Richard Attenborough with Lord Mayor Dan Wallace and others

437-01-J.jpg

Dublin Core

Title

Richard Attenborough with Lord Mayor Dan Wallace and others

Subject

Cork Film Festival, Lord Mayor Dan Wallace, Richard Attenborough, Ford Motors, Robin O'Sullivan, Charlie Hennessy, Mick Hannigan, European Film Academy

Description

This is a black and white photo of Richard Attenborough with Lord Mayor Dan Wallace and others at a civic reception in the Lord Mayor’s office in 1985. Attenborough is signing the visitors' book seated next to the Lord Mayor and festival chairman Charlie Hennessy on the far left. Fellow dignitaries include festival director Robin O’Sullivan, in the centre of the back row, and representatives from Ford Motor Ireland who were the main sponsors for the festival that year. 

Dan Wallace (1942-) was a former Fianna Fáil politician who served Cork for almost twenty-five years as a TD for the Cork North-Central constituency and as a Lord Mayor from 1985 to 1986. He once worked as a customs clerk with the Ford Motor Company in Cork and might have been familiar with the Ford representatives in this photo. Ford Motors, had a purpose-built factory on the Marina in Cork and once employed up to 7,000 workers. The factory closed in 1984, with the Ford Sierra being the last model produced.

Richard Attenborough (1923-2014) was an English politician, actor, and award-winning filmmaker. He is the older brother of Sir David Attenborough. Richard Attenborough’s prolific filmography includes acting roles in The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963), Loot (Silvio Narizzano, 1970), and Rosebud (1975) directed by Otto Preminger and starring Peter O’Toole – both of whom came to the Cork festival. Attenborough directed Gandhi (1982), Chaplin (1992), Shadowlands (1993), and his final film Closing the Ring in 2007. Around the time of this picture in 1985 he had just finished A Chorus Line (1985) and was working on the Academy-nominated epic film Cry Freedom (1987) which he directed and produced. Cry Freedom was nominated for three academy awards and won the Peace Film Award at the Berlin Festival that year.

Attenborough was a member of the prestigious European Film Academy (EFA). Founded in 1989, with Ingmar Bergman as its first president, it seeks to advance the interests of the European film industry and to increase public awareness of European cinema. The EFA invited former festival director Mick Hannigan to join the academy in 2006. Hannigan took over as festival director from Robin O’Sullivan soon after this photo was taken in 1985. As a voting member of EFA Hannigan’s name joined a list that includes, along with Attenborough and Bergman, Pedro Almodóvar, Federico Fellini, and David Puttnam. In 2020 the chairman of the academy is the Irish producer, author, and journalist Mike Downey.

Creator

University College Cork, Cork Film Festival

Source

Cork Film Festival Collection

Publisher

University College Cork

Date

1985

Rights

This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Please credit the Cork International Film Festival Archive and provide a link back to the site.

Format

Photo
TIFF
JPEG

Language

English, eng

Coverage

1985
Cork, Ireland

Still Image Item Type Metadata

Original Format

Photo

Physical Dimensions

251 x 201mm

Collection

Citation

University College Cork, Cork Film Festival, “Richard Attenborough with Lord Mayor Dan Wallace and others,” Cork International Film Festival Archive, accessed October 10, 2024, https://corkfilmfest.ucc.ie/items/show/432.