MAY 2016
KNIGHT OF CUPS
THE IRISH FILM INSTITUTE
EXHIBIT PRESERVE EDUCATE
The Irish Film Institute is Ireland’s national cultural institution for film. It aims to exhibit the finest in independent, Irish and international cinema, preserve Ireland’s moving image heritage at the IFI Irish Film Archive, and encourage engagement with film through its various educational programmes.
IFI FILM CLUB
NEW PUB QUIZ
Join us on Monday, May 16th for a discussion about Mustang following the 18.00 screening. In this special IFI Film Club event, audience members are invited to join in and contribute to a conversation about Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s remarkably assured debut about patriarchal oppression. See page 7 for film notes.
The FREE monthly pub quiz in the IFI Café Bar will take place on a new date: the first Tuesday of each month, so join us on May 3rd at 21.30 with your brainiest buddies and most inventive team names! Teams must have four people and the table who wins each month will be included in a champions’ league, competing for a grand prize. More details at www.ifi.ie/cafebar
FEAST YOUR EYES
FRENCH FILM CLUB
Our monthly Feast Your Eyes event of a film and dinner for €20 will be Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s gripping French-Turkish debut feature, Mustang. Following this screening, on Tuesday, May 17th at 18.30, enjoy a Turkish-influenced main course in the IFI Café Bar. Tickets €20 (free list suspended). See page 7 for film notes.
This month’s French Film Club screening – where IFI and Alliance Française members pay just €7 a ticket – on the evening of May 9th is director Lucile Hadžihalilović’s visually striking and inventive Evolution, a companion piece of sorts to her outstanding 2004 film Innocence. Newstalk journalist and TV critic James Dempsey will introduce the screening. See page 5 for film notes. Please visit www.ifi.ie or ask at the IFI Box Office for further details.
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DIRECTOR’S NOTE
MAY AT THE IFI
As the only cinema in Ireland with the facilities to show film on glorious 70mm prints, we’ve been delighted with the huge interest in our recent special screenings of The Hateful Eight and 2001: A Space Odyssey. This month, we’re thrilled to continue with this unique IFI offering by presenting special 70mm screenings of Paul Thomas Anderson’s modern classic The Master. We have been trying to get this remarkable 70mm print to Ireland since the film was originally released back in 2012, and are delighted to be finally (and exclusively) bringing this special event to Irish audiences.
This month we’re pleased to present a retrospective of one of cinema’s greats – Andrei Tarkovsky. Following recent audience interest when presenting Stalker as part of our The Bigger Picture strand, appetites have been well and truly whetted for a more thorough examination of the work of the Russian director, screenwriter and film theorist. Alongside a run of Mirror (1975), we’re delighted to present the other six features in his filmography. Wild Strawberries, our film club for over 55s, will host a series of events to tie in with Bealtaine, the annual festival celebrating creativity as we age. In conjunction with access>CINEMA we will be touring the Robert Redford and Nick Nolte ‘buddy movie’ A Walk in the Woods, whilst also presenting screenings of Sé Merry Doyle’s Jimmy Murakami: Non Alien and Stephen Bradley’s Christina Noble biopic, Noble. Partnerships and collaborations are key this May. Together with The Hugh Lane Gallery, and as a key reference for Jesse Jones’ new exhibition No More Fun and Games, we’re pleased to present Robert Altman’s 3 Women, and are delighted that Jones will be joining us for a post-screening Q&A.
Tarkovsky’s Stalker (see page 14)
Welcome to the IFI May programme which is packed with new releases and special events.
In association with the International Literature Festival Dublin, we are delighted to welcome director Grant Gee for a post-screening Q&A after Innocence of Memories. Having cut his teeth on music videos, Gee is now making a name for himself with literal travelogues, this time taking him to Istanbul and the world of Nobel-prize-winning novelist Orphan Pamuk. Also, in a new collaboration with Sub City, we’re pleased to present Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy, based on Mike Mignola’s graphic novels. We have a selection of wonderful new releases on offer. The astounding Son of Saul continues into May and as the winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes and Best Foreign Picture awards at the Oscars and Golden Globes, this is one of the most powerful and affecting films you’re likely to see this year. Whit Stillman’s adaptation, Love & Friendship (which was filmed in Ireland), of the Jane Austen novella, Lady Susan, comes to the big screen at the end of the month and sees a remarkable performance from Kate Beckinsale. A past guest at the IFI, Emmanuelle Bercot won the Best Actress award at Cannes for her role in Maiwenn’s Mon Roi in which she stars alongside other French favourite, Vincent Cassel, and told in flashbacks, it charts the troubled relationship of the central pair. And speaking of Cannes, this month the programming team will once again be in attendance at the prestigious festival selecting the titles that are sure to captivate IFI audiences over the next 12 months. Keep an eye on the IFI’s social media for all the latest news and updates from the Festival. Ross Keane Director
