IFI20: A Celebration of Audiences

The IFI’s home in Temple Bar is all about the people who come here to engage with our extensive programme, so when we started to plan our anniversary celebrations, we very quickly decided that we wanted the focus to be on our audiences. We wanted to celebrate the experiences that our audiences have had here over the last 20 years by reliving some of the big moments whilst also looking to the future.

For those who have strong memories of films that they’ll always associate with the IFI, we presented a season of 20 Landmark Films which featured big IFI titles including Natural Born Killers, Vertigo (on 70mm) and Mulholland Dr. Our Open Weekend threw our doors open for two days of free screenings and events for old and new audiences. We had queues from 7am which stretched up Eustace Street and down as far as the Olympia Theatre on Dame Street! We had a 1992 Day, a series of blogs throughout the month written by guest contributors, a pub quiz, DJs, a pop-up museum, tours of the IFI Irish Film Archive, Irish shorts from every year of the last 20, afternoon talks, discussions, archive and family screenings, and the unveiling of newly commissioned pieces of artworks. To close the proceedings, we were delighted to screen the European premiere of What Richard Did, the latest film by leading Irish director, Lenny Abrahamson.

IFI Open Weekend 2012

As we come to the end of a fantastic month, I think we managed to achieve what we set out to do. We greeted new audiences and welcomed back many faces who hadn’t been for some time alongside our faithful regulars. There was an amazing energy in the building throughout the month as audiences really engaged with all of the celebratory events and it generated a sense of enthusiasm for what the IFI has achieved over the last 20 years and excitement about what lies in store for its next chapter. 

Paul Lynch, Sinéad Cusack and Jeremy Irons  - Waterland

There are so many people to thank for the blood, sweat and tears that have been put into the IFI, both over the last 20 years and indeed back to our origins in 1943. There have been successive dedicated Boards, Councils, Directors and staff who have all helped shape our story and, as we look back, each and every person involved should take a bow as I think we have achieved the original vision of becoming a thriving, accessible, relevant and vital institution which now has a central role to play in Ireland’s cultural landscape.

The Archive’s Oscar and Emmy statuettes on a permanent display 

So as we close the page on the chapter of the last 20 years, we now look forward to an exciting new phase in the organisation’s story. The IFI is at an exciting point; as we look to the future, we are about to announce the findings of a major IFI Education research report, Film Focus, which could help to define the role of film in the curriculum and shape media literacy strategy. Next year we will open a brand new second home for the IFI Irish Film Archive with additional vaults at NUI Maynooth so we have the capacity to continue to ensure the preservation of Ireland’s moving image heritage. And we have exciting exhibition programmes, both in Ireland and abroad (with a focus on celebrating the EU Presidency with Irish film programmes across Europe in the first six months of 2013) which we hope will continue to engage and enthral a variety of audiences.

Here’s to the next 20 years!

Ross Keane

Director

IFI20: Remembering the IFI

On the occasion of the 20^th anniversary, I have been asked to post a few comments about my experience as a film-viewer and customer at the IFI.

To start at the beginning, my almost life-long enthusiasm for the art of film was kindled by a viewing of Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin in Roscommon – one channel TV land, the late 1960s. Arriving in Dublin in 1973, I made valiant efforts to view as many films as possible. Good work over the years was achieved by various people in many film societies, to mention three venues of note: Earlsfort Terrace, John Player Theatre SCR and The Academy Pearse Street. Praise should also be bestowed on the establishment of The Dublin Film Festival in 1985, remembering the late Michael Dwyer. It was the establishment of the Irish Film Centre in 1992 that was the most significant event in my film viewing life.

Since then, I would have attended an average of 150 films per year. Given my regular attendance, the Eustace Street venue has become a ‘home from home’. The now monthly programme is eagerly anticipated , as I plan my month’s leisure activities to fit in with the priority viewing time to be spent at the IFI.

