Miscellaneous Film Festival Shorts…

These are various and sundry short films I saw during the 1997 Cork Film Festival. These were generally screened before the main features.

Les Années Indigestes (The Tough Nineties) delivers a brief vignette on how technology can further complicate the already challenging domain of Gallic romance. A cautionary tale about the potential risks of infidelity. (Seen 17 October 1997)

Flying Saucer Rock’n’Roll, a wide-screen mini-epic, is set in (of all places) Northern Ireland in 1958. An exhilarating spoof of Bill Haley musicals, James Dean movies, and cheesy sci-fi flicks (hmmm, alien domination in Ulster?), this one will have you leaving the cinema ready to drag race an alien on your father’s tractor. Director Enda Hughes picked up the festival prize for best black-and-white short. (Seen 18 October 1997)

L’Homme aux Bras Ballants is a brief and strangely poignant stop-action animation piece concerning a man with somewhat unusual arms. Hard to make sense out of it, but the audience seemed to like it. (Seen 16 October 1997)

The Sin Eater is a clever and witty mini-gothic fable about a man who eats the sins of the dead and, as it turns out, also those of the living. Twin Town’s Rhys Ifans has the title role. (Seen 16 October 1997)