The Letterfrack Film Society, Showing the best of world cinema in Connemara

The Letterfrack Film Society

We have been showing the best of World Cinema for the last 16 years in the Audio-visual Theatre of the Connemara National Park in Letterfrack, Co Galway. Our season runs from October to March each year. We have a fantastic selection coming up for Spring 2012. Two of the upcoming films were successful in the 2012 Golden Globe Awards: at the age of 82, Christopher Plummer came away with the award for Best Supporting Actor in "Beginners", while "Midnight in Paris" was nominated in four categories and won the Best Screenplay award for Woody Allen. We have 7 films this year in our Spring season, showing every Tuesday from February 21st until 3rd April.We look forward to seeing you there!

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Spring Programme 2012:

	Feb 21: Beginners This wonderful drama starring Christopher Plummer and Ewan McGregor explores how deeply funny and transformative life can be, even in its most serious moments. Beginners unfolds through two intertwined storylines of Oliver and his father, Hal: in the present day, Oliver grudgingly attends a Halloween party where he meets Anna, an alluring French actress. But even as their budding courtship progresses, Oliver finds himself constantly dwelling upon his recently deceased father’s last years. At the age of 75, shortly after the death of his wife, Oliver’s father Hal came out of the closet. Disregarding his advanced years and a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Hal gleefully embraced his senior bon vivant lifestyle: hitting the clubs, buying a new wardrobe, and, eventually, dating a new boyfriend half his age. Throughout the film, these two narrative strands subtly illuminate each other, as Oliver strives to reconcile his father’s exemplary lessons on hope, courage, and romance to his own cloistered life. Drawing upon autobiographical events, Beginners imaginatively explores the hilarity, confusion, and surprises of love.
	28 Feb: Cell 211 Juan Oliver is knocked unconcious during the prison tour on the day before he begins his new job as prison officer. He is rushed to the empty cell 211 and left to come around. Meanwhile, inmates of the high security wing break free and riots break out. When he awakes he realises he's trapped and has to pretend to be a new prisoner in order to survive... Engaging and intense, with striking performances by the cast, the film won several Goya Awards from the Spanish Academy, including Best Picture, Director, Actor and Supporting Actress.
	6 Mar: Parked Fred lives a quiet, isolated life in his car, having lost all hope of improving his situation. That all changes when he forms an unlikely friendship with Cathal, a dope-smoking 21-year-old with a positive attitude, who becomes his ‘neighbour’. Sharing laughs, and the hard times too, Fred and Cathal discover the simple, free pleasures of life. Cathal is determined to make Fred sort his life out, and it works. Fred modifies his car, beats the welfare system and makes a friend in Jules, an attractive music teacher who lives alone nearby. But Fred struggles with his pride to tell Jules about his ‘home’, and Cathal’s life is threatened by his escalating drug habit. As they grow closer, the influence of these three outsiders on each other will change their lives. Warm, funny and touching, Parked is a triumphant story of friendship, hope, and perseverance.
	13 Mar: Beautiful Lies After the success of Priceless, Pierre Salvadori reunites with Audrey Tautou (Coco Avant Chanel) in Beautiful Lies, a fresh and funny romantic comedy about a chatty hairdresser who concocts a plan to cheer up her mother who is suffering from a serious case of the blues after having been left by her husband. 30-year-old Emilie (Tautou) runs a hairdressing salon where she provides an endless stream of well-meaning advice to her clients and friends, but the only person she cannot seem to help is her own mother. Jean, a young man who works for Emilie, is secretly in love with her but a pathological shyness prevents him from declaring his feelings. Finally, unable to contain himself, he opens his heart in a passionate anonymous letter, but Emilie has other plans... Audrey Tautou is utterly captivating playing cupid in this intelligently written and tenderly directed delight.
	20 Mar: In a Better World A film about family issues placed in a broader social context, the title In A Better World reflects how much Bier and regular screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen long for one. Two preteen boys in Denmark become friends at school. One is the regular punching bag for the school bully; his father (brilliant performance by Mikael Persbrandt) is a non-violent doctor who treats the displaced in a sub-Saharan Africa refugee camp. The other boy is a brat who has lost his mother. His anger is displaced onto a social order he perceives as abusive, and he adopts the philosophy of preventive aggression.
	27 Mar: Midnight in Paris Two young Americans, who have been together since their school days and are to be married in the fall, head for a few days to Paris where Gil’s fiancée’s father has a business meeting. While Inez and her mother are overjoyed by a chance meeting with another couple, and together they discover the tourist gems of the city and its luxury stores, Gil soaks up the mysterious magic of places where his most admired authors once experienced “a movable feast.” He feels that in Paris he will find the inspiration that will help him exchange his success as a Hollywood screenwriter for the courage to be a novelist. But his road to discovery comes with an unexpected twist, and at the journey’s end Gil discovers what he truly wants from life. In his new romantic comedy, the American filmmaker expresses his love for a city that he considers, after New York, the most beautiful in the world. “Of course I’m partial to New York because I was born there and grew up there, but if I didn’t live in New York, Paris is the place I would live,” Allen says. “Somebody else could come and shoot Paris in a completely different way. I want to present it my way, projecting my own feelings about it.”
	3 Apr: My Afternoons with Margueritte This is the uplifting story of one of those chance encounters that can radically change the course of your life. Germain (Depardieu) is a large, unmarried and almost illiterate man in his fifties. Margueritte is a tiny elderly woman with a passion for the written word. The only thing the two have in common is a shared fondness for pigeons. When Germain happens to sit beside Margueritte on a park bench and she reads him extracts from her novels, an unlikely friendship develops. Under Margueritte's tutelage, Germain discovers a love of literature and with it, a wisdom that confounds his friends at the bistro, who have always treated him like an idiot. As Margueritte begins to lose her eyesight, Germain sees an opportunity to use his love for this sweet and mischievous grandma to improve both his own life and hers.