MAY 2019 AT THE IFI

Here’s a jam packed list of everything coming up at the Irish Film Institute in May 2019!

NEW RELEASES
From Friday May 3rd: Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Vox Lux, Woman at War
From Friday May 10th: Amazing Grace, Float Like a Butterfly, High Life
From Friday May 17th: Birds of Passage, Dr. Strangelove
From Friday May 24th: Memoir of War, Too Late to Die Young, XY Chelsea
From Friday May 31st: The Blue Angel, In Safe Hands, Sunset

7th TUES – 18.30 | TRISH MCADAM: IN CONVERSATION / STRANGERS TO KINDNESS / CONFINEMENT
McAdam will be joined by filmmaker Dean Kavanagh for a free-flowing conversation about her career in film, her exploration of new visual modes of storytelling and film artistry. The interview will include screenings of McAdam’s recent films Strangers to Kindness and Confinement.

8th WED – 18.30 | SHARKWATER EXTINCTION
A thrilling and inspiring action-packed journey that follows award-winning filmmaker Rob Stewart on a courageous crusade across four continents to investigate the corruption behind a multi-billiondollar pirate fishing trade and massive illegal shark fin industry.

8th WED – 18.30 | FEAST YOUR EYES: WOMAN AT WAR
Every month we pair a new release with a specially devised main course from the IFI Café Bar. This month’s film choice will be the 18.30 screening of Benedikt Erlingsson’s Woman At War on Wednesday 8th, and the meal will take place after the screening at the IFI Café Bar.

9th THURS – 18.30 | TRISH MCADAM: WHAT AM I DOING HERE? / BERLIN
Two films by McAdam, starting with the offbeat documentary What Am I Doing Here? which follows writer and actor Donal O’Kelly as he tours his new play Vive La and essay film Berlin about the unification of the city after the fall of the wall.

11th SAT – 14.00 | TRISH MCADAM: HOODWINKED / LIU XIAOBO: NO ENEMIES NO HATRED / A POEM TO LIU XIA
In Hoodwinked, McAdam reclaimed Irish women from generations of obscurity. She reveals the significant role of women in Ireland’s battle for independence, the Mother and Child Scheme, feminism and the sexual revolution, Northern Ireland and Civil Rights, reproductive rights, and the invasion of the Forty Foot.

11th SAT – 16.00 | MEMORY ON FILM: RASHOMON
Akira Kurosawa’s formally audacious film is a spellbinding investigation into the unreliability of memory. Three characters take shelter from a storm under Kyoto’s Rashomon gate and relay conflicting accounts of the recent murder of a samurai and the rape of his wife, their discordant perspectives revealing the subjective nature of each version of the ‘truth’.

12th SUN – 16.00 | MEMORY ON FILM: WILD STRAWBERRIES
Wild Strawberries, which Ingmar Bergman wrote from a hospital bed during a period of heightened creative productivity, is filled with the director’s customary blend of visual poetry and stark psychological insight; a poignant, elegiac masterpiece, the film is, despite its subject, one of Bergman’s most humane and accessible works.

13th MON – 18.30 | IFI FILM CLUB: HIGH LIFE
Claire Denis’s (Beau Travail, Let the Sunshine In) first English-language feature is a typically enigmatic and provocative work, which upends all science fiction genre conventions. A fascinating amalgamation of psychology, biology and quantum physics, High Life is as alien and unknowable as the depths of a black hole. Come along to chat about the film with IFI staff.

14th TUES – 18.30 | MEMORY ON FILM: LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD
In a palatial resort hotel, a man (Giorgio Albertazzi) approaches a woman (Delphine Seyrig) and insists they met a year ago – ‘perhaps in Marienbad’ – and fell in love, though she has no recollection of the encounter. Resnais seduces us with the opulence of the setting, and his command of mood and tone, drawing us into an intoxicating psychological labyrinth with no exit.

