THE MODERNS CINEMA AND IRELAND

The IFI presents The Moderns: Cinema and Ireland curated in conjunction with The Moderns, IMMA’s major autumn exhibition.

This continuing season of screenings explores aspects of Ireland’s relationship with cinema, from the role the film societies play in bringing European avant-garde cinema to audiences in Ireland to the development in the 1970s of a distinct identity for Irish film.

This programme considers the impact of the Irish Film Society on the cultural life of Dublin and later, through the film society movement, on the nation. Founded in 1936 by Liam O’Leary and Eddie Toner, the IFS created a route to European cinema and spawned generations of sophisticated, cosmopolitan film-lovers. In 1936 there was public outcry when the IFS screened the banned Soviet film Battleship Potemkin, in which Eisenstein celebrated revolution as he charted the events aboard the Tsarist Battleship Prince Potemkin during the abortive 1905 Russian rebellion.

Gary Hoctor, film society historian, will introduce this screening.