Green screens

The second annual Irish Film Festival

by Scott Heller

THE BOSTON IRISH FILM FESTIVAL, At Boston College (Fulton 511) March 24 through 26 and the Harvard Film Archive March 31 through April 2.

Every time a tear is shed for Frank McCourt, or a bead of sweat darkens Michael Flatley's satin headband, a little bit of Irish culture is bought and sold. You don't need to have seen Riverdance or caught the Three Irish Tenors on PBS to know how popular Irishness has become on these shores. It's one reason Boston College can organize the second annual Boston Irish Film Festival and make it last for two hearty weekends.

But the curators of this event are shrewd, not starry-eyed. How the Emerald Isle has been marketed to American audiences is part of the program. A series of four tourist films, produced from the 1930s to the 1960s, is scheduled for March 26 at 2 p.m. John Ford's rarely seen The Rising of the Moon, starring members of the Abbey Players, shows on April 1 at 9:45 p.m. And many other programs chronicle the continuing exchange of people and art between Dublin and Dorchester and beyond.

Among filmdom's most famous Irish-Americans are the brothers Quinn, whose story is told in the 1998 documentary Three Brothers (April 1 at 7 p.m.). Actor Aidan Quinn is the best-known of the trio, thanks to Desperately Seeking Susan and Legends of the Fall, not to mention last year's This Is My Father, which was directed by his brother Paul. But it's the third Quinn, cinematographer Declan, who is the family's true cinema star. His memorable camerawork in Leaving Las Vegas is equaled by the hellish imagery of 2 by 4, which opens the Harvard Film Archive's festival weekend on March 31 at 8 p.m.

Director Jimmy Smallhorne stars as Johnny, a construction foreman whose laddish ways barely conceal a raging interior life. We should realize pretty quickly that something is up, as the film first glimpses the rangy Johnny, iron in hand, carefully pressing his jeans. He's the rare karaoke singer who dons a yellow boa and mascara to whip through T-Rex's "20th Century Boy." His girlfriend and raucous workmates seem nonplussed. But nightmares plague Johnny, and desire begins to call him away from the Bronx, into precincts of the city where gay sex is ripe for the taking.

Sharply written and rich in offhand humor, the film captures the boozy, exuberant camaraderie of Johnny's crew. Yet Quinn's baroque camera eye turns Bronx bars and empty Manhattan construction sites into an eerie nightworld where things left unsaid loom like fearsome shadows. Overtaken by repressed memories, Johnny falls into a feral crouch, and Quinn shoots the scene like a Francis Bacon painting. Far more complex than your run-of-the-mill immigrant saga, 2 by 4 is a searing gem that deserves a real commercial run, not the single area showing it will get in the festival.

Fergus Tighe, one of the film's screenwriters, will be in attendance at the HFA screening. He'll also be there the next night, to introduce Three Brothers as well as Clash of the Ash, a 1987 drama also shot by Declan Quinn. I don't know what Tighe will have to say, but Quinn's images speak for themselves.

Crossmaheart (April 2 at 8 p.m.), the festival's other newish feature, is more tepid fare. Based on a novel by Colin Bateman (who'll be there), it's the story of Kevin Miller, a defrocked journalist exiled from Belfast to the small town that gives the film its title. Tensions between loyalists and republicans run predictably high, and Kevin is introduced to his colleagues by name and religious affiliation, since the newspaper stays evenly divided between Catholics and Protestants. The disappearance of a fellow journalist seems to be a result of the Troubles, but ultimately Crossmaheart (like 2 by 4) is more about sexual sins than political warfare. Looking uncannily like the Irish actor John Lynch (In the Name of the Father), Gerard Mooney is a likable hero, and Maria Lennon is his luminous co-star (remember the name -- she's too beautiful not to be seen again). But the most memorable moment in Crossmaheart has a gang of local thugs led by the town's hairdresser tie Kevin up and forcibly put his hair in curlers.

The legendary Irish singer Luke Kelly didn't need curlers -- his wild head of red ringlets came naturally. But his notable hairdo and big beard helped Kelly stand out among the Dubliners, the gritty folk band who reigned in the 1960s and 1970s. Luke (March 26 at 7:30 p.m. and April 2 at 3 p.m.) is a conventional, respectful, yet deeply moving documentary portrait of the man newspapers dubbed "Troubadour of the Downtrodden" when he died, too young, in 1984. Among those paying tribute: Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, who still regrets missing Kelly's funeral; and U2's Bono, who groups the Dubliners with the Clash and the Stones, as opposed to those precious Irish folkies who lay on the blarney a little too thick. Also featured: singer Phil Coulter, who is currently a visiting professor of Irish studies at BC. He'll introduce Luke at the March 26 show.

For schedule details and further information about the Boston Irish Film Festival, call 552-3938.