15th WED – 18.45 | FROM THE VAULTS: ROONEY
Adapted from the Catherine Cookson novel, the follows the trials and tribulations of Rooney (John Gregson), dustbin man by trade and hurler by passion. From his digs in the bustling O’Flynn household in Rathmines, Rooney is selected for the Dublin hurling team but the road to Croke Park is not smooth and he meets romantic entanglement and inadvertent thievery along the way.

18th SAT – 11.00 | IFI & BEALTAINE @ TEMPLE BAR: BE OUR GUEST
Come along to a free screening of treasures from the IFI Irish Film Archive as part of events for Bealtaine 2019.

18th SAT – 11.00 / 14.00 | DUBLIN PLAYS ITSELF 2019 (MORNING)
Join us as we take to the streets in a programme presented by IFI, the Irish Architecture Foundation, and Poetry Ireland. The presentations interweave Dublin’s architectural, literary and cinema history in a lively blend of walks and talks and film presentations. Very limited tickets available.

18th SAT – 15.50 | MEMORY ON FILM: AMARCORD
Federico Fellini’s nostalgic, semi-autobiographical film – the title means ‘I remember’ in the regional dialect of Rimini, the seaside town of his youth – is a delightfully ebullient evocation of a year in the life of a small Italian coastal town in the 1930s, as seen through the eyes of young Titta (Bruno Zanin).

19th SUN – 14.00 | IFI & ILFD 2019: WORLDS OF URSULA K. LE GUIN
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin tells the groundbreaking author’s story in her own words, sprinkled with stunning animation and commentary from literary luminaries like Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, and Michael Chabon. Produced with Le Guin’s participation over 10 years, the film is a breathtaking journey through the late writer’s career and her worlds, both real and fantastic.

19th SUN – 14.00 | MEMORY ON FILM: THE LONG DAY CLOSES
In his second feature, Terence Davies dramatises the intense memories of the years following his father’s death – a time he has counter-intuitively referred to as his happiest – through the character of Bud (Leigh McCormack), a quiet boy growing up in Liverpool in the 1950s whose love of movies and popular music offers solace from the compromises and disappointments of reality.

21st TUES – 18.30 | TRISH MCADAM: FLIRTING WITH THE LIGHT / THE DRIP
A documentary traces the recording of the first ever album by Leo O’Kelly, recorded at the age of 50 followed by  McAdams’ comical short The Drip.

23rd THURS – 18.20 | MEMORY ON FILM: MEMENTO
Christopher Nolan’s second film creates a teasingly complex puzzle from an apparently simple premise, using a script that presents the story in two alternating timelines, one told in reverse, a conceit that attempts to mirror the condition of the protagonist, who is unable to retain short terms memories.

25th SAT – 14.00 | TRISH MCADAM: SNAKES AND LADDERS
Capturing a potent sense of 1990s Dublin with its vibrant music scene (note the rousing score by Pierce Turner) and sweaty clubs and pubs, the film, which McAdam has aptly described as “a funny drama and a serious comedy”, certainly stands the test of time.

25th SAT – 16.30 | THE WEDDING PRESENT: SOMETHING LEFT BEHIND
As The Wedding Present celebrate the 30th anniversary of their Bizarro album with a Dublin concert, we are delighted to welcome frontman David Gedge and director Andrew Jezard for this screening. Rather than a straightforward career overview, the emphasis is very much on the band’s early days, particularly the release and impact of debut album George Best, interspersed with interviews and footage of the band performing that album on its anniversary tour. With guests David Gedge and director Andrew Jezard.

25th SAT – 18.30 | MEMORY ON FILM: SPIDER
David Cronenberg’s perspective completely inhabits the fractured interior life of Spider, where past and present are hopelessly conflated; the character’s tortured psyche is reflected in the dank, crumbling production design and dour colour palette that heightens the oppressive atmosphere of anxious dread.