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NEW RELEASES, IFI DOCS & IFI CLASSICS SON OF SAUL CONTINUING FROM APRIL EVOLUTION OPENS MAY 6TH JOHNNY GUITAR OPENS MAY 6TH KNIGHT OF CUPS OPENS MAY 6TH GREEN ROOM OPENS MAY 13TH MUSTANG OPENS MAY 13TH TROUBLEMAKERS: THE STORY OF LAND ART OPENS MAY 13TH DEPARTURE OPENS MAY 20TH HEART OF A DOG OPENS MAY 20TH JOURNEY TO THE SHORE OPENS MAY 20TH MIRROR OPENS MAY 20TH THE DAUGHTER OPENS MAY 27TH LOVE & FRIENDSHIP OPENS MAY 27TH MON ROI OPENS MAY 27TH
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Open Captioned screening Audio Described screening
TIMES For a breakdown of times and dates of IFI New Releases, IFI Docs & IFI Classics, check out our weekly schedule on www.ifi.ie/weekly-schedule or the IFI ads in The Irish Times on Fridays and Saturdays. You can also sign up to receive our weekly ezine by joining at www.ifi.ie/signup. 4
SEASONS & EVENTS CALENDAR DATE 3RD TUE 4TH WED
SCREENING
TIME
IFI CAFÉ BAR PUB QUIZ (FREE EVENT)
21.30
WILD STRAWBERRIES & BEALTAINE: A WALK IN THE WOODS IFI & AEMI PROJECTIONS: COLLECTIVISM PART 3
11.00
5TH THU 7TH SAT 8TH SUN 9TH MON 10TH TUE 11TH WED
IFI & SUB CITY: HELLBOY
18.30 18.30
THE MASTER (70MM)
17.30
THE MASTER (70MM)
17.30
THE BIGGER PICTURE: ROGER & ME
18.30
THE MASTER (70MM)
20.20
IFI & THE HUGH LANE GALLERY: 3 WOMEN + DISCUSSION
18.15
14TH SAT
TARKOVSKY SEASON: IVAN'S CHILDHOOD
15.00
15TH SUN 16TH MON 17TH TUE 18TH WED 20TH FRI
TARKOVSKY SEASON: ANDREI RUBLEV
15.00
IFI FILM CLUB: MUSTANG
18.00
FEAST YOUR EYES: MUSTANG
18.30
IFI EXPLORERS: MUSTANG TARKOVSKY SEASON: SOLARIS
16.00 20.00
WILD STRAWBERRIES & BEALTAINE: JIMMY MURAKAMI: NON-ALIEN
11.00
21ST SAT 22ND SUN 23RD MON 25TH WED
TARKOVSKY SEASON: STALKER
15.30
THE HANGOVER LOUNGE: BIGGER THAN LIFE
14.00
DEPARTURE (ACCESSIBLE SCREENING*)
15.45
WILD STRAWBERRIES & BEALTAINE: NOBLE IRISH FOCUS: CLOUD OF SKIN TARKOVSKY SEASON: NOSTALGIA
11.00 18.30 20.30
26TH THU 27TH FRI 28TH SAT
DEPARTURE (ACCESSIBLE SCREENING*)
18.30
WILD STRAWBERRIES & BEALTAINE: NOBLE
11.00
ARABIAN NIGHTS: VOL 1 TARKOVSKY SEASON: THE SACRIFICE ARABIAN NIGHTS: VOL 2 ARABIAN NIGHTS: VOL 3
13.00 15.20 15.40 18.30
29TH SUN
IFI FAMILY: ZARAFA IFI & INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE FESTIVAL DUBLIN: INNOCENCE OF MEMORIES + DIRECTOR Q&A
11.00 16.30
31ST TUE
FROM THE VAULTS: LAMB
18.30
*Denotes screenings which are either open captioned or audio described. For more information on our Accessible Screenings, please visit www.ifi.ie/accessible
MAY 2016
CONTINUING FROM APRIL FILM INFO:
107 mins, Hungary, 2015, Digital Notes by Alice Butler
NEW RELEASE
SON OF SAUL Set in Auschwitz in 1944 and depicting a day in the life of a Jewish-Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando – a unit of prisoners charged with disposing of bodies amassed in the gas chambers – first-time director László Nemes’ exacting Son of Saul is a scrupulous drama that is both laudable and intensely harrowing. Against a hazy backdrop of intrepid revolt and unspeakable violence, Nemes uses the claustrophobic space provided by Academy ratio to focus
on Géza Röhrig’s agonised Saul, a man who in a heap of corpses finds a young boy who, we infer, he believes is his son. From there, we shadow Saul as he endeavours to effect a plan to honour the tragedy of this single death, regardless of the danger it presents. Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes and the Best Foreign Language Oscar, Son of Saul foregrounds a singular expression of compassion in a nightmarish reality.
OPENS MAY 6TH (ÉVOLUTION) EXCLUSIVELY AT IFI† FILM INFO:
82 mins, France-Spain-Belgium, 2015, Digital, Subtitled Notes by Kevin Coyne
Over a decade has passed since the release of Lucile Hadžihalilović’s haunting debut feature, Innocence (2004), which focused on a group of girls in an isolated boarding school. In her second film, Evolution, a kind of companion piece, a colony of young boys are cared for by women on a remote island devoid of adult men. The boys live a life of strict routine, existing on a limited diet and are subject to bizarre medical treatments. After ten-year-old Nicolas sneaks
NEW RELEASE
EVOLUTION
out one night and sees something he shouldn’t, he begins to plan his escape. The visually beautiful Evolution, enigmatic and poetic, does not give up its mysteries easily – in this, it bears comparison to films such as Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013) and Upstream Colour (Shane Carruth, 2013) – but it is a richly rewarding experience, and surely one of the year’s best films. 5
IFI CLASSIC
MAY 2016
JOHNNY GUITAR OPENS MAY 6TH FILM INFO:
110 mins, USA, 1954, Digital Film notes by David O’Mahony
THE HANGOVER LOUNGE
NEW RELEASE
Our Hangover Lounge feature this month is Ray’s Bigger Than Life (see page 20 for notes).
