Fleadh is reel star of Galway

SINCE its foundation, in 1989, the Galway Film Fleadh has shown the best in international cinema, while being a platform for Irish filmmakers to screen their work, all in an intimate, relaxed atmosphere, full of passion and with the odd beverage.

Festival director, Miriam Allen, has been involved from the get-go. It was Allen and her cohorts (Joe McMahon and RTÉ renegades, Lelia Doolan and Bob Quinn) who created the Fleadh following a much-savoured screening of Joe Comerford’s film, Reefer and the Model, at the Galway Arts Festival in 1988.

“Such was the response to Reefer that it was decided that, yes, there was an appetite for alternative cinema in Galway,” she says. “At the time, there were only four screens running and, inevitably, they were showing the big American blockbusters. It was the same diet people were being fed week in, week out, and they wanted to see something else.”