Two anime classics coming to the IFI this May!

A chance to see anything from Studio Ghibli on the big screen is not to be missed and Studio Canal have seized the opportunity of the 25th anniversary of two titles, My Neighbour Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies which were released as a double bill in Japan in 1988, to release them in cinemas on this side of the world. 

If you have never seen Totoro, or you know a small person who has yet to enter the magical world of forest creatures, spirits, brave and curious children that are typical of Japanese master Hiyao Miyazaki’s creations, then do them and yourself a favour, and bring them along to the IFI during these special May screenings, from 24th to 30th of May. 

My Neighbour Totoro

Showing in the dubbed version on May 25th and 26th (voiced by Fanning sisters, Elle and Dakota), Totoro wasn't a hit on first release; Japanese viewers took time to find its appeal. However they and the rest of the world soon recognised the sheer beauty and ingenuity of this hand-drawn rural fantasy world in which the girls wander while seeking comfort for the absence of their hospitalised mother. Totoro, created by Miyazaki for the film, turns out to be a big friendly creature, and his film offers us family life and forest life where the girls' imaginations are allowed to roam and invites the viewer to engage their imagination too. Lovingly crafted, in every corner there is something happening and not one frame of the film is wasted.

Grave of the Fireflies

Look, watch and marvel at the work of a master. His new film, The Wind Rises, opens in Japan in July. 

Alicia McGivern

Head of IFI Education

My Neighbour Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies will screen at the IFI from May 24th to 30th. Book online or call our Box Office on 01-6793477. 

The Neil Jordan Collection at the Irish Film Archive

Coinciding with the IFI’s full retrospective of Neil Jordan’s cinematic work throughout the month of May, the IFI will be displaying rarely-seen documents donated by Neil Jordan to the IFI Irish Film Archive.

Kasandra O'Connell (Head of IFI Irish Film Archive) and Neil when Neil officially donated his research and document collection to the IFI Irish film Archive

In June 2009, coinciding with publicity for director Neil Jordan’s upcoming feature Ondine, it was announced that Jordan had donated the paper material relating to his films to the IFI Irish Film Archive of the Irish Film Institute. The material had been regularly transferred to the Archive since 2006, but the delay in publicising the acquisition means that this fascinating collection has been catalogued and is now fully accessible to researchers.

Jordan’s collection has been delivered film by film, and currently the Archive holds material from The Crying Game (1992), Interview with the Vampire (1994), Michael Collins (1996), The Butcher Boy (1997), In Dreams (1999) and Breakfast on Pluto (2005). Documents relating to other productions are being delivered and made accessible on an on-going basis.

Storyboard from 'Michael Collins'

The material for each film includes documents relating to background research, production and set design, location scouting and photography, visual effects, soundtrack and sound mixing, awards, press, storyboards, shot lists, production schedules, draft scripts and screenplays, and stills. Together the material gives an insight into the working methods of one of Ireland's foremost directors.

Jordan initially had success in the 1970s as an author, before beginning his film career as script consultant on John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981) and directing the documentary The Making of Excalibur: Myth into Movie. He also wrote the script for Joe Comerford’s Traveller which premiered at the Cork Film Festival in 1981. In 1982 he wrote and directed his first feature film, Angel, funded by the newly-established Irish Film Board. This was followed in 1984 by The Company of Wolves, and subsequently Mona Lisa (1986), High Spirits (1988), We’re No Angels (1989) and The Miracle (1991).

In 1992 Jordan directed The Crying Game which brought him international acclaim and was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning Best Original Screenplay. Jaye Davidson was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Dil, but the Archive’s collection reveals the range of other actors who had originally competed for the role. Headshots of these actors made up as women are present, and seem strangely jarring dressed as the character made famous by Davidson’s outstanding performance.

The Crying Game head shot of Jaye Davidson

Following the international success of The Crying Game, Jordan went to America to direct an adaptation of an Anne Rice novel, resulting in the Oscar-nominated film Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles. As in the The Crying Game collection, the possibility of other potential actors in key roles are presented in the Archive's collection. Various (uncast) A-list actors are beautifully sketched as the vampires Louis and Lestat, as well as the film’s stars Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. Research material for the vampires' look includes a grotesque file of images of corpses in various stages of decomposition.

