I am Love/ Lo Son L'Amore'.

Wednesday 8th December 2010 at 8pm Brogans Inn Bandon.

The next screening of the Bandon Film Society on the 8th December is the Italian Film 'I am Love / Lo Sono L’Amore'.

An melodrama about power, family, trust and self-discovery. Its a story about repression in relationships and breaking free. Set in Milan’s upper classes, in the Art Deco villa of a family of great wealth. A wonderfully absorbing film in the true classic Italian style offering magnificent cinematography, production design, costumes and score – by American opera composer John Adams.

The cast is led by the British Academy award winning actress Tilda Swinton as Emma Recchi. Co-producers Swinton and Guadagnino developed the movie together over an 11-year period. The film premiered in the United States at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and premiered in both the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival. Date 8th December, 8.15pm.

New members always welcome.

HELP MAKE A DIFFERENCE. Flood and Humanitarian Relief for Pakistan

Time: 9pm

Venue: St Peters Church, Bandon

Tickets: €10

Note: Tickets are limited and Eric's performance last year was a sold out event, so book early to avoid disappointment.

Next Friday the 15^th October Bandon Film Society in association with Partnership for Change a not for profit climate change initiative will be screening the acclaimed 1931 film Dracula in St Peters Church Bandon with the renowned composer Dr Eric Sweeney to raise funds for flood and humanitarian relief in Pakistan. All proceeds from the event are being donated to the Karachi Relief Trust.

According to the UN the number of people suffering in Pakistan is double the combined total of the 2004 Indian ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The total number affected by the recent floods is 20 million.

Two years ago I met Ayesha Siddiqi, a young Pakistan graduate at a climate change conference. Little did I know that within two years both our countries would be hit by natural disasters as a result of extreme weather events. Our towns and cities have largely been rebuilt, nobody perished in the floods, we have survived one catastrophe to witness another economic crisis. But this pails into insignificance to what the people of Pakistan are currently experiencing. The earthquake that hit northern Pakistan in 2005 killed 85,000 people, made more than 3million homeless with more than 1000 hospitals destroyed. Now less than five years later they are suffering the worst humanitarian crisis to befall a nation in modern times. The floods devastated the already flimsy public health system destroying hundreds of clinics and inundated an area more than twice the size of Ireland, crippling Pakistan’s agriculture and its economy.

Ayesha is currently working with Karachi Relief, a Pakistan Disaster Management Voluntary Organization (www.karachirelief.org) supported by civic minded volunteers. She contacted me recently appealing for help. They have set up camps in some of the worst affected areas and are providing food sanitation, shelter, medical supplies and clean drinking water. The organisation is entirely run and managed by unpaid professionals like Ayesha, volunteering their time and resources in an attempt to make a difference.

Dracula: 15th October 2010 9pm St Peters Church, Bandon

This is a 1931 film adaptation of the 1897 novel of Dracula by Irish author Bram Stoker.Dracula is one of the earliest classic American horror films, an acclaimed masterpiece directed by Tod Browning. This version of the film is still regarded by many as the best film adaptation of the orginal book. A motion picture for people who love cinema the opening scenes set in Dracula’s castle are magnificient. Dr Eric Sweeneys simultaneous masterful performance of the film score on organ uses melodic and dissonant themes to heighten the macabre atmosphere without upstaging the film, itself. Experience the savory melodrama, absorbing spectacle and horror that so startled and amazed audiences nearly eighty years ago. This screening of Dracula as with Last years Phantom of the Opera should be a night to remember.

Note: This is an extraodinary screening and live musical performance. Tickets €10.

Proceeds with be donated to Karachi Relief in Pakistan

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: 13th Oct 2010

An engrossing and sometimes disturbing mystery based on Stieg Larsson's best selling crime novel The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a classically suspenseful story. An intriguing and intelligent thriller boasting outstanding performances and relentless pace. This is a mind-bending and mesmerizing thriller that takes its time unlocking one mystery only to uncover another, all to chilling and immensely satisfying effect.

His and Hers: 25th Sept 2010

No other film this year has told such a strong story with such touching conviction. The movie is an enchanting portrait of Irish women as they share in a frank, funny and gracious manner, the story of their relationships with men from childhood to dating and marriage to old age. The story is told by a 90 year old woman and is represented by seventy different women throughout the film. It’s a unique style of story telling and a unique story finding comedy in the mundane, tragedy in the profound and providing an original insight into life.

Lemon Tree: 9th June 2010

A Palestinian widow tries to protect her lemon grove when an Israeli government minister moves in next door. Her trees are seen as a potential threat to his security, a hiding place for terrorists and she is issued orders to have it uprooted. However, the security forces have not reckoned on the grit and determination of the widow, who engages young Palestinian lawyer in her attempt to try and save her trees. This is a film based on a true story.

