Playtime, Wall Street & more new releases

It's another action-packed week at the IFI.

This evening we're delighted to present a sneak preview of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps to act as a taster for the next IFI Evening Course - Reel Chancers. Our four-week course will take a light-hearted and varied look at some of the archetypal characters and situations in films about money from over the years. Post-screening talks will consider the environments in which the films were made and how these contributed to the development of these characters. Our selected films are: The Prospector - The Gold Rush (1945); The Heist - The Italian Job (1969); The Broker - Wall Street (1987); and The Con Artist - Nine Queens (2000). If you want to come along this evening to find out more and catch our FREE sneak preview of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, we have just a small handful of tickets left, so contact the Box Office asap! The course officially starts on October 12th and runs each Tuesday for four weeks at 18.30.

Lovers of French cinema should be excited to learn of our screenings this weekend of Jacques Tati's classic Playtime. Shot on vast studio sets in 70mm, this film is a work of stunning visual design. Our screenings this Saturday and Sunday (Oct 9 & 10) will be in glorious 70mm and we're the only cinema in Ireland with this techonology. This is a rare cinematic treat and an absolute must-see.

We also have the usual comings and goings this week with our new releases. You only have until Thursday to catch Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void and the Sundance winner Winter's Bone (which has been garnering great reviews across the board). Staying with us for little longer is Joaquin Phoenix as a substance-abusing hip hop artist in Casey Affleck's I'm Still Here and a look at post-Ceausescu Romania in Police, Adjective (both playing exclusively at IFI). Buried (starring Ryan Reynolds) also continues its run with us.

One of this week's new releases (from Friday) is the story of Oxbridge graduate, drug smuggler, prisoner, author and raconteur Howard Marks in Mr. Nice starring Rhys Ifans (currently being spotted around town as he's here filming Neverland). Watch the trailer here. Restrepo also opens this week (again playing exclusively at IFI) and is the powerful portrait of U.S. troops under fire in Afghanistan. You can view the trailer here.

This Sunday (October 10th) we also have our monthly Ireland on Sunday slot, this time screening Frank Kelly's 140 which captures a moment in the life of the planet drawn from 140 simulataneously shot films by 140 filmmakers in 140 locations. Frank will be in attendance and will participate in a post-screening Q & A.

We hope you find lots to interest you at the IFI this week.

Ross Keane
Head of Marketing & Communications

Irish films in Helsinki

The Helsinki International Film Festival (Love and Anarchy) finished on Sunday September 26th. This year, for the first time, the Festival featured a large programme of Irish films. In total 4,318 people attended Irish films at the Festival, with 15 of the 41 screenings completely sold-out.

The Irish Film programme included Ondine, The Secret of Kells,  Gabriel Byrne: Stories From Home, Nothing Personal, Cairo Time, The Eclipse, His & Hers and a programme of Irish shorts. Guests of the Festival included musician Lance Hogan who wrote the music for Lapland Odyssey (co-produced by Ripple World Pictures ) and The Secret of Kells, and Pat Collins, director of Gabriel Byrne: Stories From Home.

The Irish programme was coordinated by David Healy of the Embassy of Ireland in Helsinki, with support from the Irish Film Board, Culture Ireland and ourselves in IFI Reel Ireland.

Aoife Coughlan
IFI Reel Ireland Coordinator

Education programme launched

Autumn’s definitely upon us and that means the start of our schools’ programme here at IFI. Our programme launch was last night, with the now annual tradition of a free film preview and glass of wine - much welcomed by teachers and friends on a recession-laden Wednesday. The programme (which should be landing in some 3000 school pigeon-holes around the country today) includes some great contemporary titles for Transition Year Film – Lebanon, Good Hair, Inception, Nowhere Boy and Banksy’s debut, Exit through the Gift Shop. Touring for French language students we have the great Persepolis (the graphic novel based film) with a studyguide and John Rabe for German. Primary pupils get a chance of a sneak preview of Ramona and Beezus and there’s also a tour of 32A, the new Irish title for Leaving Cert. English Comparative Study. Oh, and we’ve Ken Wardrop too in a one-off showing of His & Hers for schools with a chance for students to grill Ken on his filmmaking. No better person to take on a packed cinema of teens!

The launch night film was Made in Dagenham, starring Sally Hawkins and some of Britain's best actors in a story about a group of women working at Ford in Dagenham who strike for equal pay and conditions. Miranda Richardson is marvellous as feisty red-headed MP Barbara Castle who takes up the striking Ford workers’ demands for equal pay (and there’s some fabulous late 60s fashion from Mary Quant and Biba if you’re not interested in the politics!)

