Athy Film Festival a huge success to local cinephiles
Claudia Reeves, Zoe Bell, Seamus Malone, John Daly, Fiona Loughman and John McCauley.
“ONWARDS and upwards!” was the declaration from Claudia Reeves, the Director of Athy Film Festival after its successful second annual outing recently (16-18 January).
“We had some very good audiences, and were at about 70 per cent capacity every night," she explained.
“The main, main thing this year was getting Seamus Malone to open the Festival for us,” said Ms Reeves.
“He’s from Barrowhouse, but that’s practically Athy! He’s an animator who works with Ardman Studios, who have been responsible for , and the series”.
This year there were seven films on show from all over the world, including a recent Oscar winner, as well as such classics as and
“All the other films were 15+, but include the Palestinian/Israeli collaborative documentary which won the Oscar last year which featured on the Sunday. Along with that we have movies from Japan, India, France and of course the US. As well as our seven main movies, there was also have a session of five shorts (films), and we’re still in the same venue in Athy Community College. The shorts we have are by students from Dundalk Institute of Technology, and there is a family movie called which Seamus was involved in. Seamus also made himself available for a Q&A session after the family session on the Saturday.
“The grand finale was everybody singing along to We always show some golden oldies.”
Claudia wished to remind our readers that the Film Club continues to meet every month between September and May.
“If anybody wants to join us or come to our films we have all the details on our Instagram and Facebook pages,” she said.
She said that because of this success they were now planning their third festival for around the same time next year.
“It was great last year, but we tweaked a few things, and now, its onwards and upwards!” Ms Reeves also wanted to thank Access Cinema “the national company that facilitates the hiring of the films”, as well as Kildare County Council, Athy Lion’s Club, “and a lot of local, generous sponsors”.