Tavern owner Vienna (Joan Crawford) has all but given up on old flame Johnny Logan (Sterling Hayden) when he reappears under the guise of Johnny Guitar. Her arch enemy Emma (Mercedes McCambridge), a cattle baron, is with the ‘Dancin’ Kid’, and is jealous of his apparent affections for Vienna. The real sexual tension however exists between Vienna and Emma, and themes of bisexual desire crackle throughout this heightened, florid pseudo-western,
one of Nicholas Ray’s (Rebel Without a Cause; Bigger Than Life) strangest, most psychologically complex films. Vienna’s saloon is on the outskirts of town, and with the railroad being laid, the townsfolk fear it will go right past her door and soak up all their potential business. Needless to say gunfights ensue, but it is the high-camp dialogue and astonishing costume changes that makes Johnny Guitar a one of a kind.
KNIGHT OF CUPS OPENS MAY 6TH EXCLUSIVELY AT IFI† FILM INFO:
118 mins, USA, 2015, Digital Notes by David O'Mahony
Rick (Christian Bale), a disillusioned screenwriter, reflects upon his privileged life and complex relationships with brother (Wes Bentley), father (Brian Dennehy) and ex-wife (Cate Blanchett) in a Hollywood devoid of meaning. “Where did I go wrong?” he rhetorically asks in voiceover; “I am pieces, fragments of a man.” Knight of Cups represents a development of the impressionistic aesthetic Terrence Malick has been
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exploring since he returned from extended hiatus with Tree of Life (2011) and To the Wonder (2012) – it is cinema as a stream of consciousness and its success is somewhat dependant on how the viewer approaches it. Malick is uninterested in the familiar tropes of narrative cinema and is working towards a visual poeticism, driven by associative editing and a layered sound design. The result is never less than distinctive, and at times quite profound.
OPENS MAY 13TH FILM INFO:
95 mins, USA, 2015, Digital Notes by Kevin Coyne
In this taut and violent thriller, writerdirector Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to Blue Ruin (2013), touring punk band The Ain’t Rights are having difficulty getting well-paying gigs. After one particularly disastrous show, the promoter tries to make amends by getting them on the bill at his cousin’s roadhouse in rural Oregon. Alienating the skinhead, white supremacist crowd with a lively cover of the Dead Kennedys’ Nazi Punks Fuck Off, their planned retreat is made more complicated by stumbling across the
NEW RELEASE
GREEN ROOM immediate aftermath of a murder. With the neo-Nazis determined to eliminate all witnesses, the band and the victim’s best friend barricade themselves backstage, and try to find a way out of their increasingly dangerous predicament. With a cast including Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, and Patrick Stewart, playing very much against type as the supremacists’ sinister leader, it’s a gripping and unnerving film.
OPENS MAY 13TH FILM INFO:
97 mins, France-Turkey, 2015, Digital, Subtitled Notes by David O'Mahony
SPECIAL EVENTS
Mustang will be the subject of this month’s IFI Film Club (May 16th), Feast Your Eyes (May 17th) and IFI Explorers (May 18th). See pages 2 and 20.
Five orphaned sisters are kept under strict lock and key in a remote Turkish town by their aunt and uncle until one by one they are married off, as long as their virginity can be assured to prospective suitors. This is a conservative, traditional community where parents still seek evidence of consummation from couples on their wedding night. An entirely innocent encounter with a group of local boys at the outset draws increasing restrictions on the girls’
NEW RELEASE
MUSTANG freedoms and basic rights – we follow the ensuing emergency marriage preparations through the eyes of the youngest of the girls, Lale (Günes Sensoy) who says in voiceover, “our house became a wife factory.” Lale comes to realise that escaping this well-furnished prison is the only course of action left to her. Modern patriarchal Turkey comes under scrutiny in Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s remarkably assured debut. 7
IFI DOC
MAY 2016
TROUBLEMAKERS: THE STORY OF LAND ART OPENS MAY 13TH EXCLUSIVELY AT IFI† FILM INFO:
NEW RELEASE
72 mins, USA, 2015, Digital, Colour and Black & White Notes by Alice Butler
The movement known as land art principally emerged in the 1960s out of a frustration felt by a group of artists about the constraints imposed upon them by the commercial gallery and art market. Inspired by a convergence of ideas relating in part to history and technology, they moved primarily to the unpopulated expanse of the American Southwest to produce some of the most ambitious and breath-taking sculptural works of the 20th century. James Crump’s film shrewdly focuses not just on the
movement’s devoted exponents – Michael Heizer, Walter De Maria, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson (whose piece, Spiral Jetty, is probably one of the most celebrated earthworks) – but also its supporting players, including patron and 3M heiress Virginia Dwan. Troublemakers also tackles the disdain some of these figures held for photographic documentation of their work which they believed needed to be experienced to be understood.
