IRISH FILM INSITITUTE, DUBLIN ANNOUNCES A RETROSPECTIVE OF THE WORK OF ALAN GILSENAN

IRISH FILM INSITITUTE, DUBLIN
ANNOUNCES A RETROSPECTIVE OF THE WORK OF
ALAN GILSENAN

WEDNESDAY APRIL 8TH – THURSDAY APRIL 30TH

TICKETS ON SALE NOW: IFI.IE/ALAN-GILSENAN/

Images free to use across media can be downloaded HERE

Image Credit: Alan Gilsenan self-portrait.

Wednesday, 25 March 2026: With a film and theatre career spanning almost forty years, ALAN GILSENAN is one of Ireland’s most prolific and revered directors of drama and documentary film. This selective retrospective, which includes two of his four feature dramas, provides an introduction to the films, many of which were made with his longtime producer Martin Mahon, through their company Yellow Asylum Films.

Gilsenan’s documentary mode, which ranges from robust investigation to essayistic reverie to sensitive observation, is distinguished by intellectual rigour and creative innovation, allied to a seemingly unquenchable curiosity about history, literature, culture and society – both in Ireland but also in the wider world. His highly eclectic oeuvre of over 40 films for cinema and television also provides an invaluable compendium of reflection on Irish minds and Irish matters over four decades.

Speaking about the month-long season at the IFI, Alan Gilsenan said: 
“Honoured, humbled and just a little mortified by this suitably eclectic retrospective of some of my films down the years… I’m grateful, of course, to all at the Irish Film Institute for this small moment of reflection but also to all the many great people whom I have collaborated with over the years in making these films and many others.”

Commenting on the retrospective, IFI Head of Irish Programming Sunniva O’Flynn added: “We are delighted to present an illustrative selection of films from Alan Gilsenan’s vast catalogue of work exploring 40 years of Irish and international society and sensibility with such erudition and flawless craft. We are particularly pleased that the cinema programme is complemented by a hefty brace of work on our digital platforms and look forward to learning more about the material in a career-sweeping conversation hosted by fellow documentary stalwart Pat Collins.”

The films in this season will be introduced by Alan Gilsenan or by his filmmaking collaborators, with Marsha Hunt attending for Marsha Hunt: Made in America, and with Stephen Rea and composers Jim O’Rourke and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh in attendance for the Special Advance Preview screening of The Journey of Weather-Exposed Bones.

A selection of titles from the season will be available to stream across the Republic of Ireland on IFI@Home, including The Seven Ages of Noël Browne, Ghosts of Baggotonia, We Only Want the Earth, with The Meeting, Meetings with Ivor, and The Days of Trees available to stream on IFI@Home and internationally via IFI International.

www.ifihome.ie
www.ifiinternational.ie

CINEMA SCHEDULE

The Road To God Knows Where – Wednesday, April 8th (18.30)

 All Souls’ Day – Saturday, April 11th (15.30)

 Marsha Hunt: Made in America – Sunday, April 12th (16.00)

 Samuel Beckett’s Eh Joe – Monday, April 13th (18.30)

 The Asylum – Wednesday, April 15th (18.30)

 The Yellow Bittern: The Life and Times of Liam Clancy – Saturday, April 18th (15.00)

 Ó Pheann An Phiarsaigh  – Sunday, April 19th (15.00)

 Unless – Wednesday, April 22nd (18.30)

 Meetings With Ivor – Saturday, April 25th (15.30)

 The Journey of Weather-Exposed Bones (Special Advance Preview) – Sunday, April 26th (13.30)

 Career Talk with Alan Gilsenan – Thursday, April 30th (18.30)

 

FILM NOTES

Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn

THE ROAD TO GOD KNOWS WHERE
53 mins, Ireland, 1988, Digital
Wednesday, April 8th (18.30)

Gilsenan’s breakthrough and controversial state-of-the-nation film essay, was, and still is, a provocative, iconoclastic portrait of Irish youth in the 1980s, a time of unemployment, emigration and political crisis. The Road… offered voice to a broad sweep of angry, disillusioned young people in Ireland and in their newly adopted homelands, and captured the spirit of the time in its chaotic ensemble of testimony, stark visual imagery and arresting music track featuring U2, Aslan, and The Pogues.

Alan Gilsenan will be in attendance. 

ALL SOULS’ DAY
78 mins, Ireland, 1997, Digital.
Saturday, April 11th (15.30)

On All Souls’ Day, the naked body of a young woman Nicole (Eva Birthistle) is found on a beach. Seven years later, her mother Madie (Jayne Snow), obsessed with finding out what happened on that fateful day, visits her daughter’s boyfriend Jim (Declan Conlon) in prison. As memories surface, and Madie and Jim embark on a search for truth and redemption, they stumble upon a sinister truth. Gilsenan creates a sense of deep unease with this intelligent and formally unconventional work.

Alan Gilsenan will be in attendance. 

MARSHA HUNT: MADE IN AMERICA
52 mins, UK, 1997, Digital.
Sunday, April 12th (16.00)

One episode of the Made in America series Gilsenan directed focusing on American authors (such as Gore Vidal, Patricia Cornwell, Garrison Keillor) reflecting on the cities they call home. Here African-American icon Marsha Hunt, novelist, memoirist, singer and actor, considers her complex relationship with Philadelphia, the city where she spent her childhood and discusses the complexities of colour, democracy and capitalism in the United States, linking them to the history of slavery. 