Flame and Citron: 12th May 2010

Danish drama set in Copenhagen during World War II, based on real events and eyewitness acounts. The film tells the tale of two fighters in the Danish resistance who put everything on the line in their fight against the Nazis. As they get closer to attacking the head of the Gestapo, the men realize that they can only trust each other.

Conversations With My Gardener: 14th April 2010

French drama starring Daniel Auteuil as a successful artist, weary of Parisian life and on the verge of divorce, returns to the country to live in his childhood house. When he hires a gardener who happens to be a former school friend, a warm, fruitful conversation starts between the two men. As they see everything through each other's eyes, they find a beauty they have never seen before.

Gomorrah

Tuesday 16th March

Starting at 8pm sharp

Brogans Inn Kilbrogan

Nominated for the Palme d'Or and won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 Gomorrah is an award winning film involving a multi-plotted story encompassing two Neapolitan 'families' hell bent on wiping each other out.

Dodging the bullets and police are Don Cico (Imparato), an elderly, soft-spoken man whose job it is to pay the families whose relatives are in jail; Scarface fan Marco (Marco Micur) and Ciro (Ciro Petrone) are two teenagers looking to break into a life of crime; 13-year-old Toto (Albruzzese) hopes that being a drug carrier will provide for his family; Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo) works for a Gomorrah-run haute couture business but defies the rules and breaks out on his own; and Roberto (Paternoster) does his best to steer clear of the troubles but his clean job is dirtier than first realised.

The film was chosen by the National Association of Cinemagraphic Industries to represent Italy in contention for Best Foreign Language Film at the 81st Academy Awards.

Gomorrah is a violent but realistic look at the 'other mafia,' but if you're thinking The Godfather think again, as this group aren't as elegant and their businesses not as structured as The Corleones. It's a vicious and cruel jungle these characters inhabit and director Garrone doesn't allow the viewer escape from the horror of the world; we never get a glimpse of the real world outside the rundown flats the families own.

The performances are flawless and the characters well drawn, but cutting back and forth between the various stories, of which there are too many, Gomorrah can lose any momentum it attempts to build up. Saying that, crime fans will love this fresh take on their favourite genre.

Rachel Getting Married Wednesday 10th February 2010

Brogans Inn

Date: Wednesday 10th February 2010

Time: 8.15 pm

This is a heartfelt, perceptive and sometimes hilarious family portrait in which Anne Hathaway stars as a young woman who, all but estranged from her family and struggling with various personal crises, has been in and out of rehab for the past decade. When her sister Rachel gets married, she returns to her family home for the wedding party and her reappearance forces long-simmering tensions to surface - causing hilarity and heartbreak in equal measures.

The North Face Wednesday 3rd February 2010

Set in 1936, the film centers around four mountain climbers who attempt to climb the north face of the Eiger Mountain in Switzerland. Nazi newsreels of the 1930s called it 'the last problem of the Alps'. Hesitant climbers called it the 'Death Wall'. Towering above the Swiss ski resort of Grindelwald, the Eiger presented a sheer face of rock which had long made it one of the most treacherous Alpine peaks, with a long list of fatalities to prove it.

The fact that the near-vertical route to the summit remained unclimbed produced hysteria in Germany during the Nazi era, where the ethos of Aryan physical attainment became a cultural mission-statement prior to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. This political background plays a significant part in the vivid recreation of a famous story, adding weight to a viscerally effective portrayal of man against nature.

Setting their sights on the north face are two young Germans, Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann) and Andi Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas), who prove their anti-authoritarian credentials by leaving their posts as uniformed mountain rangers to take a crack at the peak. A romance angle enters when Luise (Johanna Wokalek), the young photographer covering the story for the Hitler-supporting newspaper 'Berliner Zeitung', just happens to be Kurz's old flame.

The film is truly intense, providing breathtaking mountaineering scenes, tension-fraught, high-altitude rappelling and cliffhanging, razor-edged suspense – as good as any such scenes ever put on film.

Audience reaction and response on the night were that this was one powerful film, one of the best we have screened.

A Christmas Tale January 13th 2010

Our first film screening of 2010 promises to be a great film. The movie received an excellent 86% approval rating from film critics on the website Rotten Tomatoes.

This comic, ultimately touching family melodrama, starring Catherine Deneuve is a  holiday movie in which death, disease and mental illness cozily share the table with music, religious pageantry, and romantic and familial love. For some, Christmas means the joy of spending time with loved ones but not for the Vuillard family in Arnaud Despechin's black comedy.