Jordan returned to Ireland in 1996 to make Michael Collins, a project which he had been working on since the 1980s. Around 100 versions, fragments and rewrites are held under various alternative titles, spanning years of script development. Once completed the film was nominated for two Academy Awards, validating the unusually long time the project spent in pre-production.

Casting polaroid shot of Eamon Owens for The Butcher Boy

Following the success of Michael Collins, Jordan worked on an adaptation of Pat McCabe’s novel The Butcher Boy (1997). Again the script exists in multiple rewrites and revisions. A key issue with the adaptation appears to have been the colloquial language used, with the collection including various lists of Irish slang terms and their “translations” for American audiences. Following The Butcher Boy Jordan returned to the US once again in 1999 to make In Dreams and the The End of the Affair. This was followed by The Good Thief (2002), filmed in the South of France.

Jordan then set up the production company Company of Wolves which produced Intermission (2003) and The Actors (2003). In 2005 he adapted another Pat McCabe novel for the screen, Breakfast on Pluto. One script used by Jordan during the making of the film includes handwritten amendments made on set, showing that even during the shooting changes could be made.

Neil Jordan and Ian Wilson on set of The Crying Game

Overall, the Neil Jordan Collection gives a fascinating insight into the practicalities of the production of major feature films. Seemingly mundane items build a picture of the work involved in bringing the production together, including documents like prop lists, logs tracking tides, sunrise and sunset times, arrangements for shooting “behind-the-scenes” footage, and files of photographs taken by location scouts around Ireland and the UK. Such documents may be of interest both to film fans wishing to contextualise Jordan’s body of work, and to budding filmmakers curious to see the approach taken by a veteran Irish film director.

The Collection is an incredibly rich resource for Irish film researchers, and in time should be completed with the addition of material relating to all of Jordan’s films mentioned in this article. The collection is available for researchers at the Irish Film Archive by appointment. Many of the films mentioned are also available to view at the Archive's viewing facilities.

Rebecca Grant

IFI Librarian (2006 - 2012)

See our exclusive collection of production files, stills, draft scripts, set design and storyboards, all of which give a fascinating insight into the creative process of one of Ireland’s most acclaimed directors is now available online.

Neil Jordan Retrospective runs throughout May at the IFI. His new film, Byzantium, opens on May 31st.

This article was first published in Film Ireland in 2009 and it has been made available online with their kind permission.  

From Ireland with love...

IFI International, with the support of Culture Ireland, is teaming up with cultural partners across the EU to mount a major programme of Irish film during Ireland’s EU Presidency, running from January to June 2013.

The first six months of 2013 mark the seventh time that Ireland has held the Presidency of the EU. It provides Ireland with a central role in the machinations of European politics, but it’s also an opportunity for our wind-swept island to attract the attention of our cosier mainland European neighbours. Yet for all the important business being done in our capital at present, the Presidency is perhaps quite opaque to most of the Union’s 500 million citizens, both here in Ireland and farther afield.

In January the Irish Government launched the Culture Connects programme to engage Irish artists in Europe, and European artists in Ireland. It serves up a smorgasbord (or depending where in Europe you are, a mezze platter or tapas selection) of Irish arts and artists to audiences across the EU and beyond. There’s a wide diversity of art forms being showcased, and between now and June the IFI is packing its bags and bringing Irish film on tour.

This weekend the 1926 silent film Irish Destiny is making its way to celebrate St Patrick’s Day in Brussels. The first fiction film dealing with the Irish War of Independence, it delivers all the thrills and spills an audience would expect of a romance narrative with a dashing hero – but it also combines rare actual newsreel of wartime events, making it also to an astonishing historical record. Now almost 90 years later, it’s brought even more to life with a rousing score by Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, to be performed live in concert by the 22-player Orchestra of Wallonie. 

