August at the IFI

Welcome to our programme for August which includes a focus on films representing the Traveller community, a season of Westerns and the first part of a retrospective on legendary French filmmaker Alain Resnais.

Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In 

The steady stream of strong Irish documentaries continues at the IFI this August with Ian Palmer’s Knuckle, a decadein-the-making exploration of the violent elements of Irish Traveller culture. Accompanying the release is a season of  Traveller films that gives a wider view of the way that the community has been represented, from Joe Comerford’s debut feature Traveller to Perry Ogden’s fine examination of Traveller life during the Celtic Tiger years in Pavee Lackeen. There will be a chance to debate and discuss the cinematic representation of Travellers during a panel discussion with filmmakers alongside community artists and representatives.

Travellers On Film: Southpaw

The IFI Western Season demonstrates what a particularly highly contested genre the Western has become. Alongside popular political films such as High Noon and Rio Bravo, the season also includes a rare screening of an example of the once-popular Eastern Bloc Westerns (or Osterns). Lemonade Joe gives a fascinating insight into how the iconography of the American West was successfully adapted and reimagined to suit Communist regimes.

High Noon

Heritage Week (August 20th – 28th) is traditionally a busy time for IFI National and 2011 is no exception. The Kingdom and I: Kerry on Film is a programme of rarely-seen silent and sound films from the IFI Irish Film Archive which will screen at St. John’s Theatre, Listowel on August 25th. Elsewhere, Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn (1920) will screen on August 25th at the Pearse Museum, Rathfarnham, where the film was shot in 1920, and Dublin in the Rare Oul’ Times will return to the Dublin City Public Libraries network.

August has a packed schedule of new releases that include Project Nim, James Marsh’s hotly-anticipated follow-up to Man on Wire; In a Better World, this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner; and another journey into Pedro Almodóvar’s unique imagination with The Skin I Live In.

Audrey Tautou in Beautiful Lies

There’s also an exciting trio of new French films that include Kristin Scott Thomas in Sarah’s Key; Audrey Tautou in Beautiful Lies; and this month’s French Film Club selection, Eric Lartigau’s The Big Picture. We also honour one of France’s master filmmakers, Alain Resnais, to complement the re-release of Last Year in Marienbad. The season includes early masterpieces such as Muriel and Hiroshima mon amour as well as later films that consolidated his position as one of cinema’s most mesmerising and innovative storytellers.

Sarah Glennie

Director