The relationship with the Box Office staff has been a heart-warming experience, dealing with people who are pleasant and agreeable. On this occasion I should remember all the past staff that were very helpful to me over the years: Veronica, Ben, John, Matt, Mark, Aisling, Paul, Stewart, Mathieu, Eadáoin, Rita, Hanne, Sammy, Antonella, Paola, and Colin. I should also include the current staff lead by Liam, Darragh, the two Sarahs, Shadaan, Ronan, Greg, Megan, Anthony and Katie – thanks again all.

To isolate some highlights over the period may be somewhat unfair but these birthdays generally give way to reverie.

First: three films I never expected to see on the Big Screen: Sego Parajanov’s Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors; Ariane Mnouchkine’s Moliére; and Ritwik Ghatak’s The Cloud-Capped Star.

Second: three seasons which were brilliant: Jean Renoir, Ingmar Bergman and Howard Hawks.

Third: three silent films that gave me a new appreciation of the pioneers: Victor Sjostrom’s The Outlaw and His Wife; Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin Symphony of a Great City, and Vsevolod Pudovkin’s Mother.

Fourth: a great weekend ‘follow-up’ that was Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (931 minutes);

Fifth: a documentary that springs to mind Nicolas Philibert’s Etre et avoir;

Sixth: a Q&A with Harold Pinter;

Finally: three highlights from 2012 that keep me attending the screenings: the Carl Theodor Dreyer season, Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse and Jean Vigo’s L’Atlante.

Carl T. Dreyer

Remembering all who make it possible for us to enjoy the films, a special mention goes to the programme directors, especially Pete, and not forgetting the projectionists.

Also calling to mind the old bookshop and the great work done by Mary and Dylan in particular – so many books, so little time.

It’s been a great twenty years – here’s to the next twenty!

Séamus Farrell

  

IFI20: We’ll take Manhattan

When I became Director of the IFI in 2008 I moved from being a regular visitor to its then two cinemas, to being involved in all of the IFI’s extensive activities – the cinemas, IFI Education, IFI Irish Film Archive, IFI National and IFI International. One of the great pleasures of my time as Director was discovering and working with the Archive – one of Ireland’s richest and most important cultural resources. Comprising over 27,000 rolls of film, the IFI Irish Film Archive tells Ireland’s social, cultural and political histories through a diverse and fascinating collection of feature films, newsreels, documentaries, home movies, travelogues and advertisements. Fragments of film that may not resonate for their filmic qualities present visceral and vivid portraits of Irish life, often revealing hidden truths and forgotten details and presenting a complex and often unexpected representation of Irish culture.

The full potential of this material to tell Ireland’s story to audiences nationally and internationally became fully evident to me in 2011 when the IFI had the opportunity to contribute to Culture Ireland’s year long programme of Irish arts in the US – Imagine Ireland. Throughout the year the IFI brought films from the Archive to the Lincoln Centre and MOMA in New York and the National Gallery in Washington.  Highlights included a standing ovation for The Seasons at the Lincoln Centre – a beautiful silent film made by a doctor in 1930’s Mayo, presented in New York with a specially commissioned traditional music score; two extraordinary screenings of Hunger and In the Name of the Father at MOMA each followed by irreverent and searingly honest discussions between Gabriel Byrne, Enda Walsh and Jim Sheridan (which to the confusion of the New York audience included Jim Sheridan’s impressions of the Queen and Enda Kenny);  and a rapturous reception to Guests of the Nation, a 1930’s Irish silent film restored by the IFI and presented with a new commissioned score by Niall Byrne at a gala screening to an audience of over 800 New Yorkers in the beautiful Alice Tully Hall.

