• 21 (Pretty Much Random) Picks For The Belfast Film Festival

    March 29, 2017 - By 

    Time to hunt out your best pair of sitting-down trousers. The 17th Belfast Film Festival kicks off his week, running from Thursday 30th March to Sunday 9th April, boasting a packed programme of new cinema, both local and international, as well as special guests, live events, short films and classic screenings. There’s a lot going on, and any preview is going to be piece-meal. Ultimately, most of the fun will be encountering something totally unexpected once the lights go down. We’ve picked out a handful of screenings and events but encourage you to browse the full programme on their website. Here at The Thin Air we…

  • Interview: Paying Tribute to The Sad and Beautiful World of Sparklehorse

    March 27, 2017 - By 

    On Saturday, April 8 we will co-host a special, two-part event at The MAC as part of Belfast Film Festival celebrating the life and music of the sadly-missed Mark Linkous AKA Sparklehorse. Following a screening of Alex Crowton and Bobby Dass’ new documentary ‘The Sad & Beautiful World of Sparklehorse’, the evening will also feature a Q+A with the filmmakers, as well as a live, one-hour performance ‘A Night of Sparklehorse’ with Tom McShane, Peter Sumadh AKA The Mad Dalton, Richard Davis AKA Heliopause, Pixie Saytar, Jake Lennox and Brian Coney. Ahead of the one-off event, we chat with the organisers and…

  • John Cusack Joins The 17th Belfast Film Festival

    February 28, 2017 - By 

    The 17th annual Belfast Film Festival, running 30th March – 8 April, is on the horizon, and the organizers have announced a range of festival highlights. Principal among them is the news that John Cusack, one of modern cinema’s most unconventional stars, will be in town as this year’s special guest and recipient of the festival’s Outstanding Contribution to Cinema award. The screenwriter, author and star of Say Anything, High Fidelity and Dragon Blade will be joined in conversation by local film broadcaster Brian Henry Martin at the Movie House Dublin Road on Friday 31st March, to reflect on his…

  • Belfast Film Festival 2016

    March 10, 2016 - By 

    Comprised of more than 133 films and events from 30 countries around the world, the programme for this year’s 16th Belfast Film Festival is their biggest to date. Set to return from April 14-23 in various venues across the city, an incredible range of premieres, guests, documentaries, shorts, discussions, music, film installations fall under categories including New Cinema, Documentary Panorama, Altered States, Talking Film, TV, NI Independents and Twisted Cornea. Launching with Deniz Gamze’s Mustang on Thursday, April 14 at the Moviehouse, the sheer medley and diversity of this year’s programme is nothing short of a thing of beauty. But don’t take our word for it: you…

  • I Am Belfast

    April 21, 2015 - By 

    The movies were like magic carpets, Mark Cousins tells us about his younger days, introducing Festival opener I Am Belfast at the Moviehouse Dublin Road. The film itself is a kind of magic carpet ride through the city, with Cousins as the excitable genie, showing us not a whole new world, but the same one, viewed from unexpected angles. Belfast, tilted. We begin in the clouds, coming down on the city from above, Cousins bringing his film-making eye to his hometown after a career spent Out There. Cut to a stained mountain face, raw and prehistoric, its reflection stretching outward in a pool…

  • 10 Picks for Belfast Film Festival

    April 16, 2015 - By 

    Kicking off this evening with Mark Cousins’ I Am Belfast, and running from April 16 to April 25, this year’s Belfast Film Festival boasts a programme traversing ever genre and sub-genre of modern and classic cinema. With screenings and one-off events taking place in venues large, small and altogether curious across the city, there is (as their full programme attests) quite literally something for everyone on offer. In fact, so dense is the schedule that we’ve enlisted the immeasurably tasteful Conor Smyth to whittle it down to ten of their most unmissable screenings and events. Delve in. I Am Belfast  The question…

  • Festival Preview: Belfast Film Festival 2015

    April 12, 2015 - By 

    Time to dig out your best sitting-down trousers, as the Belfast Film Festival returns for its fifteenth year. With over one hundred films in ten days, it’s part celebration, part endurance test. Opening night duties fall to local legend Mark Cousins (pictured), premiering his I Am Belfast, a dream-like exploration of the city’s identity and history that promises to go beyond across-the-barricade clichés (Cousins’ meditation on D. H. Lawrence, 6 Desires, is also being screened). At the tail-end of the programme is Stephen Fingleton’s post-collapse drama The Survivalist, with Martin McCann as a loner living off the land amongst the…

  • Belfast Film Festival Presents: Spaced

    March 24, 2015 - By 

    Plan 9 Film Club, as part of the Belfast Film Festival, host a night at the Black Box on April 22 dedicated to cult UK sitcom Spaced. Running for two seasons from 1999-2001 on Channel 4, it was the big breakthrough for creative minds Simon Pegg, Jessica Stevenson & Edgar Wright, who, as we all know, have went on to write, direct and star in some of the finest comedies in recent years. It also gave early exposure to the likes of sitcom favourites Mark Heap, Nick Frost, Julia Deakin and NI comedian & actor Michael Smiley. Tickets are available from the Film Festival for £5. Doors open at 7pm, with…

  • Belfast Film Festival Programme Launch

    March 19, 2015 - By 

    Set to take place in venues across the city from April 16-26, the programme for the 15th Belfast Film Festival has been announced. As is very much its custom, the festival has an extraordinarily diverse line-up up its sleeve this year, with categories boasting categories including New Cinema, Altered States & Twisted Corners, Northern Irish Independents/Shorts, as well as Opening & Closing films I Am Belfast, Shooting For Socrates and The Survivalist. Check out the full programme and buy tickets at the Belfast Film Festival website here.

  • Belfast Film Festival 2015

    March 9, 2015 - By 

    Although the majority of the programme is yet to be revealed, the first few announcements for the forthcoming fifteenth Belfast Film Festival hints at yet another extremely promising festival in the making. Following a handful of great line-up events and screenings including Metropolis – Live at the Ulster Hall on Saturday, March 21 and Yann Demange’s ‘71 at the Movie House on Thursday, March 5, a live soundtracked screening of David Lynch’s landmark Eraserhead at The Mac on Wednesday, April 22 and a Blazing Saddles Night on Saturday on Saturday, April 18 stand out amongst the first few announcements. Check back for more screening announcements. In the…