Stout fellows The Boston Irish Film Festival is good for you BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN
	The Boston Irish Film Festival At the Harvard Film Archive and the Brattle Theatre through October 25.

"We’re not selling something," says Liam O’Maonlai in the documentary on his band Hothouse Flowers. "We’re revealing something." The same can be said about this year’s Boston Irish Film Festival. In its sixth year (and now backed by big-bucks corporate sponsorship), the BIFF reveals a fractured, diverse Ireland. It reveals that to define Ireland — or Irishness — as a single entity is impossible. And it reveals that Irish film is evolving into an export worthy of the international stage.

Set in Algeria and shot in dusty, dehydrated Morocco, Alan Gilnesan’s potent and poignant Timbuktu (October 22 at 7 p.m. at the Harvard Film Archive, with the director present) couldn’t be farther from the Guinness and green of the Emerald Isle. The film follows Isobel (Eva Birthistle) from Dublin to the Sahara sands as she searches for her monk brother (Liam O’Maonlai), who’s been kidnapped by Algerian rebels. Deecy (a brilliant Karl Geary), a feisty transvestite, joins her on the journey. It’s an arresting, beautifully shot story of faith in your friends and your family. Both their trip and yours is a visceral one, violent, sensual, well worth making.

For all that his presence pervades the film, O’Maonlai’s screen time amounts to mere minutes. That’s not the case in Sherece Lamke’s rockumentary Scenes from a Tour: Hothouse Flowers (October 23 at 9 p.m. at the HFA). The introspective lead singer gets loads of face time as he and his mates, Fiachna O’Braonain, Peter O’Toole, and Dave Clarke, gush about one another. They’re charming guys, sure, but the film amounts to an overlong love fest, with murmurings of betrayal and pain within the band — rock and roll’s got to have a dark side — but no real troubles and no backstory about the four years they took off.

Jason Figgis attempts to reveal a different kind of dark side in The Twilight Hour: Visions of Ireland’s Haunted Past (October 23 at 8 p.m. at the HFA). He follows Sir Simon Marsden, a tomb-voiced photographer known for portraying the "reality of the unreal," as he explores some of Ireland’s most macabre manors, mausoleums, and sacred sites for a book project. Using superbly edited digital video and infrared film respectively, Figgis and Marsden convey the whisper of latent spirits, hauntings, and a sinister world lurking in tandem to our own.

The Troubles still haunt Northern Ireland, and Vinny Cunningham’s documentary Battle of the Bogside (October 24 at 5 p.m. at the HFA) examines the three days of violence that erupted in Derry in August 1969. Using previously unseen footage of the riots as well as interviews with those on both sides who were part of it, Cunningham conveys the history and the passion behind the conflict, as well as how it would shape the political landscape for the next 35 years.

In Cinegael Paradiso: Once upon a Time in Connemara (October 23 at 4:30 p.m. at the HFA, with the director present), Robert Quinn looks back to a bit of Irish filmmaking history with his documentary of Cinegael, the Irish-language cinema and production company started by his father, Bob Quinn, on the west coast of Ireland in the mid ’70s. Part revolutionary, part traditionalist, the elder Quinn aimed to preserve Irish-speaking culture by filming the locals carrying on in their lives. The rebel purist was successful in his efforts, as is his son in telling the story.

In Ian Fitzgibbon’s endearing comedy Spin the Bottle (October 23 at 7 p.m. at the HFA, with the director present), ex-con and aspiring rapper Rats (co-writer Michael McElhatton, a tough Dublin flats version of Owen Wilson, busted nose and all) needs to come up with the funds to get his obese aunt to Lourdes for a cure. It’s a semi-predictable romp, but you can’t help rooting for Rats and his two pre-slammer pals, introvert animal lover Brainer (Donal O’Kelly) and randy Tomo (Peter McDonald), in this cross between Chasing Amy and The Full Monty.

Andrew McCarthy, of Pretty in Pink and St. Elmo’s Fire fame, makes his directorial debut with the short "News from the Church" (October 22 at 7 p.m. at the HFA). Based on a Frank O’Connor short story, the film looks at some traditionally Irish themes as a young woman confesses to carnal intercourse and a younger boy pilfers a loaf of bread. The priest gives the girl a browbeating; the brawny baker gets brutal revenge on the boy, then seeks forgiveness from the very same priest. Cheap grace if ever there was.