Film Festival highlights

The opening scenes of Tony Palmer’s documentary, Bird on a Wire, about Leonard Cohen’s five-week European tour in 1972 — which began in Dublin — show security manhandling concertgoers in Tel Aviv. Cohen coos softly, in his Quebecker drawl, into a microphone: “I know you’re trying to do your job, but you don’t have to do it with your fists.”

The documentary, which will be screened for free for Cork Film Festival ticket holders, is a portrait of a sensitive, exhausted 37-year-old singer songwriter maintaining control of himself on a chaotic tour at odds with his nature (although he still comes on to beautiful women while being followed by a camera crew). “He told everybody, including me, that he never wanted to tour again,” says Palmer. “He thought this was not him. He was a poet. He didn’t want to be just a caged parrot made to repeat the same old songs.”

Festival goers can also watch Palmer tackling Benjamin Britten, in Nocturne. Britten, like Cohen, is one of life’s pacifists.