A Screening: 'Costa Brava' - Sat Oct 18th - East Essex Street, Temple Bar

dublin | arts and media | event notice Friday October 10, 2014 12:43 by Dublin Film Qlub - Dublin Film Qlub

Dublin Film Qlub launches Season Five!

A critical take on "Postcard Barcelona", and a funny, sunny portrait of a lesbian anti-hero, by the brilliant Catalan filmmaker Marta Balletbó-Coll. MARTA BALLETBO-COLL: 'COSTA BRAVA' sat 18 October 2014 2.30pm (doors open at 2pm)

The Dublin Film Qlub's Season Five kicks off with...

MARTA BALLETBO-COLL: 'COSTA BRAVA'

sat 18 October 2014
2.30pm
(doors open at 2pm)

The New Theatre
East Essex Street
Temple Bar
Dublin 2

Day Membership: 8 euro
(free tea and coffee)

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Marta Balletbó-Coll (b. 1960) exemplifies independent guerrilla film-making. She is a one-woman writing, filming, producing, directing, and promoting army. Perpetually at the mercy of small budget constraints,

Balletbó-Coll stars in her own films and gets them made on the proverbial shoestring --she famously filmed Sevigné (2004) in two weeks--, but despite (or because of) this, she has managed to produce three highly personal, inventive, and exciting films. Her protagonists are always good people, trying to get by in a world that was not quite made for them. And one feels that the same may be true of Marta Balletbó-Coll’s unmercenary, honest movies. For this season, we have selecting her wonderful first film, Costa Brava (1995).

The genre of Drama has been the staple of lesbian films since the 1930s closed the door on bubbly gender-bending farce. Against the grain, Marta Balletbó-Coll’s hilarious tragi-comedies about contemporary clueless lesbianhood have been a wonder to behold, much like a small fleet of shiny spaceships. The fact is that Balletbó-Coll comes to us like an alien ambassador, bringing her intergalactic message of peace: the proof of intelligent life is self-deprecating humour, she tells us. It works a charm, and she always gets the girl. In this sense, Marta Balletbó-Coll is the lesbian Woody Allen (the early, pre-Purple Rose of Cairo Allen), and Costa Brava is her 'Manhattan'. This is a tale of flourishing margins, cultural erotics, and domestic misalignments,
protagonised by a noble antihero, perpetually baffled, armed only with a Giggle-ray gun.

Marta Balletbó-Coll’s last film was produced in 2004. It has been far too long. From our little Dublin Film Qlub corner, we would like to humbly beg her to take up the camera again. Three films is not enough. We want more. Three, two, one, Fire!

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Film Qlub

© Dublin Film Qlub 2014.
You are welcome to reproduce this material, but we request that you acknowledge the source.

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DUBLIN FILM QLUB -- LAUNCH OF SEASON 5: GAY DIRECTORS
18 October 2014, to 18 July 2015
Third Saturday of Every Month @ The New Theatre, Temple Bar, Dublin 2
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AllaNAZIMOVAKennethMcPHERSONJackelineAUDRY
GretaSCHILLERPierPaoloPASOLINIGusVAN.SANT
MartaBALLETBó-COLLVincentMINELLYMarleenGORRISXavierDOLAN

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There have been hundreds of lesbian and gay directors since the beginning of cinema. Many of them have been outstanding creators, and stirring activists. A director is not always the only, or even the main, creative mind behind a film – a film is a collective project. But many individuals have developed a line of work that became associated with them, and some have pulled together creative teams which have produced scorchingly beautiful (in and out) films.

This season, we will see how lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men have embraced queer visual signs in the characterisation and imagery of their films. We will see how these directors, working from that common pool, have tried to do things differently, both visually and in terms of storytelling. We will see how they have attempted to correct deficiencies in LGBTQ representation, responding to the needs of their own historical moment.

Our chosen ten have made an invaluable but not always fully acknowledged contribution to the history of cinema, as well as to LGBTQ art and culture. This band of brothers and sisters never met, but they have fought together as the shock troops attacking the system from all corners. From Alla Nazimova’s glorification of camp, to Kenneth McPherson’s queering of time, Jackeline Audry’s respect for the damned, Greta Schiller’s portrait of Paris as a leisured lesbian, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s pansexual fairy tale, Gus Van Sant’s ode to interconnectedness and fluidity, Marta Balletbó-Coll’s anti-epic of daily gay life, Vincent Minelly’s pastel-coloured song to survival, Dee Rees’ boxing match with the coming-of-age genre, and Xavier Dolan’s x-ray of The Tantrum as weapon of Self Destruction.

In this season, we will spend some time with ten ambitious queer directors and the films they helped create. We are not interested in worship -- we wanted an excuse to see how very differently gay filmmaking has been through the years, how those differences complement each other, and what a great contribution to cinema they have made. Ten splendid films, proving that gay aesthetics and gay politics can be a spring board, to help propel everyone onto a richer and fairer world.

To see the full programme:
http://www.filmqlub.com/season-five

To see a trailer of Season 5:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuIb95eBW-Y

Contact us:
[email protected]

© Dublin Film Qlub 2014.