On Day 6 of the Belfast Film Festival, we welcomed Ken Loach to Northern Ireland to receive the Réalta award for outstanding contribution to cinema.
The atmosphere in Belfast was electric as one of the greatest filmmakers in the world went from venue to venue to take part in Q&A’s. Ken started off in St Mary’s where he was interviewed by Eilish Rooney as part of 30 Years of Féile an Phobail before heading to the Movie House Dublin Road to take part in a sold out, public Q&A. Ken talked about his career in film with Hugh Odling Smee and received the Réalta award for outstanding contribution to cinema to a standing ovation. Ken finished off his day by travelling to the Queen’s Film Theatre to take part in another sold out Q&A following his screening of his Palme d’Or winning film, The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
In St George’s Market the Coalition of Aid and Development Agencies (CADA) presented Wasted! The Story Of Food Waste to a packed out crowd. Wasted! exposes the criminality of food waste and how it’s directly contributing to climate change and shows us how each of us can make small changes – all of them delicious – to solve one of the greatest problems of the 21st Century. The screening was followed by a panel discussion on the global issues linked to food waste and suggestions on how we can all take action.
In the Crescent Arts Centre, Vicki Bennet, working under the name People Like Us, presented her new live-cinema performance The Mirror. Vicki Bennet specialises in the manipulation and reworking of original sources from both the experimental and popular worlds of music, film and radio.
Over in the Queens Film Theatre, a packed out cinema was treated to The Cured, an original, innovative and surprising post-zombie film from Ireland that stars Ellen Page, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor and Sam Keeley. Following the screening Rory Friers and Niall Kennedy of the Belfast based band, And So I Watch You From Afar, who soundtracked the film, took part in a short Q&A.
And finally, fans of Seinfest were treated to an evening of appreciation for New York’s finest foursome in the Black Box.