform popular music singlehandedly.
As for the play, it exposed Dylan to Britain’s disturbing and surreal new genre of so called boarding house drama. Madhouse on Castle Street is set in a boarding house somewhere in England. One of the tenants, Walter Tompkins, has retired to his room and vows never to come out again. Dylan sang four songs including the first ever broadcast of Blowin’ in the Wind.
The BBC wiped the play in 1968 and it’s since become the Holy Grail of missing Dylan archive. Arena goes in search of that lost treasure, finding the rarest ever Dylan tracks along the way and exploring the bizarre, magical, not to say hilarious story of the first time Bob Dylan was let loose in London.
With contributions from director Philip Saville, Evan Jones who wrote the play, folk legends Martin Carthy and Peggy Seeger and supreme Dylan collector, Ian Woodward.
A LONESTAR PRODUCTION
DIRECTED BY ANTHONY WALL
PRODUCED BY MARTIN ROSENBAUM
Ned Dowd Masterclass with screening of “STATE OF GRACE”
2h 9mins
3.30pm Phoenix €12
Ned will discuss producing ‘State of Grace’ which was released in 1990 on this same day, September 14th. Time Out New York had this to say about the film: “this saga about Irish-American hoods in Hell's Kitchen and though sometimes monstrously violent, it's a hugely impressive piece of work for a young director previously known for his documentary U2 Rattle and Hum. The plot is familiar: youthful loyalty compromised, betrayal, kinship, ethnic rivalry, protection of territory, return to roots, revenge. More important is the visual impact of the film, which begins in a blur of motion and ends with a bloody St Patrick's Day shoot-out. But most impactful are the performances: the much underrated Penn as a prodigal returnee, Wright as the ghetto woman who moved up and away, Harris as the bossman, and - most astonishingly - Oldman showing the ferocity of a Joe Pesci, the aimlessness of a Mean Streets De Niro, and the sex-appeal of a pre-fight Mickey Rourke.”
FESTIVAL CLUB
Closing receptionJohn Benny Moriarty Bar
Dingle 10pm
