?The 2011 Galway Film Fleadh begins on 5 July and runs until 10 July. Now in its twenty-third year, the festival is split into several thematic streams, such as new Irish cinema, both classic and new German cinema, documentary, director profiles, Icelandic cinema, short film and Super8 film, among others. Within these categories is a number of films with a music interest.

In Passione (2010), directed by the Italian-American filmmaker John Turturro, songs, singers musicians and poets are all protagonists. Set in Naples, each song is said to be transformed into ‘a little melodrama, a sentimental postcard’.

Screaming Masterpiece (2005), an Icelandic, Danish and Dutch co-production directed by Ari Alexander Ergis Magnússon, is a documentary about the Icelandic music scene since the late 1980s, featuring artists such as Björk, Sugarcubes, Rós, Múm and Sigur Rós.

Two Irish silent films will also be shown with live musical accompaniment. The Lad from Old Ireland (1910) and His Mother (1912) are two films produced by the Kalem Company in New York – a new film about this early twentieth-century series of films on Irish themes, Blazing the Trail: The O’Kalems in Ireland (a shot from which is pictured above) will also be screened at the Galway Film Fleadh.

www.galwayfilmfleadh.com