Hollywood stalwart Maureen O' Hara will appear at the Kerry Film Festival on Saturday, November 5th to present the Maureen O’Hara award to Irish actress Fionnula Flanagan.
"I will be thrilled to present Fionnula Flanagan with this year’s award at the Kerry Film Festival," said Maureen O’Hara, "It’s a pleasure to honour such a remarkable actress who epitomises all that the award has come too represent over the last four years."
Since 2008 the Kerry Film Festival has presented the Maureen O’ Hara award to women who have excelled in film, Brenda Fricker was the inaugural recipient. Rebecca Miller received the award in 2009, while Maureen O’ Hara was on hand to present the award to Oscar winning French actress Juliette Binoche last year.
“I am delighted and very honoured to be invited to receive the Maureen O’Hara Award at the Kerry Film Festival 2011,” said Flanagan. “It is fitting and generous of Maureen to lend her name to an award that acknowledges the work of actresses following in her footsteps, who are as passionate about film as she herself proved to be in her long and successful career as a true Hollywood film star.”
“I am proud to be able to support the Kerry Film Festival since in these troubling economic times, not just for Ireland, but for the whole world, I believe it is important to keep the arts alive. It is the painters, the poets, the storytellers, the film makers who give us all a different way of looking at life, who remind us of our frailty, our longing, and our potential. However, of all the arts film is unique. Through the lens of the camera we get to see the power contained in the mere raising of an eyebrow, the averting of the gaze, the smile suppressed, and we realize we are all members of the human family. Racially, culturally, politically, religiously, we are all different, and nuanced in our diversity. However, it is the intimate, indelible images captured by the film camera that offer us, seated together in the dark, the sense memory and anticipation, deep in our DNA, of having our hearts broken. And that is how we know we are human. Perhaps it is the only proof we really have.”
Most recently appearing in ‘The Guard’ with Brendan Gleeson, Fionnula Flanagan has made an impact on the stage, in feature films, and on the small screen, most recently as Eloise Hawking in ABC’s ‘Lost’.
The variety of her work is evident in her filmography which includes feature films James Joyce’s ‘Women’, ‘Ulysses’, ‘Waking Ned’, ‘A State of Emergency’, ‘Reflections’, ‘Final Verdict’, the Academy Award winning ‘In The Region of Ice’ and the critically acclaimed ‘Some Mother’s Son’, in which she starred with Helen Mirren.
The award ceremony which takes place at Siamsa Tíre in Tralee at 2.00pm on November 5th, is the culmination of a week long celebration of film at the Kerry Film Festival with new Irish and international short film competitions, special feature screenings, workshops and events. It will be hosted by radio and TV personality, Dave Fanning and will feature screenings of the winning short films as selected by this year’s illustrious adjudicators Paul Greengrass, Norton Virgien and Cillian Murphy.
