‘Hunger’ - Steve McQueen - Cannes 2008
‘Hunger‘ is showing at the Cannes Film Festival 2008, opening the ‘Un Certain Regard‘ category, from British director Steve McQueen, the artist who hit the headlines recently with his design for a postage stamp that replaced the Queen’s head with the faces of soldiers killed in Iraq.
Turner Prize-winnng British artist Steve McQueen makes his big-screen debut with Hunger, an account of the 1981 hunger strike in Northern Ireland’s Maze prison.
The film follows the last six weeks in the life of Republican Bobby Sands, who died during the strike.
It plunges viewers into the world of the early 1980s H-Blocks uprising and of republican prisoner Bobby Sands (played with formidable force by Michael Fassbender), who died 66 days into a hunger strike.
The film depicts the hellish conditions in the prison, not only through the experiences of the hunger strikers but also through the prison wardens with whom they were in constant battle.
McQueen is best known for his film installations, which are usually projected on to gallery walls. One of the most famous of these is ‘Deadpan’, a recreation of a Buster Keaton stunt.
Synopsis:
Raymond Lohan wearily follows his normal routine: an ordinary man doing the job of a prison officer in the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland, 1981. Working within one of the infamous H-Blocks, where republican prisoners are on the Blanket and No-Wash protest, is a living hell for both prisoner and prison officer.
A young, new prisoner Davey Gillen is brought into this environment for the first time. Although terrified, Davey resolutely refuses to wear the prison uniform - he is no common criminal. So joining the Blanket protest, he shares a filthy cell with another ‘non-conforming’ republican prisoner Gerry Campbell. Gerry, hardened to the horrific realities of Maze life, guides Davey through the daily routine, he trains him how to smuggle items and exchange ‘comms’ (communications) with the outside world, passing them on to their H-Block leader Bobby Sands at Sunday Mass.
‘Blindness’ Cannes Film Festival Opener?
Fernando Meirelles’ drama-thriller about a city succumbing to a blindness epidemic.
‘Blindness‘ stars Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo is being eyed to open the Cannes Film Festival, while ‘Hunger,’ from Brit director Steve McQueen, is the leading candidate to kick off Un Certain Regard.
The source of many press reports identify ‘Blindness’ as the May 14 Cannes opener.
According to Variety, Cannes declined to comment on the rumors regarding ‘Blindness.’
More than one option Meirelles’ pic was one of the most glaring absences from the Official Selection lineup unveiled by delegate general Thierry Fremaux last Wednesday.
Fremaux’s announcement left both opening and closing film slots open.
Steve McQueen’s ‘Hunger’ appears clearer.
McQueen’s feature debut is strongly expected to open Un Certain Regard.
Reportedly powerful, but very out-there, ‘Hunger’ is an impressionistic interpretation of the last six weeks in the life of Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker who died in the Maze prison in 1981.