Guests of The Nation Gala Reception

This last event will always sum up for me my overriding memory of working at the IFI – working with the incredible staff and Board, whose commitment and enthusiasm drives the IFI forward and makes great things happen. Presenting a gala screening of an unknown Irish film with in one of New York’s most prestigious venues; co-ordinating the RTE Concert Orchestra to travel over to perform the score with only one-day’s  rehearsal in New York was a daunting task which certainly had its challenging moments! It’s success was entirely the result of the energy, stamina and good humour of my colleagues who came to New York with me  – Ross Keane, Kaz O’Connell, Sunniva O’Flynn, and Eve-Anne Cullinan Chair of the IFI Board – and the great back-up provided by all of those that worked on the project back at base. It was a privilege to be part of the IFI for a couple of years and I know that with that team behind it the IFI can only go from strength to strength. Roll on the next 20 years!

Sarah Glennie

Director of Irish Museum of Modern Art

Former IFI Director (2008 - 2012)

IFI20: Dancing, eating and drinking at the IFI Café Bar

I started working at the IFI Café Bar shortly after it opened. After a little while I left but was asked to come back in shortly afterwards as Manager and I’ve been here ever since. When I started the place was struggling to get established so we had to concentrate on getting people through the door. We made some changes to the décor to make it a little warmer and more welcoming and concentrated on getting the food up to scratch. We also did a lot of late night trade with performance nights, jazz bands, all sorts of nights as there weren’t the same number of clubs and pubs all around us as there are now. The 1994 World Cup in USA didn’t do us any harm either – we got the matches up on big screens and we were suddenly packed with Jackie’s Army.

Of course back then the IFI Café Bar was a much smaller affair with only about 10 staff on our books, now we have nearly 40, which shows how much our trade has expanded. We’ve been a successful because we’ve always tried to be a welcoming oasis of calm in the middle of Temple Bar whether or not you’re seeing a film. And we didn’t lose the run of ourselves either- even during the Celtic Tiger years when some people had money to burn we focused on providing a really good value option in the City Centre with main courses priced around €10 in today’s terms - so there’s a huge amount of loyalty to the place.

IFI Open Day BBQ 

I love to travel myself, I get over to France a couple of times a year and that’s where I get my love of food and wine from; I’ve been wine tasting all over the world. Temple Bar is now an international destination and it is great to see people coming from all over so I try to match the same hospitality I see when I go away here at the IFI.  

Bert Donlon

IFI Café Bar Manager

Follow IFI Café Bar on Facebook or have a look at our New Lunch & Evening Menus. 

IFI20: Falling in love ... at the IFI

It was a busy Wednesday early evening in July 2008, and the IFI cafe was hopping, and we both found ourselves awkwardly sharing a table beside the stairs. Not much was said until Joan asked me to hold her seat while she went out to get her cinema ticket and have a cigarette, at which point I asked if I could join her. The café was full by this point and we both realized that in order to have our table reserved we needed to order some food first. We both ordered falafels, an easy decision for both of us, and off we went to the open area, bonded by the delight at this achievement as the place was humming, and keeping a seat seemed impossible. 

By closing time we'd sampled the falafels, and moved to one of the tables outside for a pint. We had abandoned any ideas of seeing a film, and realized there were so many parallels and things we had in common. For us, all roads led to the IFI, and we both wanted to meet up again. It was two weeks later that we eventually got to see a film together. It was a French film but neither of us can remember the name! For the last few years we have made a point of having some food in the IFI Café Bar and going to look at a film on our anniversary. We got married last year and this year we skipped the film again and brought our six month old son with us instead! Happy days.

Tim and Joan

Special guest bloggers share their memories and thoughts about the IFI over past 20 years - please check out our blog page, Facebook and Twitter for regular updates.

The IFI is very grateful to them for their recollections.

Sitting and standing at the IFI

I've been sitting in the IFI for a long time. I was there when it opened in Temple Bar, sitting at screenings, festivals, and conferences as a student; sitting and looking up at stellar faces in the worlds of film and film education from Dennis Hopper to Frederic Jameson; sitting in the bar, even when there was dancing there, talking with my classmates after sitting upstairs in what is now Cinema 3, where we took some of our MA classes as part of a partnership with UCD. Then I spent a lot of time sitting in the archive and the library while I conducted my PhD research. I sat leafing through old magazines and the miscellaneous paper records charting the scattered history of Irish documentary film. I sat reading rare books on Irish film, and less rare magazines that I couldn't afford to buy. I sat at a Steenbeck in the bowels of the building, with Liam and Sunniva looking over my shoulder while I made handwritten notes on films sometimes no one else had seen. I sat in the viewing room too, heaps of Beta and VHS tapes coming in waves from the collection, together with support and advice, hints and directions that helped to shape my onward journey as a student. Somewhere along the way I started standing up. 

