Families and Communities - 43rd Belfast Festival @ Queen's

Our programme takes us literally from birth and the creation of life with our Opening Procession, Insectes, and shows like Oogly Boogly and Organillo, to the afterlife in Daragh Carville's new work for Tinderbox, Family Plot. Communities of all kinds are celebrated, from those on the borders of this country in Simon James.Mapping Frontiers exhibition, to teenage skateboarders in Australia as they learn painfully what being part of a community means in Skate. Join us too for Belfast's major conference on arts in the community - Arts Towards an Inclusive Society.
Festival Director - Stella Hall

Robert Fisk
Date: Fri 21 Oct
Venue: Whitla Hall (QUB)
THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILISATION: THE CONQUEST OF THE MIDDLE EAST
Decorated British foreign correspondent Robert Fisk gives his first-person account of fifty years of bloodshed and tragedy in the Middle East, from the Palestinian-Israeli bloodbath to the shock and awe of the recent war against Iraq.It is also a story of journalists at war, of the rage, humour and frustration of the correspondents who spend their lives reporting the first draft of history, their weaknesses and cowardice, their courage and truth-telling. All the most dangerous men of the past quarter century in the region - from Osama bin Laden to Ayatollah Khomeini, from Saddam to Ariel Sharon - come alive in these pages. Fisk has met most of them and even spent the night out at a guerrilla camp with bin Laden himself. The Great War for Civilisationis written with passion and anger, a reporter's eyewitness account of the Middle East's history.

Louis Theroux (SOLD OUT!)
Date: Sat 22 Oct
Venue: Elmwood Hall
Louis Theroux's new book, The Call of the Weird, is a hilarious and thought-provoking journey through weird America. For ten years Theroux has been making programmes about off-beat characters on the fringes of US society.Now he revisits America and the people who have most fascinated him to try to discover what motivates them, why they believe the things they believe and to find out what has happened to them since he last saw them. Has he manipulated the people he's interviewed, or have they manipulated him? Is there something particularly weird about Americans? What does it mean to be weird, or to be yourself'? And do we choose our beliefs or do our beliefs choose us?

Joanne Harris
Date: Sun 23 Oct
Venue: Elmwood Hall
Joanne Harris is the author of the Whitbread shortlisted Chocolat (made into a major film starring Juliette Binoche), Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange, Coastliners, Holy Fools, Jigs & Reels, and, with Fran Warde, The French Kitchen: A Cookbook and The French Market.Her latest novel, Gentlemen and Players,takes place at an old and long-established boys' grammar school in the north of England where a wind of unwelcome change is blowing. Suits, paperwork and Information Technology rule the world and Roy Straitley, Latin master, eccentric, and veteran of St Oswald's, is finally - reluctantly - contemplating retirement. But beneath the little rivalries, petty disputes and everyday crises of the school, a darker undercurrent stirs. And a bitter grudge, hidden and carefully nurtured for thirteen years, is about to erupt.

Peter David Hart
Date: Tues 25 Oct
Venue: Elmwood Hall
MICK - THE MAKING OF MICHAEL COLLINS
A compelling new biography of Michael Collins, the most gifted, ruthless and powerful politician of modern Irish history by the internationally renowned professor of Irish history and author of the highly acclaimed The I.R.A. and Its Enemies.Few people have had as profound an impact on their countrys history in so short a time as Michael Collins had on twentieth-century Ireland. Dead at thirty-one, assassinated by a compatriot, he had already fought in the Easter Rising, been elected to four different parliaments, organized the IRA and smuggled in its arms, launched its guerrilla war, beat British intelligence at its own game, financed the revolution, negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty, run the first independent government of Ireland, and led the Irish army to victory as its first Commander-in-Chief. Collins gained international fame as the mystery man who could not be caught, the man who won the war and, paradoxically, the man who made peace with the British Empire and made it stick. That he also paid the ultimate price has ensured that he remains a hero and an icon both in his native country and abroad.Yet Collins was first and foremost a man of ambition who sought power and exercised it ruthlessly to achieve his goals. More politician than soldier, he surrounded himself with followers loyal only to him, and his friendships often went only as far as his interests. His death left a troubled legacy: an IRA he had helped create but could not control, a Northern Ireland problem he thought he could solve, and a Civil War he had been unable to prevent.Peter Harts compelling and comprehensive biography draws on many hitherto unseen sources to explore the life of Michael Collins and to ask what made him such an extraordinary and complex man. Set to become the definitive work, Harts is the first book fully to investigate Collinss life before becoming a revolutionary and the first to take a critical look at his rise to power and its consequences.

