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| Friday 19th | 4.00pm | Cork Opera House |
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Poitín
Bob Quinn
Ireland | 2007 | 65mins | 35mm | Colour | Subtitled
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This year is the 30th anniversary of the making of Poitín, the first feature film made in the Irish language.
Poitín is rightly regarded as a classic of Irish cinema. Based on a story by Colm Bairead, it tells of an elderly poitín maker and his daughter who exact revenge on the two agents who cheat and then terrorise them. Although the story has a de Maupassant atmosphere, it is told with a light touch and has its comic moments.Poitín stars three of Ireland’s greatest actors, Niall Tobin and the late Cyril Cusack and Donal McCann, in their only appearance together on film. All the supporting cast are well known Connemara actors and the film was shot entirely in Connemara. Poitín was met by public outrage after its Irish television premiere on St. Patrick’s Day in 1979. Controversial for its defiantly unromantic depiction of the West of Ireland, Poitín is a welcome corrective both to touristic images and to the rural idyll suggested by the likes of The Quiet Man and Finian’s Rainbow.
The film’s negative went missing for many years until cinematographer Seamus Deasy (whose first feature it was) uncovered it in the vaults of Technicolor. Now Poitín has been digitally remastered and a new 35mm print produced - the original was on 16mm. A music score has been composed by Bill Whelan (composer of Riverdance). Originally there was no music used in the film - apart from one brief (and playful) interjection of Arabic music from a radio. The new version was premiered this summer at the Galway Film Fleadh, exactly thirty years after the film was shot in Connemara. Niall Toibin, the survivor of the trio of imported actors was guest of honour.
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