Alan Gilsenan and Marsha Hunt will be in attendance. 

 

SAMUEL BECKETT’S EH JOE
38 mins, Ireland, 1986, Digital.
Monday, April 13th (18.30)

Eh Joe written by Samuel Beckett for television, was first broadcast on Beckett’s 60th birthday on April 13th, 1966. In Alan Gilsenan’s version, created 20 years later, Joe (Tom Hickey) is haunted by the voice of his dead wife (Siobhán McKenna in her final role) as he sits alone in his bedsit.

Here the cinematography explores the landscape of the human body creating tension in tandem with the intimate, auditory nature of the original text.

Alan Gilsenan will be in attendance. 

THE ASYLUM
76 mins, Ireland, 2025, Digital, Subtitled.
Wednesday, April 15th (18.30)

By 2006 St. Ita’s Psychiatric Hospital, commonly known as Portrane, was a place which evoked fear and loathing in the public imagination even though little was known about what went on inside. As it was then facing closure, Gilsenan gained unprecedented access to the institution and, with signature sensitivity and integrity, he chronicled an intimate record of life for the residents (some of whom who had been there for half a century), explored the treatments in use, and considered the immense challenges of life after release.

Alan Gilsenan will be in attendance. 

THE YELLOW BITTERN: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LIAM CLANCY
108 mins, Ireland-USA, 2009, Digital, 15A.
Saturday, April 18th (15.00)

This surprising portrait of Liam Clancy, the last surviving member of The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, and the man that Bob Dylan called “just the best ballad singer I’d ever heard in my whole life,” is an intimate, c
onfessional and highly cinematic work which charts the Clancys’ rise to fame from small-town beginnings in Tipperary to their Aran-jumpered 1960s hey-day in Greenwich Village where they played for JFK and out-sold the Beatles – but behind the scenes all was not well…

Alan Gilsenan will be in attendance. 

Ó PHEANN AN PHIARSAIGH
51 mins, Ireland, 2010, Digital
Sunday, April 19th (15.00)

Through a carefully structured montage, and drawing solely on Pearse’s own creative writings, this experimental essay explores the life and death of a controversial national icon, an artist who moulded his life, and ultimately his death, into his finest work of art.  It suggests that Pearse’s visionary views on an Irish Republic, on education and on the Irish language stemmed primarily from an artistic impulse which he articulated through his essays, speeches, plays and poems and considers the impact of his legacy on Ireland’s collective national unconscious.

Alan Gilsenan will be in attendance. 

UNLESS
90 mins, Canada-Ireland, 2016, Digital
Wednesday, April 22nd (18.30)

Reta Winters (Catherine Keener) has many reasons to be happy: her three teenage daughters, her twenty‐year marriage, and her work as a successful novelist. But suddenly, all the quiet satisfactions of her life disappear when her eldest daughter, Norah (Hannah Gross), drops out of college and leaves home for a Toronto street corner, refusing to speak and holding a sign that says simply ‘Goodness.’

Adapted from Carol Shield’s final novel, Unless is a deeply moving study of parental grief in the face of incomprehensible loss.

Alan Gilsenan will be in attendance.  

MEETINGS WITH IVOR
82 mins, Ireland, 2017, Digital
Saturday, April 25th (15.30) 

Radical psychiatrist Prof. Ivor Browne (1929 – 2024) was a leading figure in the Irish medical establishment and one of its greatest critics.  His pioneering and often controversial work changed attitudes to mental illness in Ireland. In this quirky and challenging cinematic portrait Browne, then in his late eighties, radiates energy, good humour, compassion and a capacity for deeply informed, startlingly innovative thought. With contributions from Tommy Tiernan, Tom Murphy, Mary Coughlan, Sebastian Barry, Nell McCafferty, and Prof. Brendan Kelly.

Alan Gilsenan will be in attendance. 

THE JOURNEY OF WEATHER-EXPOSED BONES
Special Advance Preview.
76 mins, Ireland, 2025, Digital, Subtitled.
Sunday, April 26th (13.30)

Gilsenan’s latest work is a non-narrative film, inspired by a new translation of the seminal Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō by the Irish translator, poet and scholar Andrew Fitzsimons.

It is – in equal parts – a journey through contemporary Japan, a cinematic act of psycho-geography, a meditation on the devastating impact of climate change and a profound reflection on the meaning of ‘home’ in today’s uneasy global world.

Alan Gilsenan will be in attendance alongside Stephen Rea and composers Jim O’Rourke & Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh.   

 

ALAN GILSENAN: CAREER CONVERSATION
60 mins approx.
Thursday, April 30th (18.30)

Alan Gilsenan will be joined by fellow filmmaker Pat Collins to reflect on a career in film and to explore his narrative strategies and the themes and subjects that have consumed him over the years.

 

NOW BOOKING

Book now for cinema screenings via https://ifi.ie/alan-gilsenan/ or via IFI Box Office in-person or over the phone via 01 679 5744.

Season bundles are available for IFI Members only:

 

These packages can only be booked in-person or by calling the IFI Box Office on 01 679 5744.  See https://ifi.ie/support for full details on IFI Membership and to sign up.

This season is available for 25 & Under cardholder pricing. Sign-up is free for the 25 & Under card for those aged 16-25. See https://ifi.ie/25under for full details.

 

SUPPORT

The IFI acknowledges the support of the Arts Council.