One thing definitely in the air last night was the pressure teachers are working under with budget restrictions and the rest. It’s ever-harder to get out of schools these days, get cover and make space in packed schedules for film. This just makes us all-the-more determined to make our programme as relevant and stimulating as possible. With our research project, Film Focus, entering the third phase of pilot projects, we hope that the outcomes of this next year will go some way to ensuring the place for film, visual literacy and moving image in school curricula. If you teach or know anyone in teaching who’d like more info on our programme, don’t hesitate to call Dee or Baz at IFI Education on 01 679 5744.

Here’s to a great term.

Alicia McGivern
Head of Education

Tony Curtis passes away

The news has just broken that Tony Curtis has passed away. Jamie Lee Curtis' rep confirmed the news to ET but no further details are currently known. Tony was due to visit the IFI for a short season of his work back in June of this year, but sadly had to cancel.

Born in the Bronx during the Great Depression, Bernard Schwartz overcame a traumatic, poverty-stricken childhood – as documented in the great show-biz autobiography American Prince – to become Hollywood legend Tony Curtis, enjoying a rather colourful life both on and off screen. Since his first notable appearance as a gigolo in Robert Sidomak’s Criss Cross (1949), Curtis notched up more than a hundred screen credits, amongst them iconic classics Sweet Smell of Success, Spartacus, The Defiant Ones (for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar in 1957) and Billy Wilder’s immortal Some Like It Hot. He had been directed by everyone from Carol Reed and Stanley Kubrick to Nicolas Roeg and Quentin Tarantino.

Gaspar Noé and 'Enter The Void'

Misogynist, pornographer, homophobe, cruel, racist, depraved . . . the list of pejorative terms hurled at Argentine-French filmmaker Gaspar Noé has lengthened with the release of each of his films. After all, here is a director whose first widely-seen film, Carne (1991), opened with a graphic abattoir sequence of a horse being slaughtered and the carcass stripped for meat. This was followed by Seul contre tous (I Stand Alone) (1998), which expanded on the world of the earlier film’s central character, the nameless Butcher unforgettably portrayed by Philippe Nahon, whose rage against the state of his life and of French society encompasses incest with his daughter and assaulting a pregnant woman. As if Noé hadn’t given his critics enough ammunition, his next film, Irréversible (2002), featured a horrific murder and an infamous nine-minute, single-take rape scene before the film had reached its halfway mark. As a result of his approach, Noé has been tagged as part of the New French Extremism, a movement of transgressive cinema which also includes directors such as François Ozon, Catherine Breillat and Marina de Van — interesting filmmakers all, each of whom deserves better than to pigeonholed in such a way.

However, to take the easy option and simply accept either Noé’s detractors or out-of-context descriptions of scenes from his films at face value is to do a huge disservice to a truly fascinating director. One of the keys to understanding Noé’s approach is provided by the work of his father, the artist and intellectual Luis Felipe Noé, part of the 1960s Buenos Aires Otra Figuración movement. Hallmarks of the movement included the use of vivid colours, political content and an extreme sense of kinesis, attributes Noé fils has incorporated into his own work. Also telling is a comment attributed to Noé pére: “I believe in chaos as a value.”

There is certainly also an element of the professional provocateur to Gaspar Noé; he has never denied his attempts at manipulating audience emotion, whether it be a thirty second warning to audiences to leave the cinema in fear of what is about to happen (Seul contre tous), or sound design incorporating frequencies guaranteed to cause uneasy discomfort in the viewer (Irréversible), but this is best seen as following in the tradition of  the showmanship and sly playfulness of Hitchcock, while his softly-spoken insistence on being ‘normal’ is positively Lynchian. The ostentatious gimmickry and overtly confrontational nature of his previous work gives rise to parallels with films such as Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997), but while Haneke is lauded for his intellectual austerity, Noé is unfairly demonised. Each of Noé’s films has been a huge leap forward in style, tone and content, and with Enter the Void he has created an unforgettable masterpiece — a film that’s remarkable in its ambition, scope, style and beauty.

