EXCLUSIVELY AT THE IFI

Closing this Thursday, May 1st. Tickets are on sale now.

His first feature-length work since the acclaimed Silence, director Pat Collins marks his return with this mesmeric documentary, a poetic and imaginative film essay that makes unexpected links between events and locations, history and contemporary life.

Revolving around stories associated with place, the film reflects on the traces of the past that exist in the present. As his distinctive slow cinema style is masterfully deployed, Collins locates these traces in the footprints – mansions, battlefields, and worn-down villages – left by histories shown to be still in motion today.

Making judicious use of archive footage from RTÉ and the IFI, Collins meditates on the themes of colonialism, emigration, the Famine, land, property, and art these histories contain. With all this achieved through Collins’ unique cinematic voice, the result is a film which starts a much-needed conversation about Ireland’s buried past. (Notes by Conor Dowling.)

These screenings will be preceded by the Arts Council funded short, What Remains. Pat Collins and Tadhg O’Sullivan’s abstract work, explores personal and cultural memory, made exclusively from film in the IFI Irish Film Archive. (11mins, Ireland, 2013.)

Don’t forget we now schedule weekly.

★★★★1/2  Entertainment.ie    ★★★★ The Irish Times      ★★★★1/2 Scannain.com

IFI Spotlight, our annual review of Irish film and television, will take place on Saturday, April 12th and will feature a day of free seminars and panel discussions.