DECEMBER 2019 AT THE IFI

All events at the Irish Film Institute in December 2019.

NEW RELEASES:
From December 6th: The Cave, Ordinary Love, So Long, My Son

From December 13th: Beanpole, Citizen K, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Kingmaker

From December 20th: Bait, Buddies, Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

From December 27th: Little Women, Long Day’s Journey into Night (3D)

2nd MON – 18.30 | IRISH FOCUS: SEAMUS HEANEY AND THE MUSIC OF WHAT HAPPENS + Q&A
Six years after his unexpected death in 2013, Seamus Heaney’s wife Marie and their three children talk intimately about their family life and read the poems he wrote for them. Followed by Q&A with Adam Low and Catherine and Marie Heaney, hosted by Prof Margaret Kelleher

3rd TUES – 18.30 | IFI & IMMA: DEREK JARMAN: SEBASTIANE
Jarman made his narrative feature debut with this controversial, proudly homo-erotic, Latin-language treatment of the life and martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, a member of Emperor Diocletian’s Praetorian Guard in the 4th century who was persecuted on account of his Christianity. Introduced by Sean Kissane, Curator of Exhibitions at IMMA, and curator of Derek Jarman: PROTEST!

3rd TUES – 20.30 | PREVIEW: ORDINARY LOVE + Q&A
Retired Belfast couple Joan (Lesley Manville) and Tom (Liam Neeson) live comfortably together, with days filled with the affectionate bickering that comes from a lifetime of shared experiences. Everything changes when Joan finds a lump and is diagnosed with breast cancer, undergoing surgery followed by chemotherapy. Plus Q&A with producer Brian J. Falconer, and directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn.

4th WED – 18.30 | IFI & AEMI: SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE
A one-of-a kind documentary fiction hybrid filmed in 1968 by director William Greaves, which sees him leading an increasingly perplexed film crew around New York’s Central Park as they try to ascertain what kind of film they’re making. This screening will be introduced by comedian and theatre maker James Moran.

5th THURS – 18.20 | EUROPEAN CINEMA NIGHT: COLD WAR
A totally free screening of Pawel Pawlikowski’s entrancing, Oscar-nominated romance. All you have to do is pop in and pick up your tickets at any time from the IFI Box Office.

5th THURS – 18.30 | IFI & IMMA: DEREK JARMAN: JUBILEE
Queen Elizabeth I (Jenny Runacre) is transported into the future by her mysterious occult aide Dr John Dee (Richard O’Brien), and the pair finds themselves in the anarchic Britain of the 1970s, where crime and disorder plague the streets, and Queen Elizabeth II has been killed in an arbitrary mugging.

7th SAT – 13.30 | IFI & IMMA: DEREK JARMAN: THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION
The film, which Jarman himself described as, ‘a dream world, a world of magic and ritual’, takes the form of a poetic montage of imagery depicting gay male desire, accompanied by a selection of Shakespeare’s sonnets, beautifully intoned by Judi Dench, with an evocative soundtrack composed and performed by English experimental group Coil.

8th SUN – 13.00 | OPEN CAPTIONED SCREENING: ORDINARY LOVE
Retired Belfast couple Joan (Lesley Manville) and Tom (Liam Neeson) live comfortably together, with days filled with the affectionate bickering that comes from a lifetime of shared experiences. Everything changes when Joan finds a lump and is diagnosed with breast cancer, undergoing surgery followed by chemotherapy. Presented with Open Captions for the hearing impaired.

8th SUN – 13.30 | IFI & IMMA: DEREK JARMAN: CARAVAGGIO
Probably Jarman’s most accessible, and beautiful, film with a cast including Sean Bean and Tilda Swinton as the model and partner caught up in a complex love triangle with the painter (Nigel Terry). The film brings together Jarman’s quintessential themes: the plight of the artist, homosexual love and the hypocrisy of religious authority.

10th TUES – 18.30 | IFI & IMMA: DEREK JARMAN: THE LAST OF ENGLAND
Jarman’s angriest film, a striking collage of Super 8mm, home video footage, and new material, is a distressing, nightmarish vision of a country which had, under Thatcher’s rule in the 1980s, as the director saw it, become a homophobic, repressive state.

12th THURS – 18.30 | IFI & IMMA: DEREK JARMAN: THE GARDEN
Diagnosed with the HIV virus in the mid-1980s, Jarman’s health was in decline when he came to create this contemplative, self-reflexive reverie on sexual repression, religious iconography and mortality.

12th THURS – 19.00 | OPEN CAPTIONED SCREENING: ORDINARY LOVE
Retired Belfast couple Joan (Lesley Manville) and Tom (Liam Neeson) live comfortably together, with days filled with the affectionate bickering that comes from a lifetime of shared experiences. Everything changes when Joan finds a lump and is diagnosed with breast cancer, undergoing surgery followed by chemotherapy. Presented with Open Captions for the hearing impaired.