DEPARTURE OPENS MAY 20TH FILM INFO:
109 mins, UK, 2015, Digital Notes by David O'Mahony
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Beatrice (Juliet Stevenson) and her 15-year-old son Elliot (Alex Lawther) have come to their secluded retreat in the south of France not for a vacation but to clear it out for imminent sale – the house has for Beatrice become a symbol of her recently failed marriage. A typically self-absorbed teenager, Elliot prefers to wander in the surrounding idyllic woods than assist his mother, and it is there that he spies handsome bilingual Clement (Phénix Brossard) skinny-dipping in the local
reservoir and is immediately besotted. Nuanced performances and a delicately achieved tone make Andrew Steggall’s debut feature an endearing portrait of unrequited young love.
There will be Open Captioned (OC) screenings on May 23rd (15.45) and 26th (18.30). Audio Description (AD) will be available on all screenings. Visit www.ifi.ie/accessible for more.
OPENS MAY 20TH EXCLUSIVELY AT IFI† FILM INFO:
75 mins, USA, 2015, Digital Notes by Alice Butler
Since the 1960s, when she first gained recognition in New York for her innovative, mostly sound or musicoriented performance art, the uniquely talented Laurie Anderson has developed a career as an artist, composer-musician, filmmaker and inventor that has seen her reach the top of the UK charts, act as NASA’s first artist in residence and win the 2007 Gish Prize for her "outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind's enjoyment and understanding of life.”
IFI DOC
HEART OF A DOG An essay-film combining live action, 8mm home movie footage, as well as Anderson’s own striking black line drawings, Heart of a Dog uses stories, related by the filmmaker in her distinctively performative and tuneful voice, about or concerning the life and death of her cherished pet terrier, Lolabelle, as a trigger to consider a number of complex, interrelated subjects, both personal and political, including love, mortality, memory and the post-9/11 surveillance state.
OPENS MAY 20TH (KISHIBE NO TABI) EXCLUSIVELY AT IFI† FILM INFO:
128 mins, Japan-France, 2015, Blu-ray, Subtitled Notes by Kevin Coyne
Ghosts both literal and figurative abound in this delicate and unusual love story, which won the prize for Best Director in the Un Certain Regard section of last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Lonely Mizuki (Eri Fukatsu) is surprised one evening when her husband Yusuke (Tadanobu Asano) appears in her apartment and informs her that he died at sea three years previously. Promising to show her “beautiful places”, he offers to take her to meet those who showed
NEW RELEASE
JOURNEY TO THE SHORE him kindness on his journey home: a newspaper vendor who doesn’t realise that he is also dead; a restaurant-owning couple, one of whom is haunted by her own childhood loss; and a village in which Yusuke was a respected and beloved teacher. As they travel, the two reconnect, and in dealing with their regrets and sadnesses about their relationship, are finally able to move on. 9
NEW IFI CLASSIC RELEASE
MAY 2016
MIRROR OPENS MAY 20TH EXCLUSIVELY AT IFI† FILM INFO:
106 mins, Soviet Union, 1975, Colour and Black & White, Digital, Subtitled Notes by Alice Butler
TARKOVSKY SEASON
NEW RELEASE
See pages 12 – 14 for our Tarkovsky season.
An iconic, influential film of force and poetic beauty in which Tarkovsky favours “associative linking” over “linear sequentiality”, Mirror is a semiautobiographical work that collapses the prevailing distinction between individual and collective history, memory and experience. Fluctuating between different time periods – the mid-1930s, the war-time period and the narrative present set in the early 1970s – Tarkovsky ingeniously merges dream, vision, real time and
archive sequences to evoke a portrait in radical form of his own psychology and of those connected to him including his son, a neighbouring Spanish family, an orphan at a military school, but perhaps most evocatively, his ex-wife and mother, both played at various stages with inimitable depth by Margarita Terekhova. It is difficult to recall when cinema has been more expressive or worked more effectively to contest the monumental history of a state than in this vital, mysterious film.
THE DAUGHTER OPENS MAY 27TH FILM INFO:
96 mins, Australia, 2015, Digital Notes by David O'Mahony
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A prodigal son’s return leads to revelations of long-repressed family secrets in theatre director Simon Stone’s brooding debut feature, a re-working of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck relocated to contemporary New South Wales. Recovering alcoholic Christian (Paul Schneider) has been summoned home from America for the wedding of his wealthy father, Henry (Geoffrey Rush), to his considerably younger former housekeeper. Henry has closed the town’s mill, which has kept the
community alive for generations, further alienating him from townsfolk that already view him as aloof. One such former mill worker is Oliver (Ewen Leslie), Christian’s childhood friend, whose absent-minded father Walter (Sam Neill) was once Henry’s business partner. Revisiting his 2011 stage adaptation, Stone brings much cinematic innovation to Ibsen’s text, while holding fast to the core theme of sins of the past exploding in the present.
OPENS MAY 27TH FILM INFO:
92 mins, USA-Ireland-UK, 2016, Digital Notes by David O'Mahony
An adaptation of Jane Austen’s Lady Susan, a posthumously published early epistolary novella, Love & Friendship sees Whit Stillman transpose his urbane, ironic brand of humour to 18th-century England with delightful results. A director of literary sensibility, Stillman incorporates playful devices of his own into Austen’s elaborate comedy of manners, such as introducing his dramatis personae with wryly amusing character descriptions. The recently widowed Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale), a scheming,
NEW RELEASE
LOVE & FRIENDSHIP self-interested manipulator, comes to stay with her in-laws, Catherine and Charles Vernon, at their country estate, primarily for the purposes of securing her financial future through a match with Catherine’s eligible younger brother Reginald de Courcy (Xavier Samuel), a plan which comes unstuck with the surprise arrival of her daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark), a potential romantic distraction for Reginald. Lady Susan must use all her wiles to thwart their possible union.