Fergal Keane and Michael Longley
Date: Wed 26 Oct
Venue: Whitla Hall
ALL OF THESE PEOPLE
Michael Longley is one of Ireland's most celebrated poets. His publications include No Continuing City, An Exploded View, Man Lying on a Wall, The Echo Gate and Gorse Fires which won the 1991 Whitbread Poetry Award. He published Tuppenny Stung in 1994, a collection of prose reminiscences. The Weather in Japan won the TS Eliot Prize, The Hawthornden Prize and the Irish Times Poetry Prize. His most recent collection is Snow Water. Fergal Keane OBE is one of the BBC's most distinguished correspondents, having worked in Northern Ireland, South Africa and the Balkans. As an author, he has published The Bondage of Fear, Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey, Letters to Daniel: Despatches from the Heartand most recently All of These People. Keane took the title of his memoir from a Longley poem. Here, the two writers discuss their approaches to their work with BBC Northern Ireland's Chris Spurr who earlier this year made Keane on Keane for BBC Radio 4.

BRUISER THEATRE CO PRESENTS
Sue Townsend
Date: Thurs 27 Oct
Venue: Belfast City Hall
In advance of Bruiser Theatre Company's production of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4, here's an exciting opportunity to see and hear the book's author Sue Townsend in conversation, discussing the effect her most famous creation has had on her life and career. An extract from Bruiser's production will also be staged. An evening of good humour and good company in the beautiful setting of Belfast's City Hall.

G.P. Taylor
Date: Thurs 27 Oct
Venue: Elmwood Hall
Tersiasis the eagerly anticipated third novel from G.P. Taylor. His second novel, Wormwood, and his first, Shadowmancer, hailed by The Times as the "biggest event" in children's fiction since Harry Potter', were instant bestsellers.In Tersias, London is living through one of its darkest times - a comet has just missed the Earth, leaving the city in chaos and the people fearing an apocalypse. Tersias, a blind boy oracle, has predicted the comet and sees visions of the future through the darkness. As Tersias's powers strengthen, people who seek to use them are drawn from the shadows; Malachi, a charlatan magician, Jonah, a desperate highwayman and Lord Malpas, a keeper of mysterious powers. But none of them are aware of a much darker force that torments Tersias's soul...A gripping tale of intrigue and sorcery set in a richly atmospheric London.

Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme
IRISH PREMIERE
Date: Sat 29 Oct
Venue: QFT
"Out-strips all other films on Hip-Hop!" TIME OUT
Explosively tracing the story of a group of underground hip hop MCs and DJs from the early 1980s to the present day, Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme isa documentary film that explores the world of improvisational rap. Made over the course of more than seven years Freestyle takes the viewer on a journey through previously unexamined dimensions of the genre.The film follows some of the best MCs ever to bless the mic. As these artists improvise poetry out of the mix of language, politics and culture that make up their lives, we discover revolutionary worlds where the English language is subverted and re-appropriated as a tool of economic and social empowerment. The film combines the best of independent documentary filmmaking with the hip hop mix tape format.
DIRECTOR KEVIN FITZGERALD WILL BE PRESENT TO INTRODUCE THE FILM AND A Q&A SESSION WILL FOLLOW THE SCREENING. KEVIN FITZGERALD WILL DJ LATER IN THE EVENING AT SHINE IN QUB STUDENT'S UNION

Dermot Bolger and Sebastian Barry
Date: Tues 1 Nov
Venue: Great Hall
Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way tells the story of 18 year old Willie Dunne who leaves Dublin in 1914 to fight for the Allied cause. The novel evokes the camaraderie and humour of Willie and his regiment, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, but also the cruelty and sadness of war, and the divided loyalties that many Irish soldiers felt. The narrative brilliantly explores and dramatises the events of the Easter Rising within Ireland and how such a seminal political moment came to affect those boys off fighting for the King of England on foreign fields. Dermot Bolger's latest novel The Family on Paradise Pier starts in the tranquil idyll of a Donegal village in 1915 and follows the extraordinary journeys of one Irish family through the War of Independence, the General Strike in Britain, the dangerous streets of 1930's Moscow, the Spanish Civil War and on to Soviet gulags, Irish Internment camps and London during the Blitz. Based on real-life people, this family saga shows Bolger at the height of his powers as a master storyteller.
"An exceptional literary gift." INDEPENDENT
"Many say Sebastian Barry writes like an angel and they are right, provided they remember he is on the side of the angels that fell." FRANK MCGUINNESS

Ned Sherrin
Date: Wed 2 Nov
Venue: Great Hall (SOLD OUT!)
Ned Sherrin looks back on his life and career with inimitable wit and a good deal of wisdom. In his long, successful and event-filled career Ned Sherrin has been an innovative satirist ( That Was The Week That Was), novelist, anthologist, film producer (including Up Pompeii), celebrated theatre director ( Side by Side by Sondheim, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell) and BBC Radio 4 host ( Loose Ends). His autobiography offers fascinating insights into the worlds of British film, radio, TV and theatre from the 1960s to the present day. From fainting in front of a high court judge, to matchmaking Princess Margaret and Starsky from Starsky and Hutch, he never forgets a good story, and is always happiest when the joke is on him. Famed for his charm and his keen ear for a fine anecdote, Ned Sherrin brings both talents to his autobiography, which is sure to delight and engage his many fans.

