Today (Thursday, February 28) marks the beginning of the Alliance Française Cork French Film Festival, a cerebral celebration of the often discussed, continuously evolving and indelibly influential medium of French cinema.

Over the course of the next nine days, the programme, which is as comprehensive in scope as it is thrilling in execution, will offer a wide-ranging variety of cinematic pleasures taking in feature films, short films, documentaries, experimental cinema, cine-concerts, guest directors and film-making workshops.

Expected highlights on the programme come in the shape of the intriguing Ex Drummer, based on the cult novel by Herman Brusselmans, the curious Mister Lonely, staring Samantha Morton, Diego Luna and Werner Herzog, 2007 Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize Winner Silent Light, the always divisive director Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park, a retrospective look at the documentaries of Alan Resnais, opening film Water Lilies, described as an intense study of female friendship, sexual awakening and synchronized swimming, the closing film Caramel, a rich comedy of manners which follows the life of five women working in a Lebanese beauty salon, where love, laughter and tears fight for attention and the Filmatruc installation featuring Cork’s The Quiet Club, a fee-form, sound-art collective with an ever-evolving line-up.

For the aspiring film-maker there’s the Experimental Film Workshop with the Burstscratch Film Lab and a Scriptwriters & Directors Masterclass. Electro-acoustic composer Somadrone, experimental-electronic sound-forgers Lakker and the suitably cinematic 3epkano provide live scores, while Dublin, no-wave krautrockers Cap Pas Cap hammer their collective cowbell for the closing party.

“I studied film for three years at Cluain Mhuire, Galway’s Film College and continued my education with a degree course in Post Production at Ravensbourne College of Design in London,” says Paul Callanan, the festivals Artistic Director, explaining his background and how he came to curuate the event over the past two years. “I have been working as a director, producer, camera operator and editor making music promos and documentaries and I’m currently working on two feature length documentaries and have a few other projects in the pipeline.

“I have been involved with the film festival for several years now. I began working in the education department, writing study guides for schools for the educational screenings. I have been curating the festival for the last two years. Work on the festival began many months ago developing funding proposals for the Arts Council and the likes. The programme has been slowly developed over many months of research working closely with film-makers, musicians and distributors.”

The fruits of his considerable labour are plain to see. In his two years as Artistic Director, Paul has overseen a substantial diversification of the programme and all that it has to offer. The festival is now in its 19th year – but this years and last years events in particular offered unparalleled growth in terms of the overall range of the festival - there was the addition of a new venue last year in the Gate, while the programme was notably more ambitious then ever before with a number of new additions including 35mm feature films, a full documentary programme, live audio-visual events, and filmmaking workshops. For Paul, the most important thing for this years festival was to build on the success of last years new endeavours.

“Last year the scope of the festival grew dramatically by adding a second venue, the Gate Cinema,” he says. “This allowed us to screen a full 35mm feature programme and free up the Triskel to develop a short film programme and live audio-visual events. Last years festival was an overwhelming success and the intention this year was to consolidate on the ground made. This year’s feature film programme is very strong and showcases fresh contemporary films, includes Irish premieres. Coming from a city, which was recently European Capital of Culture this year’s programme is imbued with the spirit of European integration and co-operation. We screen several French films made in co-production with other countries and present films in many different languages. The audio-visual programme has been developed further and I am very exited about the events we will be presenting.”

As a director and lover of film, Paul’s own personal attraction to the medium of French cinema is the inherent passion imbued in both its past and present. It’s opulent past was fundamental in the birth of modern  cinema and it’s influence reaches across the whole spectrum of filmmaking. For Paul the stereo-typical image of the French living and breathing the art of film is more then just a myth, as its artist-friendly industry proves.

“The thing that marks French cinema as a band apart from it’s other European neighbours is that France has always lived and breathed cinema; it was born there and then carefully nurtured by a host of Parisian artists in the 1920’s. Cinema is now a capitalist driven multi-billion dollar industry but film is still a language with a strong French accent.