Cork In 50 Artworks, No 27: King Kong programme cover for Cork Film Festival
Kieran O'Connor with his 1994 poster and programme cover for the 39th Cork Film Festival. Picture: Larry Cummins
History does not record how Jean Kennedy Smith, the American Ambassador to Ireland, reacted to the sight of an inflatable King Kong on top of Cork Opera House, where she opened the 39th edition of Cork Film Festival on October 2, 1994.
The original King Kong will forever be associated with the Golden Age of the Hollywood talkies, which her father, Joseph Kennedy, played a large hand in creating.
The opening film at the 1994 festival bore no relation to King Kong, however; Whit Stillman’s Barcelona was a ‘doomed-bourgeois-in-love’ comedy drama, chosen by the festival director, the late Donal Sheehan. Rather, the reference to King Kong came from the festival poster, designed by a young graphic artist from Bishopstown named Kieran O’Connor.
O’Connor had several years experience with the festival at that point, having been recruited by Sheehan’s predecessor, Mick Hannigan. “I started as a general office factotum,” says O'Connor. “But I was just out of art college, and I was very interested in design. The festival acquired an Apple Mac, what would now be considered a very primitive computer, but I fell in love with it, and started doing all the festival graphics. After a while, I was trusted to design the poster, which I did for the first time in 1990.”
O’Connor’s early poster designs were collages, but the King Kong poster began life as a painting, which he still has in his possession. It re-imagined Cork city centre as a film set, with a crew shooting footage of the legendary gorilla astride the steeple of St Anne’s, Shandon.
“I was trying to connect Cork with the world of film,” he says. “So I had that classic image of King Kong on top of an iconic building, along with all the lights and cameras, and the janitor sweeping up behind the set.”
Cork’s connections to the film industry were tenuous, to say the least, when the festival was founded by the Palace Cinema manager Dermot Breen in 1956. But in the years that followed, it attracted stars of the calibre of Gregory Peck, Dawn Addams and James Mason. Walt Disney came, and John Boorman and John Huston were regular visitors.
By the mid-1980s, however, the festival was at a low ebb, financially and artistically. There was talk of winding it up, but then the board appointed Hannigan and Theo Dorgan as joint directors. The two brought the festival to a broader audience, and made new connections in the business community.
“Mick and Theo resurrected the festival,” says O’Connor. “By the early 1990s, it had become a big thing once more on the social calendar in Cork. Murphy’s brewery came on board as sponsors, so there was a bit of money around, for the first time in years. That was how the festival could afford to put King Kong on top of the Opera House.”
The festival served as a springboard for several prestigious arts careers. By 1994, Hannigan and Dorgan had both moved to Dublin, Dorgan to serve as director of Poetry Ireland, and Hannigan to work as cinemas director with the Irish Film Institute. He would later return to Cork Film Festival, serving as director until 2013. He opened the Kino arthouse cinema on Washington St in 1996.
O’Connor credits the festival for kickstarting his own career as a graphic designer. His posters and graphics brought him to the attention of other arts organisations and businesses around Cork, and he was soon in great demand.
“For better or worse, it set me on my current career trajectory. I was working for Triskel Arts Centre at that time as well, programming its film screenings, but eventually I gave up both to concentrate on my work in design. But I still love film, and I miss it, to be honest.”
These days, O’Connor does design work for organisations such as his alma mater, Crawford College of Art, as well as Triskel Arts Centre and Crawford Art Gallery. He has continued to support the festival, and though he moved to Cobh with his family earlier this year, he intends attending as much of the 2021 edition as possible.
“I was really excited when I saw that Fritz Lang’s Metropolis was in this year’s programme, with a new live score by Irene and Linda Buckley. I booked tickets for that straight away, and I’ll see what else I can get to. For me, the festival is as great a treat as it ever was.”
- Cork International Film Festival runs November 5-21