Inspired by a viewing over twenty years ago of Robert Montgomery’s Lady in the Lake (1947), a film shot entirely from the point of view of the main character and which the director watched under the influence of psilocybin, Enter the Void has obviously long been a cherished project of Noé’s. Interviews at the time of Irréversible find him mentioning that that film had only been made due to a delay in “the pre-production stage of another movie I wanted to shoot in Tokyo, about a drug dealer,” while in recent interviews he has discussed how the balletic, sweeping camera movements of Irréversible were trial runs for the amazingly complex camerawork of the new film. Indeed, Irréversible may eventually be seen as a key film of transition in Noé’s body of work, as Enter the Void not only refines the shooting style of the former but also represents a significant maturing of the contemplative and tender nature of that film’s latter half, with none of the shock tactics of his earlier films. Noé’s psychedelic exploration of the afterlife (for which Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was also a key influence) and the bonds of love that bind us veers away from traditional narrative structures and instead places us at the very centre of a warm yet unforgiving examination of consciousness and existence.

Enter the Void was first shown in a rough cut at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, with a length of 163 minutes. Following almost a year of post-production and extensive editing, including the excision of a complete reel, the version showing at the IFI has a running time of 137 minutes.

View the trailer here.

Kevin Coyne

Open House, Open Archive

If you've ever wondered what goes on in the IFI Irish Film Archive, you might be interested in our new series of public tours. Starting on the 9th of October, as part of the Irish Architectural Foundation's Open House event and continuing in November and December, we are giving members of the public the opportunity to see what goes on behind closed doors. We've been trying to increase awareness of the important work the Archive does and raise its profile within the IFI building. You may have noticed our Archive exhibitions in the IFI foyer and outside Cinema 3 which we hope will remind people that the IFI is much more than just a Cinema and Café Bar; it's a dynamic cultural institute with a range of important education and archive activities going on behind the scenes.

In addition to the Archive tour as part of Open House, O'Donnell and Tuomey (the architects responsible for the initial design of the IFI and also the recent redevelopment) will  be giving tours of the main IFI building. Special screenings from the Archive’s collections will take place in the IFI’s new Cinema 3 and feature Gael Linn’s Amharc Eireann newsreel footage of the Abbey Theatre and Liberty Hall under construction, as well as of other buildings in this year’s Open House Dublin. All tours and screenings are free but tours must be booked in advance. To book your place on the Archive tour email koconnell@irishfilm.ie

For more information on Open House, please visit www.architecturefoundation.ie/openhouse/

Kasandra O'Connell
Head of IFI Irish Film Archive

Busy Days at IFI

We're in the middle of yet another busy spell at the IFI.

We've just sent the October programme to print which promises some great new releases, and also contains information on Darklight 2010, Civility in Crisis (our Polish Season in collaboration with the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival), a four week evening course, a preview of an award-winning film with a very special guest, and a host of other events. Full details will be announced on September 29th.

To top it all off, we've also included a taster of some of the titles in this year's Horrorthon (October 21-25) which promises to send shivers down the most hardened of spines. The full Horrorthon programme is being kept closely under wraps, but we will be presenting it shortly. (Don't forget to look out for a separate flyer on the Festival to get all the gory details!)

This week we have the usual comings and goings. If you haven't managed to catch the wonderful, restored version of Metropolis (which received five star reviews across the board) catch it before it finishes this Thursday (Sept 23rd). Also finishing on Thursday is Certified Copy which stars Juliette Binoche in the role that bagged her a Best Actress Award at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Having said goodbye to these two films, it opens the way for a few new (and familiar) faces. Opening Friday (Sept 24) we have the wonderful classic From Here to Eternity (remind yourself of what's in store by viewing the trailer) and Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void (watch the trailer). If you fancy something FREE, we're participating in Culture Night by offering a screening of Into The West from the IFI Irish Film Archive at 18.50 this Friday. You can get your tickets by calling the box office on 01 679 3477 or calling into the IFI.

Not being content with getting the October programme off to print, we've also polished off the IFI Education Autumn/Winter Programme which provides full details of the school screenings taking place at the IFI and nationwide from October through to January. The details will be announced on September 29th but if you want to recieve a copy of the programme, contact our Education department on 01 679 5744 or schools@irishfilm.ie

And finally, if you're in the mood for rebellion, we have the perfect weekend lined up for you. Starting on Saturady, Before the Revolution is a special season of films curated by Enrique Juncosa offering a selection of titles that mark the social change and poltical activism of the 1960s which culminated in the events of May 1968. Screenings include Antonioni's Blow Up, Godard's Week-End and Bertolucci's Partner. 

We hope you enjoy all we have in store!

Ross Keane
Head of Marketing & Communications