The Craic Festival - Teenage craic better than ever - SEE VIDEOS

The Craic Festival, the premier showcase of Irish film, music and culture in New York City, returns this March celebrating its 13th year at the top. The 2011 festival, which will be held March 9-12, will showcase established and emerging film and music talent from Ireland. CAHIR O’DOHERTY talks to festival director Terence Mulligan for a preview of its biggest and best lineup to date.

Most international film and music festivals follow the trends, but the best ones actually set them. The Craic Festival, the consistently impressive New York-based festival of the best of Irish film and music, is a case in point.

For over a decade now it’s been the springboard into the U.S. market for the most important new Irish filmmakers and musicians, but if you look at the lineup this year you’ll discover that the organizers  have surpassed themselves.

If you haven’t heard of Julie Feeney, the festival’s musical opener and the most interesting Irish vocalist and music star Ireland has produced in quite some time, take my word for it -- you’re about to.

Spend 20 minutes at a concert with this otherworldly woman and prepare to be floored. Forget Lady Gaga -- Feeney’s a whacked-out force of nature, a pop-music-hits-high-culture avalanche, and she’s really that good.

If you love Irish music and want to catch her debut (think Sinead O’Connor meets Black Swan via Phillip Glass) you can’t afford to miss her show at the festival. Feeney will open this year’s festival with a special 90-minute performance at Joe’s Pub on March 9.

But the Craic Festival isn’t just about groundbreaking Irish music or musicians, it’s also about the best new Irish films.

This year’s headliner is White Irish Drinkers, a hard-hitting portrait of an Irish American adolescence in 1970s Brooklyn. The buzz about the film, written and directed by John Gray, is already deafening, and this is your first and only chance to catch it in the company of the filmmakers and stars.

The plot is an overly familiar one, but it’s the performances that lift this film into the stratosphere. Growing up on Brooklyn’s mean streets in 1975 we meet Brian Leary, an 18-year-old who knows all about killing time and getting into petty crime with his streetwise older brother that he both fears and idolizes.

“I’m from Brooklyn and I can really relate to this film, because I know the world that it’s set in, but I think its universal too,” festival director Terence Mulligan tells the Irish Voice.

“The performances are outstanding and the direction is too. People will be wowed by it.”

If Mulligan sounds pleased by the lineup he’s created for this year’s festival he has good reason to.
“I think it’s the strongest line up since the festival began,” he says simply. “The films are strong and we’ve gone for a good independent lineup.”

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Nster.com