26th SUN – 11.00 | IFI FAMILY: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL
This highly entertaining adventure allowed an Oscar-nominated Johnny Depp give full vent to his maverick, eccentric Captain, taking on the undead crew of Capt. Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). Only the dazzling maid, Elizabeth (Keira Knightley), could free the Cap’n and his loyal crew from the legendary curse. Tickets: €5.00 per person, €15.00 family ticket (2 adults + 2 children, 1 adult + 3 children).

26th SUN – 13.00 | MYSTERY MATINEE
This month’s secret screening, for which tickets cost just €5.20, will take place at 13.00 on Sunday 26th. Sometimes it will be a preview, but not always; sometimes, it will be a title one might expect to see at the IFI, but not always. Join us for this month’s screening, and expect the unexpected!

26th SUN – 16.00 | MEMORY ON FILM: ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
The compulsion to hold onto memories of loves lost, however painful, is explored in Michel Gondry’s endlessly imaginative and influential collaboration with Charlie Kaufman, who won the Oscar for his screenplay. When heartbroken Joel (Jim Carrey) learns that newly ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has had him expunged from memory, he endeavours to do likewise.

26th SUN – 17.30 | SUNSET (35MM) + Q&A
Director László Nemes will be present for a Q&A after this special 35mm preview. In Sunset, László Nemes, explores the twilight years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before the outbreak of World War I, through the experiences of Írisz (Juli Jakab), his enigmatic protagonist.

27th MON – 18.10 | IFI FRENCH FILM CLUB: MEMOIR OF WAR
Marguerite Duras’s harrowing experience of World War II, as recounted in her autobiographical novel La Douleur, published to acclaim in 1985, forms the basis of Emmanuel Finkiel’s sombre evocation of grief and suffering. Tickets for the 18.10 screening on Monday 27th cost just €7.80 for IFI and Alliance Française members.

27th MON – 18.20 | THE BIGGER PICTURE: THE GREAT DICTATOR
Satirist, columnist and impressionist Oliver Callan will talk about the impact of this film, and how good political satire must veer close to the edge in order to make any impact.

28th TUES – 18.20 | MEMORY ON FILM: HIDDEN
The bourgeois complacency of a Parisian family is severely tested when surreptitiously-recorded videos of their lives begin arriving anonymously to their well-appointed home. Michael Haneke’s ambiguous, claustrophobic nightmare fuses George’s repressed memories with the guilt and shame of a nation.

29th WED – 11.00 | WILD STRAWBERRIES: AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER
Recalled in Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle, the film features Cary Grant as the New York-bound playboy, Nickie, who falls for fellow traveller Terry (Deborah Kerr), a former nightclub singer heading to start a new life with her fiancée. Chemistry abounds between the pair as the ship travels west, and their promise to meet on the Empire State Building will leave even the most cynical of viewer believing in true love. Over 55s only, tickets€4.45 including regular tea/coffee before the event.

29th WED – 18.10 | MEMORY ON FILM: “I DO NOT CARE IF WE GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS BARBARIANS”
‘I do not care…’ is a formally audacious interrogation into collective memory, the wilful amnesia of national myth making, and the fraught relationship between the past and present. The film was a deserving winner of the top prize at last year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

30th THURS – 10.30 | IFI SPOTLIGHT 2019
IFI Spotlight 2019, now in its seventh year, presents a day of panel discussions, presentations and interviews gauging the current health of the Irish film and television industry.

31st FRI – 11.00 | WILD STRAWBERRIES: AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER
Recalled in Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle, the film features Cary Grant as the New York-bound playboy, Nickie, who falls for fellow traveller Terry (Deborah Kerr), a former nightclub singer heading to start a new life with her fiancée. Chemistry abounds between the pair as the ship travels west, and their promise to meet on the Empire State Building will leave even the most cynical of viewer believing in true love. Over 55s only, tickets€4.45 including regular tea/coffee before the event.