The San Francisco Irish Film Festival 2010

• This year’s theme: Irish Romance, and that’s the overanalyzed, undercommunicated, post-apocalyptic, Bollywood-dancing, rockabilly love-dueling, what-70-women-secretly-think-about-their-men kind of romance. Watch the event video trailer
• Opening Party: Thursday, Sept. 23th 2010 At Picaro Tapas Cafe 16th Street (opposite the Roxie).
• Opening: Thursday, Sept. 23th 2010
• Closing: Saturday, Sept. 25th, 2010
• Tickets: ($10) available at The Roxie box office and through ticketweb.com

The seventh annual San Francisco Irish Film Festival returns to the Roxie Theater in San Francisco’s Mission District on September 23 to 25 with its best line-up yet and a theme of romance. With “the most fumbling, indirect, over-intellectualized proposal ever secretly caught on camera” in the documentary The Bass Player, or what 70 Irish women think about their men in the multi-award-winning film His and Hers, we’re talking romance Irish-style. Forget that saccharine Hollywood nonsense.

As a special treat, four filmmakers will be present at question-and-answer sessions after the films. They are available for interviews before the event as well as in San Francisco from September 23 to 25.

In celebration of low-budget Irish independent filmmaking, the Festival will also be honoring one of the directors with a special New Director’s Award. See the Festival website schedule page for the dates and times of screenings, descriptions of movies, and links to movie trailers. Press copies of movies are available on request.

The Festival kicks off on Thursday, September 23 with A Film With Me In It. This black comedy, directed by Ian Fitzgibbon, won the Best Film award at the Istanbul Film Festival. The story follows two would-be filmmakers trying to cope with a mounting body count resulting from freak accidents they didn’t cause but, if discovered, will make them look like murderers. The film features standout comic performances by Mark Doherty, who wrote the script, and Dylan Moran.

Friday night brings back the ever-popular Magners & Shorts, where viewers can drink free Irish cider while watching the best of this year’s Irish short films. Moore Street Masala is Ireland’s first indigenous Bollywood-style jaunt that packs 300 dancers in the city’s iconic Moore Street market. The Ballad of Kid Kanturk tells of a bog-gothic love-duel between aging singer Slim Mannion, reborn rockabilly sensation Kid Kanturk, and the seductive rockabilly vamp caught between them.

Friday’s second movie is the post-apocalyptic drama One Hundred Mornings, which has received the Slamdance Jury Special Mention, IFTA Cinematography, and Workbook Project Discovery & Distribution awards in 2010. The story follows two couples hiding out in a lakeside cabin hoping to survive the crisis of a world falling apart. Facing dwindling resources and increasing danger, each person must make an unimaginable decision. Writer-director Conor Horgan will be at Saturday’s screening and says, “It’s said that you should write about what you know. You should also write about what scares you, and the world we show in One Hundred Mornings scares the hell out of me.”

On Saturday, three documentaries take three different looks at Ireland. Meeting Room tells the controversial story of the Concerned Parents Against Drugs movement from its emergence during Dublin’s 1980s drug crisis to its scandalous decline. Filmmaker James Davis will answer questions after the screening. The Bass Player: A Song for Dad, nominated for an Irish Film and Television Academy Award, follows filmmaker (and SF Irish Film Festival Director) Niall McKay, as he helps his elderly father Jim, a jazz bass player, return home to Ireland. Father and son revisit Niall’s tumultuous childhood with an abusive, unpredictable mother.

The festival closes with His & Hers, which is proving to be the most successful Irish documentary to date. Directed by Ken Wardrop, this intimate narrative chronicles the stories of 70 Irish women. From nine months to 90 years old, they talk about the Irish men in their lives.

Event Information:

Seventh Annual San Francisco Irish Film Festival
Thursday, September 23 to Saturday, September 25 2010
Roxie Theater
3177 16th Street (at Valencia Street)
415-863-1087, Roxie.com
Tickets: ($10) available at The Roxie box office and through ticketweb.com