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| Timetable :: Programme :: Focus on Stephen Woolley |
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Focus on Stephen Woolley
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Cork Film Festival's Special Guest this year is acclaimed producer, and now director, Stephen Woolley. His directorial debut, Stoned, will be the Gala screening in Cork Opera House on Friday 14th and Steven will be present to introduce the film. |
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While Stoned is his first film as director, Woolley has spent a lifetime steeped in movies and filmmaking. He has produced over twenty films including his latest co-production, Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto. Over a twenty-year period Woolley has also exec-produced an additional twenty films. The release of Intermission and the shooting of Breakfast on Pluto has continued Stephen Woolley's long-term partnership with director Neil Jordan that began with The Company of Wolves in 1983. His collaborations with Jordan include The Actors, The Good Thief, the Oscar-nominated The End Of The Affair, Michael Collins, Interview With The Vampire which grossed over $250 million worldwide, and the Oscar-winning The Crying Game which grossed $65 million at the US box-office alone. Woolley also produced Jordan's Oscar-nominated Mona Lisa which won numerous international awards. The pair worked together again on High Spirits, The Miracle and The Butcher Boy. Woolley's career began in the summer of 1976 at the Screen on the Green cinema in London where he tore tickets, sold ice cream, projected films and helped manage the cinema. After working with The Other Cinema he programmed and subsequently owned his own cinema, The Scala, which won acclaim for its diverse, original and alter-native programming. During this period he also wrote film criticism, helped edit a film journal and produced a TV series for Channel 4 entitled The Worst of Hollywood. In the 80s in partnership with Nik Powell, he established Palace Pictures and acquired, marketed and distributed some 250 independent and European movies from Diva to When Harry Met Sally. During this period Woolley's producing career flourished, with the controversial Absolute Beginners, the dance comedy Shag. Scandal attracted phenomenal critical acclaim and box office success on both sides of the Atlantic. Other Palace productions included The Big Man (with Liam Neeson), A Rage in Harlem and The Pope Must Die. Woolley also acted as Executive Producer on director Richard Stanley's first and second features Hardware and Devil Dust, as well as Waterland starring Jeremy Irons, and Terence Davies' The Neon Bible. The Producer's Guild of America awarded him the 1992 'Producer of the Year' for The Crying Game. Woolley's first film with his previous company Scala Productions was Backbeat in 1993 and he subsequently executive produced The Hollow Reed, Fever Pitch, Purely Belter and Little Voice. In 2003 he filmed Intermission in Ireland starring Colin Farrell, Kelly MacDonald and Cillian Murphy. Woolley and his partner Elizabeth Karlsen have recently established their new company, Number 9 Films. While Woolley's primary involvement with Irish filmmaking has been as Neil Jordan's producer, he has also been responsible for films such as Divorcing Jack, The Last September, The Actors and Intermission. We believe that acknowledgement of this significant role in Irish filmmaking is appropriate and overdue and during his visit to the festival Stephen Woolley will be presented with a special award for his 'Contribution to Irish Cinema'. During each of the festival a Stephen Woolley produced film will be screened in the Gate Multiplex. While eight films are but a fraction of the number of films he has produced over a 20-year career, the selection is representative and each film a classic in its own right. On Saturday 15th we present "Stephen Woolley in Conversation with Michael Dwyer" in the Lecture Theatre of the Crawford Art Gallery at 12.00pm. Admission is free. |
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Sunday 9th | 12.00pm | Gate Multiplex Widely considered as one of the most original werewolf genre films, a surreal fantasy-horror story all of which takes place within the mind of a sleeping adolescent girl. Each story is filled with metaphors and similes in which the werewolves represent puberty, sexuality, masculinity, and sexual awakening.
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Monday 10th | 2.00pm | Gate Multiplex A pre-fame Beatles head for the seedy clubs of Hamburg in search of success. The band meet up with a group of trendy German beatniks, one of whom bass guitarist Stuart Sutcliffe falls in love with. Whilst best friend John Lennon can only watch, Sutcliffe has to choose between rock 'n' roll and a new life in Germany...
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Tuesday 11th | 2.00pm | Gate Multiplex An English bon-vivant osteopath is enchanted with a young exotic dancer and invites her to live with him. He serves as friend and mentor, and through his contacts and parties she and her friend meet and date members of the Conservative Party. Eventually a scandal occurs when her affair with the Minister of War goes public, threatening their lifestyles and their freedom. Based on the real Profumo scandal of 1963.
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Wednesday 12th | 2.00pm | Gate Multiplex A British soldier is kidnapped by IRA terrorists. He befriends one of his captors, who is drawn into the soldier's world. An unlikely kind of friendship develops between Fergus, an Irish Republican Army volunteer, and Jody, a kidnapped British soldier lured into an IRA trap by Jude, another IRA member. When the hostage-taking ends up going horribly wrong, Fergus escapes and heads to London, where he seeks out Jody's lover, a hairdresser named Dil. Fergus adopts the name "Jimmy" and gets a job as a day laborer. He also starts seeing Dil, who knows nothing about Fergus' IRA background. But there are some things about Dil that Fergus doesn't know, either.
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Thursday 13th | 2.00pm | Gate Multiplex A British soldier is kidnapped by IRA terrorists. He befriends one of his captors, who is drawn into the soldier's world. An unlikely kind of friendship develops between Fergus, an Irish Republican Army volunteer, and Jody, a kidnapped British soldier lured into an IRA trap by Jude, another IRA member. When the hostage-taking ends up going horribly wrong, Fergus escapes and heads to London, where he seeks out Jody's lover, a hairdresser named Dil. Fergus adopts the name "Jimmy" and gets a job as a day laborer. He also starts seeing Dil, who knows nothing about Fergus' IRA background. But there are some things about Dil that Fergus doesn't know, either.
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Friday 14th | 2.00pm | Gate Multiplex A pre-fame Beatles head for the seedy clubs of Hamburg in search of success. The band meet up with a group of trendy German beatniks, one of whom bass guitarist Stuart Sutcliffe falls in love with. Whilst best friend John Lennon can only watch, Sutcliffe has to choose between rock 'n' roll and a new life in Germany...
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Saturday 15th | 12.00pm | Gate Multiplex On a rainy London night in 1946, novelist Maurice Bendrix has a chance meeting with Henry Miles, husband of his ex-mistress Sarah, who abruptly ended their affair two years before. Bendrix's obsession with Sarah is rekindled; he succumbs to his own jealousy and arranges to have her followed. As the investigation progresses, we learn the reason for their separation.
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Sunday 16th | 12.00pm | Gate Multiplex An urban love story about people adrift and their convoluted journeys in the search for some kind of love. When the desperately insecure and emotionally inarticulate John breaks up with Deirdre to 'give her a little test' his plan backfires leaving her broken-hearted and him alone and miserable. Through chance and coincidence, their break-up triggers a roller coaster ride of interweaving escapades in the lives of everyone around them. Intermission presents a slice of life, the passage between breaking up and making up, exploring how our lives intersect, and the power we all possess to affect the lives of those around us.
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