OPENS MAY 27TH (MY KING) EXCLUSIVELY AT IFI† FILM INFO:
128 mins, France, 2015, Digital, Subtitled Notes by David O'Mahony
Tony (Emmanuelle Bercot) is admitted to a rehabilitation centre following a serious skiing accident; bedridden and under constant supervision she reflects on her tumultuous ten years with Giorgio (Vincent Cassel), an obsessional, mutually destructive relationship that has left her in an emotionally brittle condition. Through extended flashbacks we observe key moments in their shared history, from the first blush of romance and lust to marriage and children, and the eventual toxic fallout of infidelity,
NEW RELEASE
MON ROI repeated breakups and constant internecine squabbling. From her convalescent bed, Tony ponders her connection to Giorgio, an undeniable bond that held them together no matter how much harm they caused each other. With a pair of astonishingly committed performances from Bercot and Cassel, Mon Roi, the fourth feature from French actress turned director Maïwenn (Polisse), is a rigorous, emotionally draining delineation of an explosive relationship. 11
MAY 14TH—28TH
A humanist intrigued by notions of faith and spirituality, Tarkovsky’s work also frequently addresses the reciprocal relationship between the artist and society, how the past informs the present, and the individual’s place in and relationship with nature.
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Stylistically, his films are predominantly constructed in long takes which are intended to impress upon the viewer the experience of the passage of time, and the relationship of one moment to another. He believed, “my function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that beauty is summoning him.” Introduction and notes on individual films by Kevin Coyne. Mirror opens at the IFI on May 20th (please see page 10 for notes).
Stalker
Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) is one of the true greats of world cinema. Despite having sole responsibility for just seven features and a handful of shorts, his work has proven hugely influential; admired by contemporaries such as Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman, who said of him, “Tarkovsky for me is the greatest (director), the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.” He has also had an enduring impact on Russian filmmakers such as Aleksandr Sokurov and Andrei Zvyagintsev, and others such as Béla Tarr and Terrence Malick.
ANDREI TARKOVSKY SCULPTING IN TIME
IVAN’S CHILDHOOD MAY 14TH (15.00) (Иваново детство) FILM INFO:
95 mins, Soviet Union, 1962, Subtitled, Black & White, Digital
Tarkovsky’s first feature won him immediate international acclaim as he received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and the respect of individuals such as Bergman and Sartre.
ANDREI RUBLEV
FILM INFO:
183 mins, Soviet Union, 1966, Subtitled, Black & White and Colour, Digital
Andrei Rublev, what Tarkovsky called a “film of the earth”, is an epic, largely fictionalised biography of the great 15th-century Russian iconographer.
SOLARIS
FILM INFO:
166 minutes, Soviet Union, 1972, Subtitled, Colour and Black & White, Digital
The film led to controversy and censorship in the USSR, an ironic fate for a film that examines Tarkovsky’s personal fascination with the connection between an artist and the time in which the artist lives.
led to its status as one of cinema’s truly great science-fiction films.
MAY 18TH (20.00) (Солярис)
Ivan’s Childhood blurs the boundaries between dream and reality as a means of examining the tension between past and present. What Tarkovsky called his “qualifying examination”, Bergman believed “like a miracle.”
Broken into eight chapters which recount incidents from the artist’s life, its backdrop of medieval Russia is a time of conflict and cruelty in which Andrei, a humanist who only wishes to inspire with his art, faces his own struggle between the physical and the spiritual.
MAY 15TH (15.00) (Андрей Рублёв)
Twelve-year-old Ivan (Kolya Burlyaev) has attached himself to a Russian regiment fighting the Nazis, where his size makes him invaluable for increasingly dangerous reconnaissance missions. The boy is determined to avenge the death of his parents at the hands of German soldiers.
Stanisław Lem’s science-fiction novel had previously been adapted for Russian television in 1968, but Tarkovsky brought his own sensibility to the genre, imbuing his moving and unsettling Solaris with an emotional and intellectual depth that has
The crew of a scientific research station above the titular planet are troubled by apparitions of those they have lost, particularly new arrival Kelvin, to whom appears his late wife. The crew come to believe that these simulacra have been created from their memories by the planet, which is in some way sentient.
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ANDREI TARKOVSKY SCULPTING IN TIME
STALKER
A Writer (Anatoliy Solonitsyn) and a Professor (Nikolay Grinko) seeking the room entrust themselves to a Stalker (Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy), who is able to navigate the Zone and locate the Room.
MAY 21ST (15.30) (Сталкер) FILM INFO:
162 mins, Soviet Union, 1979, Subtitled, Colour and Black & White, Digital
Tarkovsky’s second foray into sciencefiction is no less of a masterpiece than Solaris. In the Zone, an area in which the normal laws of reality no longer apply, is said to exist the Room, entry to which is believed to lead to the fulfilment of one’s deepest desires.
NOSTALGIA
Tarkovsky moved production of Nostalgia to Italy, where he enjoyed greater artistic and financial freedom.