Irish Destiny is just one of three ciné-concerts that the IFI is touring for the EU Presidency. Guests of the Nation is destined for London’s Barbican next month, with Niall Byrne’s score set to soar under the baton of David Brophy. In June, Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn takes to the road with composer Bernard Reilly and a group of 12 musicians, for screenings and concerts in Berlin, Paris and Madrid.

Combining film and live music in overseas venues is not a straightforward process. How can it be dark enough for projection but bright enough for musicians? How can we fit two languages worth of translated subtitles into the same frame as the original intertitle cards? What if the harp gets in the way of the screen?! For the duration of the Presidency I am in daily contact with our venue partners throughout Europe, and working through the challenges and rewards and languages and cultures that a project like this presents. But these are fascinating programmes to work on, presenting a very rich intersection between two arts forms and combining old and new, showcasing not only some of the best of Ireland’s film heritage but also some of its most talented contemporary musicians. It breathes a whole new life into the enjoyment and appreciation of these films; both in the creation of a completely new score to enrich and enlighten the film narrative, but also in bringing the thrill of live performance into each screening. 

Lucy Healy-Kelly
International EU Presidency Coordinator

Read more about IFI International and our EU Presidency Programme in 2013. 

Director Dylan Mohan Gray on his new documentary 'Fire in the Blood'

"What drove me to spend so many years working on Fire in the Blood knowing, even in the worst, loneliest moments, that this would almost certainly be the most important thing I would ever do in my life…" Dylan Mohan Gray, director of Fire in the Blood, which will screen EXCLUSIVELY at the IFI (February 21st - 28th), discusses why he felt he had to make this film and why he is particularly pleased it will screen in Ireland. 

I tend to be a fairly laconic character, but must confess that I was truly thrilled when I heard that the Irish Film Institute would be screening my film, Fire in the Blood, over the course of eight days in February. In fact, I insisted on coming for opening night, because somehow I have long suspected that people in Ireland would, and will, really and truly connect with the story and message of this film. More times than I can count I have met Irish people working on health projects in different parts of Africa, in particular with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), and have invariably been deeply impressed with the energy, fierce commitment and good humour with which they were fighting the good fight for global public health and basic human rights. A few people have also mentioned to me lately that Ireland is home to Europe’s largest pharmaceutical industry, at least on a per capita basis, and that possibly adds another wrinkle to the great sense of anticipation I feel in bringing this film to audiences in Dublin.

Fire in the Blood has been a nearly six-year journey for me, though its roots go back at least a few more years before that, to an article I read in Sri Lanka back in 2004. Initially I had no intention whatsoever of making a film on this subject, but started reading obsessively about it out of pure curiosity, and soon found myself deeply shocked and angered… first of all because I was ashamed to admit I knew virtually nothing about what was clearly an episode of immense historical significance, and secondly because such scant attention had been paid to it, that no book or film provided a comprehensive account of it, and that the entire story was quickly fading into the mists of time, virtually without a trace.    

       

Fundamentally, however, what made me see that there was a great film in all this, what caused me to lay awake thinking about it and finally one day to take the fateful decision to try and make it, despite having no expertise in non-fiction, was my enduring fascination with the ins and outs of the story, and more importantly the incredible cast of characters who played key roles in it.  

That is what drove me to spend so many years working on Fire in the Blood  knowing, even in the worst, loneliest moments, that this would almost certainly be the most important thing I would ever do in my life… for me this film has so many fascinating and inspirational aspects which take it far beyond the realm of HIV/AIDS, of global public health, world trade, commerce and even the wider field of human rights.  This is a story about money and power, how we treat one another as human beings, but also how any single one of us can rise above the cynicism and casual inhumanity which surrounds us all the time and decide to change the world for the better, no matter how daunting the adversary. Even after so many years, I still find that idea incredibly uplifting and empowering.    

Dylan Mohan Gray will attend the opening night screening at 18.20 on February 21st and take part in a Q&A. Book now or call the IFI Box Office on 01 679 3477.

Do we really need rom-coms this Valentine's Day?