14th SAT – 13.30 | IFI & IMMA: DEREK JARMAN: EDWARD II
n adapting Christopher Marlowe’s Elizabethan drama for the screen, Jarman forefronts the play’s homosexual themes, adding relevance through pointed anachronisms in the staging, mixing contemporary and medieval props and clothing.

15th SUN – 13.30 | IFI & IMMA: DEREK JARMAN: WITTGENSTEIN
Derek Jarman’s penultimate film was a theatrical, highly imaginative biopic of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, based on a screenplay by the radical literary theorist Terry Eagleton. Commissioned by Channel 4, and working from a meagre budget as he so often had to, Wittgenstein is full of arresting visuals and bold performances from Tilda Swinton, Michael Gough and Karl Johnson, who brilliantly captures the troubled, homosexual philosopher in all of his torment and drama.

16th MON – 20.10 | IFI & HORRRORTHON PRESENTS: DEATHCEMBER
Following this year’s hugely successful edition of IFI Horrorthon, we’re delighted to offer audiences a seasonal chance to see Deathcember, a cinematic advent calendar taking a look at the darker side of Christmas. Producers Ivo Scheloske and Dominic Saxl have assembled an impressive roster of international cast and crew featuring some of horror’s big names and most familiar faces, including Ruggero Deodato, Lucky McKee, Polyanna McIntosh, Julian Richards, Barbara Crampton, Richard Glover, Irish actor Johnny Vivash, and many, many more.

17th TUES – 18.20 | THE SCIENCE OF GHOSTS + Q&A
Can a film ever truly reflect who you are? Irish singer/songwriter Adrian Crowley becomes a ghost visiting his own life, imagining what a documentary about himself would be like, blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, reality and imagination, subject and director. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Niall McCann and Adrian Crowley, hosted by Matthew Nolan, and a short musical performance.

17th TUES – 18.30 | FEAST YOUR EYES: IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE
It’s A Wonderful Life has become required viewing during the Christmas period, and we’re pleased to present this perennial IFI favourite in a 4K digital restoration, screening daily from December 13th. Presented with a special festive main course at the IFI Café Bar on December 17th, all for just €24.

18th WED – 11.00 | WILD STRAWBERRIES: SOMETIMES ALWAYS NEVER
The droll, elegant performance style of Bill Nighy complements this study of retired reclusive Merseyside tailor Alan, who directs the fastidiousness of his working life into Scrabble games. When his favourite son departs in a row, Alan finds himself searching for him over a number of years, while his elder son Peter, frets about never being good enough. Wild Strawberries is our film club for over 55s. Tickets: €5.50 including regular tea/coffee before the event.

22nd SUN – 11.00 | IFI FAMILY: THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS
For this unusual adaptation of A Christmas Carol, we go behind the scenes of Charles Dickens’s imagination, to see how he might have come up with the characters of his much-loved tale. Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) plays Dickens, much put upon in his packed family home, who goes for a wander around London, trying to complete and publish a story in time for Christmas. Tickets: €5.50 per person, €16.50 family ticket (2 adults + 2 children, 1 adult + 3 children).

24th TUES | CINEMAS CLOSED

25th WED | CINEMAS CLOSED

26th THURS | CINEMAS CLOSED

27th FRI – 11.00 | WILD STRAWBERRIES: SOMETIMES ALWAYS NEVER
The droll, elegant performance style of Bill Nighy complements this study of retired reclusive Merseyside tailor Alan, who directs the fastidiousness of his working life into Scrabble games. When his favourite son departs in a row, Alan finds himself searching for him over a number of years, while his elder son Peter, frets about never being good enough. Wild Strawberries is our film club for over 55s. Tickets: €5.50 including regular tea/coffee before the event.

29th SUN – 13.00 | OPEN CAPTIONED SCREENING: LITTLE WOMEN
Writer-director Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) has crafted a Little Women that draws on both the classic novel and the writings of Louisa May Alcott, and unfolds as the author’s alter ego, Jo March, reflects back and forth on her fictional life. Presented with Open Captions for the hearing impaired.

29th SUN – 13.00 | FROM THE VAULTS & IFI FAMILY: DARBY O’GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE
This 60th anniversary screening will be introduced by Conor Doyle, godson of Jimmy O’Dea. Generations of Irish people hold fond or fearful childhood memories of this Disney fantasy which mixes whimsy with magic, folklore and gothic. When Darby O’Gill (Albert Sharpe), a wily caretaker falls down a well, he is held captive by Brian, King of the Leprechauns (Jimmy O’Dea) who grants him three wishes.

30th MON – 18.10 | OPEN CAPTIONED SCREENING: LITTLE WOMEN
Writer-director Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) has crafted a Little Women that draws on both the classic novel and the writings of Louisa May Alcott, and unfolds as the author’s alter ego, Jo March, reflects back and forth on her fictional life. Presented with Open Captions for the hearing impaired.