George Galloway MP
Date: Thurs 3 Nov
Venue: Whitla Hall
You now have the opportunity to meet and ask questions of the controversial and charismatic MP George Galloway when he presents THe Mother of All One Man Shows - An Audience with George Galloway George Galloway made spectacular global headlines when he appeared in front of the US Senate earlier this year. CNN's Wolf Blitzer desribed the British MP's evidence as "a blistering attach on US senators rarely heard" in deat of American power. The former Labour MP travelled to Washington after senators accussed him of receiving credit to buy Iraqi oil- an allegation he has always denied.Author of I'm Not The Only One, George Galloway is one of the most controversial figures in British politics today. A central organising force and mobilising figurehead for the Stop The War Coalition opposed to the war in Iraq- which lead to him being expelled from the Labour Party.George Galloway founded Respect a new political party becoming it's first MP for the London constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow in this year's general election.George Galloway will sign copies of his book during the evening and discuss his proudest achievements over the past few years which include; being a leader of the anti-war movement which built the biggest demonstrations in British history; being right about Iraq; having made enemies like Tony Blair, Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black; having defeated the Daily Telegraph in court; and having helped build Respect - the Unity Coalition."

Jeanette Winterson
Date: Thurs 3 Nov
Venue: Great Hall
Jeanette Winterson's honours include England's Whitbread Prize, and the American Academy's E. M. Forster Award, as well as the Prix d'argentat the Cannes Film Festival. Jeanette burst onto the literary scene as a very young woman in 1985 with Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Her subsequent novels, including Sexing the Cherry, The Passion, Written on the Body and The PowerBook, have also gone on to receive great international acclaim. Her latest novel Lighthousekeepinghas been heralded as "a brilliant, glittering, piece of work" (The Independent). Jeanette is, of course, also a very familiar face in the media and is a brilliant reader of her own work.

Kate Adie
Date: Fri 4 Nov
Venue: Elmwood Hall
Inspired by her own circumstances as an adopted child, bestselling author and BBC reporter Kate Adie writes vividly, inspiringly and from many fascinating perspectives about what it means to be an abandoned child. What's your name? Where were you born? What is your date of birth? Simple questions that we are asked throughout our life - but what if you didn't know the answers? Kate Adie uncovers the extraordinary, moving and inspiring stories of just such children. With a curiosity inspired by her own circumstances as an adopted child, Kate shows how the most remarkable adults have survived the experience of abandonment. From every perspective Kate Adie brings us a personal, moving and fascinating insight into the very toughest of childhood experiences - and shows what makes us who we really are.


THE 2ND ANNUAL IRISH PAGES LECTURE
London In Translation A Poet's view of 7/7 by Sarah Maguire
Date: Sat 5 Nov
Venue: Council Chamber
Sarah Maguire is one of Britain's leading poets and translators. She was born in 1957 in West London, where she has lived all her life. Her third book of poems is The Florist's at Midnight (Cape, 2001). She is the founder and director of the Poetry Translation Centre at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her poem Passages, which first appeared in a recent issue of IRISH PAGES, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Forward Prize for the Best Poem of 2004 published in Ireland and Britain The Annual Irish Pages Lecture is delivered by a previous contributor to the journal. The invited speaker alternates between an Irish and overseas writer. Introduced by Chris Agee, Editor of Irish Pages.

Nick Laird
Date: Sat 5 Nov
Venue: Great Hall
The poems in To a Fault, published earlier this year confirmed the arrival of a significant and challenging new voice in Cookstown's Nick Laird. Laird followed that collection with Utterly Monkey, a very funny, energetic, wonderfully engaging novel centering on a talented, upwardly mobile young man who has left his Northern Irish small town roots well behind him. In his mid-twenties he lives in a stylish London flat and has a job in a top London law firm. However, one innocuous Wednesday night his old mucker from home, Geordie Wilson, arrives at the door. On the run from a loyalist militia, whose operational funds he has taken, he manages to bring everything that Danny has been fleeing from right to his smart London doorstep. Nick Laird will read from both publications.



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