The annual event that is St Valentine's Day. A day laced with cynicism as the red balloons start to blanket Dublin and every shop is adorned with teddy bears and red hearts. Valentine’s Day conjures up images of the traditional date night: going to the cinema and a bite to eat, or cuddling up and watching a movie with the fire roaring. But does there really need to be a rom-com in there? Here are my top three, anti-Valentine films.....

Shame  

A handsome New Yorker with a compulsive addiction and a fear of intimacy, this is the bare faced reality of the wounded shunning his past trying to belong to a world that’s slowly destroying him. Evocatively shot and beautifully directed by Steve McQueen, Michael Fassbender gives a raw and compelling performance, turning any romantic notions of the world he inhabits on its head. Definitely more of a second date movie...

Fatal Attraction

Another theme of obsession, this tense thriller can still make a grown man shudder. Happily married man Michael Douglas has a weekend fling with his co-worker (Glenn Close) which goes horribly sour when she refuses to let  the relationship end.  His life quickly turns into a nightmare with a healthy dose of blackmail, stalking, and kidnapping. A good warning for any intendant adulterer/adulteress. Recommended for a night in with some rabbit stew...

Cyrus

Is this a truly modern love story? In honour of the wonderful John C Reilly who did an exclusive Q&A here at the IFI last weekend, Cyrus has to be on the list. Directed by the stalwarts of mumblecore -  Jay and Mark Duplass - this is the story of a divorced  and lonely middle aged man, who on the encouragement of his ex-wife, finds new love with a single mother, only to encounter a rival in the form of her unhinged son Cyrus. Nobody plays the downtrodden but determined romantic like Reilly with such delicacy and humour.

Shauna Lyons

Public Affairs & Marketing Director

Lucky for us, all three of these titles are available in the IFI Filmshop, so after your Valentine’s dinner at the IFI Café Bar, grab yourself a copy and leave Sleepless in Seattle for another day.

Last Men Standing

With so many movies being shot on digital these days, is it the end for film cameras? New documentary Side by Side, produced by Keanu Reeves, investigates the history, process and workflow of both digital and photochemical film creation. We talked to Paul Markey, IFI Projectionist, about the importance of grainy 35mmm film, old-school projectors and the future of cinema exhibition.   

Side by Side, screening from February 15th - 21st at the IFI

What’s so special about 35mm? Don’t we all care for quality and convenience these days? 

It’s not as cut and dried as you would imagine. 35mm and, more specifically, all its flaws became the universal cinema aesthetic these last hundred years. ‘Flaws’, such as graininess, can now be instantly corrected by digital conversion – in the case of old films, or never exist at all – in the case of new movies shot digitally. I think we are in a time of evolution in what is regarded as a quality picture. Many old films have been converted to digital with awful results – scrubbed of their grain and all slick and shiny. Even new movies, shot and released digitally, can suffer certain blandness when the final picture ends up on screen. So what defines a ‘quality’ image is in flux and has never been more in the eye of the beholder.

Becoming a projectionist doesn’t sound like an obvious career choice. Why did you choose this job? 

My father instilled in me a love of movies, so it's in my blood. Retired now, he worked as a Stand In and assistant to actors (he was Daniel Day Lewis' assistant on My Left Foot and got kicked in the face by Sean Connery during The Great Train Robbery). I supposed that's been my indirect root to show business!  I hate popcorn, but I like to write and am a bit of a night owl so I found a home in projection booths.  Plus ultimately, it’s the projectionist not the director, who has final cut!

Are all projectionists obsessed with cinema – you must have seen hundreds if not thousands of films?

The biggest surprise I found when first working in a cinema was that most people weren't film fanatics.  It was just a job. This is true of many projectionists, or they might be tech-heads and like working with the equipment.  For me it is all about the films. Embedded in that is a drive to put the picture on screen in the correct ratio - many cinemas take a very flippant approach to this, especially when it comes to trailers - and decent sound levels (harder than you think!). After serving time in a multiplex for 10 years, I realised that one's taste can become polluted and standards systematically lowered.  One has to strike a balance between the fast food of movies and the nourishment of film.  I love all genres and all types.  Some of my all-time favourites would be:  O Lucky Man, Subway, Yeopgi Girl, Sons of the Desert, Police Story, California Split, Mr. Vampire.

