#Festival: Women In Film Festival takes place at Triskel Christchurch Cinema May 6-8

Deep Focus: Women In Film Festival is a new fixture on the Triskel Christchurch Cinema programme premiering 6 – 8 May 2016. Showcasing the finest feature, documentary and short films from around the world, this festival is a celebration of female directors who tackle a wide range of subjects with unique and distinctive voices.

Chris O’Neill, head of cinema at Triskel has been looking forward to realising this festival for some time and delighted to announce the festival on International Women’s Day. “It is not only timely but also long overdue to be hosting a festival dedicated to female filmmakers”, he says. “In the past five years since Triskel Christchurch began hosting cinema screenings, we have shown numerous fine works by women directors from all over the world. This three day festival will be an opportunity to celebrate such films in an entertaining and illuminating programme”.

Amongst the films which will be screened are The Violators, in which author Helen Walsh makes a striking debut as writer/director with this powerful new British drama set against the backdrop of the grim Cheshire housing estates following teen Shelly as she navigates hard urban realism in the midst of absent parents and scant opportunities. No Home Movie, which is the final work from, now deceased, avant-garde Belgian director Chantal Akerman focuses on conversations between the filmmaker and her mother Natalia just months before her mother’s death. This intimate video essay serves as tribute to Natalia, a Polish immigrant and Auschwitz survivor who died in 2014, while unpacking the director’s sense of home in the absence of her parent.

Deep Focus: Women In Film Festival is programmed by Fiona Hegarty, Naoimh Ní Luanaigh and Chris O’Neill. Hegarty has previously worked as Programme Development Manager at Cork Film Festival, Ní Luanaigh is a filmmaker whose last short film Kennedy Quay has played to wide acclaim at numerous festivals. Alongside his role as Head of Cinema at Triskel Christchurch O’Neill programmes for Cork Film Festival, the Dundead Film Festival in Scotland and is an independent filmmaker.

Further details will be announced on Monday 21 March at http://triskelartscentre.ie/deep-focus-festival/