MAY 25TH (20.30) (NOSTALGHIA) FILM INFO:
120 mins, Italy, 1983, Subtitled, Digital
Tired of state interference in his work, particularly after his experience in 1979 when attempting to make The First Day (a project for which filming had already begun before the frustrated director destroyed the existing footage),
THE SACRIFICE MAY 28TH (15.20) (OFFRET) FILM INFO:
149 mins, Sweden-U.K.-France, 1986, Subtitled, Digital
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A film that had to be shot twice after the original stock was ruined during development, it stands as a testament to the director’s perfectionism and precision.
After the head of the Soviet delegation actively (and successfully) campaigned against the awarding of Cannes’ Palme d’Or to Nostalgia, Tarkovsky resolved to stay in the West.
Suitably, the film follows an expatriate Russian writer who yearns for the homeland of his memory, filled with an ennui that causes him to ignore the attentions of his beautiful translator (Domiziana Giordano), and only roused from his torpor after an encounter with a local mystic, who sets him a challenging task.
The Sacrifice was to be his final film – Tarkovsky died shortly after completion from lung cancer, possibly as a result of exposure to toxic materials while shooting Stalker. In a world facing imminent disaster, Alexander (Erland Josephson) vows to walk away from all that he loves if God will spare his family from this fate. A film that affirms the power of love, humanity, and faith, it makes for a fitting conclusion to a remarkable body of work.
IFI EVENTS IRISH FOCUS FROM THE VAULTS ARCHIVE AT LUNCHTIME IFI FAMILY HELLBOY THE MASTER (70MM) AEMI PROJECTIONS 3 WOMEN ARABIAN NIGHTS INNOCENCE OF MEMORIES THE BIGGER PICTURE IFI EXPLORERS THE HANGOVER LOUNGE WILD STRAWBERRIES & BEALTAINE
IRISH FOCUS CLOUD OF SKIN MAY 25TH (18.30) DIRECTOR:
Maximilian Le Cain
FILM INFO:
84 mins, Ireland, 2015, Digital Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn
Join us for our focus on new Irish film and filmmakers.
Haunted by the memory of a blind woman with visionary powers, a man revisits the sites of their love affair. Rather than unfolding as a traditional
FROM THE VAULTS LAMB MAY 31ST (18.30) DIRECTOR: Colin Gregg
FILM INFO:
110 mins, Ireland–UK, 1985, Digibeta Notes by Sunniva O'Flynn
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Michael Lamb (Liam Neeson) is an idealistic young Brother in a west of Ireland reformatory, ill at ease with the brutal regime under which the young inmates live. The recent death of his father and his growing anger at the mistreatment of one of the boys
narrative, Le Cain’s first feature is an immersive and dreamlike exploration of memory and vision. Shot in a series of time-warped Irish locations, the otherworldly atmosphere is intensified by composer Karen Power’s compelling soundscapes. Though formally unconventional, this work is as accessible as it is beguiling. It is the work of a filmmaker who for years has tirelessly pushed an Irish underground cinema to the surface and is here at the peak of his powers. Please see page 18 where Maximilian Le Cain’s work also features as part of this month’s AEMI programme. (Hugh O’Conor) prompts him to take dramatic action; cash in his inheritance and flee with the boy to England. With this unconventional relationship between a naïve young cleric and a troubled child at its core, the film is vivid and unsettling – and unlikely to have been made at a later stage when scandals of clerical abuse were rife – with Neeson in his first lead film role and a remarkable debut for Hugh O’Conor (four years before his Oscar nomination for My Left Foot). We’re delighted to welcome Hugh O’Conor to the IFI for a post-screening Q&A.
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IFI FAMILY
Water Wisdom
ARCHIVE AT LUNCHTIME
BE WISE, MODERNISE!
ZARAFA
Join us for free screenings of films from the IFI Irish Film Archive. Simply collect tickets at IFI Box Office. Please see www.ifi.ie for dates and times.
MAY 29TH (11.00)
PROGRAMME 1 AMHARC ÉIREANN – LEICTRIÚ CHONAMARA The Rural Electrification Scheme rolls out in the west of Ireland in this short magazine-style newsreel by Colm O Laoghaire for Gael Linn. FILM INFO: 3 mins, 1957, Black & White, Digital
MORE POWER TO THE FARMER
Made by Gerard Healy for the ESB, the film celebrates the Rural Electrification Scheme and the inestimable benefits to farm-life – with scenes of cable-laying, pole-raising, a switch-on ceremony and new appliances in the home. FILM INFO: 15 mins, 1957, Digital, Black & White
PROGRAMME 2: WATER WISDOM
Colm O Laoghaire’s dramatised tale of a rural housewife’s embarrassment at her lack of piped water when city visitors drop by. The film encourages small farmers to introduce piped water, to maximise farm efficiency and minimise domestic disgrace. FILM INFO: 22 mins, 1962, Digital
For more gems from the IFI Irish Film Archive, see From the Vaults on page 15.
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This beautiful animation starts with the colours and sounds of Africa and tells the story of brave young Maki and his escape from slave traders. Making a long journey across the fiercely hot desert he befriends a baby giraffe, Zarafa, and a kindly Bedouin called Hassan. Together they travel to the ancient city of Alexandria, before climbing aboard a magic air balloon which flies them to 19th-century Paris where they present Zarafa to the King. Using a range of colours and a classic drawing style, this moving and engaging film will appeal to adults and children alike. DIRECTORS: Rémi Bezançon, Jean-Christophe Lie FILM INFO: 78 mins, France-Belgium, 2012, Digital
Recommended Age 6+ Tickets: €4.80 per person, €14.40 family ticket (2 adults + 2 children, 1 adult + 3 children).