Working in the projection room, you’re watching the audiences’ backs from above. Any memorable stories to tell or any anecdotes from the dark side to share? 

Adults tend not to look up at where the light is coming from, but kids do all the time.  Over the years I've seen fights break out, been blinded by laser-pens, seen whole screens thrashed by thugs (on the opening night of the Veronica Guerin movie, the audience cheered and clapped when she was shot and wrecked the screen when the credits rolled). Oh, and the ratio of Irish male pattern-baldness remains about 3 to 1!  Don't get me started on cell phones...

The IFI is the only cinema in the country screening films in all possible formats – from Digibeta, DVD, Blu-ray and DCP, to 8, 16, 35 or 70mm. Why is it so important to maintain all these different forms of projection?

‘Grainy film’, as I mentioned at the start, is a flaw that is now an aesthetic element of the film picture.  This debate continues to rage as film stock is converted to DCPs and Blu-ray. The grain can be easily removed, but should it?  Also as regards digital, there is still little future-proofing.  I could easily lace up and project a film print struck 50 years ago, but decades from now will hard drives, servers and file compression be the same?  Nope.  It’s a big problem facing digital preservation.  In the short term we've gained a lot.  Many films are being restored and distributed widely thanks to the cost-effectiveness of digital cinema but we face big questions in the long term.  Our Blu-ray players and servers require regular updating as the file structure software changes, or they cease to function.  The lumbering film projectors, with a dash of oil and a bit of care, have been turning for years and will, at least in the IFI, continue to do so.

Side by Side is opening from February 15th – 21st, EXCLUSIVELY at the IFI. There will be a special screening of The Last Projectionist on February 16th (14.30) & 17th (16.20). 

Saidhbh Ni Dhulaing, IFI Membership Officer, talks about IFI Membership and explains its many benefits to customers . . .

An IFI membership is not a hard thing to encourage people to sign up for, something I soon learned having started as IFI Membership Officer recently. In fact, if you go to the cinema at the IFI even just 3 times a year, you’d be almost foolish not to opt for it.

First of all let’s look at cinema tickets - IFI members receive up to 15% off cinema tickets and our concession members (that’s pensioners, unemployed and students) receive an even greater reduction, almost 25% in fact. 

Imagine for a minute that you are an IFI Member, and you come to see Tarantino’s Django Unchained this Friday night at the IFI. As a regular customer you will pay €8.90 (still good value for Dublin city on a Friday night it has to be said) but as a member you will only pay €7.70, and as a concession member you will pay a mere €6.70. You can bring up to 3 friends with you who will also receive this cheaper ticket price, so you’ll be saving your friends money too.

Django Unchained showing from January 18th 

As well as reduced prices you receive loyalty points each time you spend at the IFI – 8 points for every €1 (double the amount received when using a Loyalty Card without membership). Loyalty points can be exchanged for cinema tickets once you have enough as each point equals 1c, so 670 points for example will get you a free ticket worth €6.70 and so on.

Did I mention you also collect those loyalty points every time you eat or drink at the IFI Café Bar, and each time you buy something in the IFI Film Shop? You also get a 10% discount at both of these fine establishments when you flash your membership card.*

IFI Café Bar

Once you’ve signed up (which you can do online, at our Film Shop or at the Box Office) you’ll receive a free cinema ticket meaning your first visit as a member will be ... free! You can also get a free monthly programme delivered to your home, a weekly ezine and the chance to win free tickets to a members-only preview screening every month.

In short, at this time of year when money can be tight, an IFI membership gives you a cheaper option for a great night out and an opportunity to be inspired by fascinating and award-winning films all for only €25 a year or €15 concession.

If you want to know more visit, see our IFI Membership page or you can contact me, Saidhbh Ni Dhulaing.

* discount in Café Bar is for max two diners and amount must be over €10