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The Most Fertile Man in Ireland

Screening on Film
Directed by Dudi Appleton.
With Kris Marshall, James Nesbitt, Bronagh Gallagher.
Ireland, 2001, 35mm, color, 90 min.

A sex-comedy that harks back in style and theme to early Almodovar (Irish masculinity on the verge of a nervous breakdown, if you will), this Northern Ireland debut feature blends social and political commentary with fluffy bedroom farce. Eamonn Manley is the timid employee of a dating agency whose unusually high fertility makes him a target of wannabe mothers everywhere. Soon his services are being sought by local loyalists, who see in him the potential to revive the North’s dwindling Protestant population. All of this, of course, proves highly taxing for the put-upon Eamonn, whose only ambition in life is to find true love and settle down.

PRECEDED BY

  • Coolockland

    Directed by Brian Tucker and Ronan Carr.
    With Ronan Carr, Ronan Leahy, Simon Delaney.
    Ireland, 2000, digital video, color, 20 min.

Liberal borrowings from the American film-noir genre are embellished with distinctly Irish surrealism as hard-boiled detective Onan Waits (writer and co-director Carr) investigates the murders of celebrity impersonators in the North Dublin suburb of Coolock. Chief among the film’s many guilty pleasures is a less than polite encounter between Brendan Behan and James Joyce and an irate Jesus who proclaims: "If you see Elvis, you tell him I’m the real king!"

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