IFI & SUB CITY HELLBOY
MAY 5TH (18.30) DIRECTOR:
Guillermo del Toro
FILM INFO:
122 mins, USA, 2004, Blu-ray Notes by Kevin Coyne
Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman bring the hero of Mike Mignola’s graphic novels to life in Hellboy, a thoroughly entertaining, intelligent, and witty take on the superhero genre. When Nazis enlist Rasputin to summon ancient entities to assist their war efforts, what arrives instead is an infant demon who is rescued by the Allies and raised by an occult expert (John Hurt).
Resurrected by his disciples, Rasputin unleashes a hellhound which is hunted down by Hellboy and his colleagues at the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence, leading to a potentially apocalyptic showdown which reveals clues as to Hellboy’s ultimate destiny. In association with Sub-City Comics.
THE MASTER (70MM)
MAY 7TH (17.30) MAY 8TH (17.30) MAY 10TH (20.20) DIRECTOR:
Paul Thomas Anderson
FILM INFO:
144 mins, USA, 2012, 70mm Notes by Kevin Coyne
On its release, it was always the IFI’s intention that The Master receive screenings on 70mm. For reasons entirely beyond our control, it has taken until now for this to happen, but we are delighted to finally be able to keep the promise made to audiences in 2012. WWII veteran Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, in a remarkable performance as a man floundering and visibly uncomfortable in his own skin)
drifts from job to job, unable to adjust to life in peacetime, seeking comfort in alcohol, before connecting with Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), leader of quasi-religious movement ‘The Cause’. Tickets: €12 (€10 Members) Supported by
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IFI & AEMI PROJECTIONS COLLECTIVISM PART 3: EXPERIMENTAL FILM SOCIETY MAY 4TH (18.30) DIRECTORS: Various
FILM INFO:
Approx duration: 87 mins, Digital
GUESTS
We are pleased to welcome core members of the Experimental Film Society to take part in a discussion after the screening.
For the final edition of our three-part programme on Collectivism as it relates to contemporary film practices, AEMI is proud to present a selection of works by members of the Experimental Film Society. The programme develops out of a series of conversations with core members of EFS addressing the role of the collective in constructing a productive understanding of what cinema can say and do. Drawing upon the speculative logic of science fiction,
a regular presence in many of the works screening here, cinema is re-articulated as a heterogeneous space which “can contain all galaxies and forms of life, even ones we can sense but can’t fully comprehend.” Curated by Alice Butler and Daniel Fitzpatrick. Please see page 15 where EFS filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain’s work also features as part of this month’s Irish Focus strand.
IFI & DUBLIN CITY GALLERY THE HUGH LANE 3 WOMEN MAY 11TH (18.15) DIRECTOR: Robert Altman
FILM INFO:
124 mins, USA, 1977, Digital Notes by Alice Butler
GUESTS
We are pleased to welcome artist Jesse Jones, Director of the Feminist Film Festival Karla Healion and IFI’s Alice Butler to take part in a discussion after the screening.
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A key reference point for Jesse Jones in the development of her exhibition, ‘NO MORE FUN AND GAMES’, which runs at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane until June 26th, Robert Altman’s oneiric masterpiece portrays the elusive bond that evolves between Millie (Shelley Duvall), her obsequious co-worker Pinky (Sissy Spacek) and a more peripheral artist figure called Willie Hart (Janice Rule). While settling into a job at a Californian health spa,
Pinky starts to idolise Millie, an incessantly talkative fellow Texan who everyone else seems to ignore. Soon after Pinky moves in with Millie however, their identities begin to interchange, with Pinky becoming intractable and Millie more subservient.
ARABIAN NIGHTS MIGUEL GOMES MAY 28TH (13.00/15.40/18.30) FILM/EVENT DURATION:
Volume 1 - 125 mins; Volume 2 131 mins; Volume 3 - 126 mins; Portugal-France-Germany-Switzerland, 2015, Digital, Subtitled Notes by Kevin Coyne
TICKETS
Tickets: €25. Tickets to individual volumes will not be available. There will be an interval of approximately 30 minutes between each volume.
One of the year’s most ambitious projects, Miguel Gomes’ (Tabu) triptych takes its structure from One Thousand and One Nights, placing Scheherazade (Crista Alfaiate) in a contemporary setting as the tales she tells relate to the director’s perspective on Portugal as a country suffering a psychological crisis as a result of its financial crisis, and the use of stringent austerity as a means by which to counter the latter. The sprawling storytelling is dense
and complex, but by no means a dour exercise in miserabilism; the volumes are shot through with eccentric humour throughout their many digressions in an absorbing and engaging work. Film times: Volume 1: The Restless One – 13.00; Volume 2: The Desolate One – 15.40; Volume 3: The Enchanted One – 18.30.
IFI & INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE FESTIVAL DUBLIN: INNOCENCE OF MEMORIES MAY 29TH (16.30) DIRECTOR: Grant Gee
FILM INFO:
97 mins, UK, Digital
GUEST
We’re delighted to welcome director Grant Gee for a post-screening discussion.
In the 1990s Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize-winning author of My Name is Red, bought a rundown building in Beyoğlu, an unfashionable suburb of Istanbul. Over the next two decades he slowly turned it into a museum: a monument to the obsessive personality of Kemal, the fictional protagonist of his 2008 bestseller The Museum of Innocence, who hoards every object relating to his secret affair with Füsun.
