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.

Inspired by J M Synge’s The Aran Islands (1907), U.S. ethnographic filmmaker Robert Flaherty was drawn, as were so many artists before and after him, to Aran where he would document the lives of the noble islanders living freely and harmoniously in thrall to the elemental power of the sea. His powerful homage to these lives, which included superbly photographed documentary and anachronistic recreation of outmoded island practices, was to become the best-known and most controversial documentary ever made about Ireland.

Followed by a discussion with Dr. Harvey O’Brien and Enrique Juncosa, Director of IMMA.