Directed by Grant Gee, the award-winning filmmaker whose Patience: After Sebald was screened at the IFI as part of the festival in 2012, Innocence of Memories offers a dreamlike mediation on the novel, the museum, and Istanbul itself. Presented in association with International Literature Festival Dublin.
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THE BIGGER PICTURE ROGER AND ME Our monthly programme strand in which a key film is presented in the context of a notional film canon.
evolution of the documentary form through his scabrous attacks on various cornerstones of American life such as health, foreign policy, and gun control, and has changed the way the documentary is perceived, from old-style TV fodder to mainstream cinema fare. In this his first film, he takes on General Motors, the backbone-of-America company which deserted his hometown of Flint and 35,000 workers, for cheaper conditions south of the border.
Oscar winner, left-wing activist, writer and filmmaker Michael Moore has contributed to the
Donald Taylor Black, filmmaker and Creative Director of The National Film School will present the film.
MAY 9TH (18.30) DIRECTOR:
Michael Moore
FILM INFO:
99 mins, U.S., 1989, Digital Film notes by Alicia McGivern
IFI EXPLORERS MUSTANG
Set in a remote Turkish village, the film depicts the lives of five orphaned sisters and the challenges they face growing up as girls in a conservative community. They long to have their own freedom but are forbidden by their elders to have any contact with the outside world, or with boys.
MAY 18TH (16.00) DIRECTOR:
Deniz Gamze Ergüven
FILM INFO:
97 mins, France-Turkey, 2015, Digital, Subtitled Notes by Dee Quinlan
IFI Explorers is our monthly film club for 15-18 year olds.
IFI Explorers' special €3 offer for May is the highly anticipated, Oscar-nominated drama, Mustang.
THE HANGOVER LOUNGE BIGGER THAN LIFE MAY 22ND (14.00) DIRECTOR: Nicholas Ray
FILM INFO:
95 mins, USA, 1956, 35mm Notes by David O'Mahony Film + Brunch €16
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Our monthly indulgent Sunday afternoon of brunch and a classic film.
Inspired by a New Yorker article about a man driven to megalomaniacal extremes by
Turkish-born French director Deniz Gamze Ergüven balances out the film’s bleakness with unexpected humour and warmth to create this tender and fresh coming-of-age film.
experimental drugs, Nicholas Ray’s film seizes on the idea of drug-fuelled insanity behind the white picket fences as a critique of middle class American values. Schoolteacher Ed Avery (James Mason) is diagnosed with an arterial condition for which hormone cortisone is prescribed. The new drug has an astonishing curative effect on Avery, but its unforeseen effects on his psyche are more alarming still. Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar is on re-release from May 6th. See page 6 for film notes.
WILD STRAWBERRIES & BEALTAINE
A WALK IN THE WOODS KEN KWAPIS
This month’s Wild Strawberries events tie in with Bealtaine, the annual Festival which celebrates creativity as we age. For 2016, Bealtaine takes a look at some iconic citizens, and at the cultural life of the nation across various genres and events.
The access>CINEMA film tour choice for 2016 is based on the Bill Bryson memoir of walking the Appalachian Trail. This amusing drama follows Robert Redford as a late-in-life hiker who takes to the trail with his decidedly ill-prepared pal, played by Nick Nolte. There’s something completely watchable about this affable pair, hauling their new kit across beautiful terrain, encountering various slices of American life.
As we like to connect with the land, it’s also the focus of this year’s touring film, in conjunction with access>CINEMA, in which Robert Redford and Nick Nolte rekindle their friendship through an Appalachian trek. Our second item is a moving profile of artist Jimmy Murakami, a late citizen of Ireland. To complete the month we are showing Noble, about the indefatigable Christina Noble.
MAY 4TH (11.00)
FILM INFO: 107 mins, USA, 2015
GUEST SPEAKER: Presenter Anne Cassin from RTÉ’s Nationwide will launch the film tour.
JIMMY MURAKAMI: NON ALIEN SÉ MERRY DOYLE
NOBLE STEPHEN BRADLEY
MAY 20TH (11.00)
MAY 25TH & 27TH (11.00)
The subject of this affecting and intriguing documentary is the late filmmaker, artist and animator Jimmy Murakami, who made Ireland his home. The Oscar-nominated animator of When the Wind Blows and The Snowman uses drawings to revisit his American childhood, in particular the camp in which he, his JapaneseAmerican parents and siblings were interned, stripped of their citizenship and deemed ‘nonaliens’ during WW2.
Christina Noble has dedicated her life to working with street children in Vietnam, following her own appalling upbringing in 1940s Dublin. From building a shelter after a visit in 1989, thus began a lifetime’s commitment. The film is not short on melodrama, but the performances by Gloria Cramer Curtis, Sarah Greene and Deirdre O'Kane of different stages in Christina’s life offer a glimpse of a remarkable woman. FILM INFO: 100 mins, UK-Vietnam, 2014
FILM INFO:
90 mins, Ireland, 2010
GUEST SPEAKER:
Director Sé Merry Doyle will present his film.
All film tickets: €4.25 including regular tea/coffee before the event. Wild Strawberries is our film club for over 55s. If you are lucky enough to look younger please don’t take offence if we ask your age. 21
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