Dr. Harvey O'Brien & IFI Director Ross Keane (Photo by Alina Radko)

I found myself standing in front of the crowds as well as sitting among them, saying things about my research, talking about movies in general, giving classes in the meeting room on documentary, animation, film noir... anything, really; speaking to kids on the education programme about the joys of writing film reviews, fronting the Keeping it Real conference with Ruth Barton, both of us wearing long leather jackets at the opening panel. It wasn't planned, I swear. 

Then I was standing at my book launches, making speeches about the slow disappearance of good will in academia while thanking those at the IFI that had shown more than a little of it during the years I was sitting in that library and that archive. 

IFI Irish Film Archive

Eventually, it was a no-brainer that I would try to repay a little of what I felt I owed the IFI by serving on the Board. When I put my name forward my undergraduate mentor and teacher Stephanie McBride, then about to retire from active duty herself, greeted the news by saying to me "I hear you're standing." 

I'm still to be found sitting though. I'm sitting on the Board now, having stood for it after all, and I sit on the sub-committee on education and archive. I'm also frequently found there during the Summer semester, when my students have a saying "If it's Thursday, it must be Harvey", and you'll find me conducting a series of research consultations a couple of feet from where I did it all myself. 

To me the IFI has always been a place for learning, sitting or standing, and it's great to be part of it during the 20th celebrations. It's been quite a journey. I may need to lie down.

Harvey O’Brien 

Film Studies Lecturer at University College Dublin and author of The Real Ireland: The Evolution of Ireland in Documentary Film and co-editor of Keeping it Real: Irish Film and Television

A Night To Remember – a most stressful time at the IFI

Friday December 10^th 1993 – excitement was running high in the offices of the Irish Film Institute on the eve of the re-premiere of the War of Independence drama Irish Destiny.

The adventure had  begun years earlier when, prompted by the discovery of two enormous, original posters for Irish Destiny under the lino of a house in Ringsend, we began a search for the film of which little had been heard, since its release in 1926. A print was eventually found and restored in the Library of Congress in Washington.  A score was commissioned from Micheál Ó Súilleabháin who composed a score. The only job left was to turn the NCH into a cinema for the night.

Micheál Ó Súilleabháin

A 35mm mobile projector and a big giant screen were en route from London.  Too heavy to fly, we had booked a man and his 2 tonnes of equipment on the B+I car ferry. We awaited their arrival.

Hours passed and word filtered through that the man and his truck were stuck – on the boat in the middle of the Irish Sea.  It wasn’t  actually a national emergency, so a call to David Andrew’s people in the Department of Defence asking for a loan of their rescue helicopter, was fruitless.

Saturday dawned with the truck still on board. There was no option but to call Westair Private Jets from whom we hired a helicopter to fly over and winch the bloody truck off the boat.  And then a pit-stop at an RAF Airbase in Valley in Wales where the irony of the RAF facilitating the screening of a republican drama was not lost on us. In Dublin a high-speed dash from the airport through the city with Garda out-riders and a super-quick set up with mere moments to spare before the rehearsal-free curtain up. Proinnsías Ó Duinn’s baton was raised; the projector whirred to life; the title sequence unspooled;  and the opening notes of Micheál’s score filled the hall.  But then - the baton dropped. The music stopped.  Proinnsías walkie-talkied “Stop the film ! – There is an Overture to be played!”.  Much laughter from the audience – with, according to the Evening Press, “President Robinson, a patron of the IFI, particularly amused”.

A frantic rewinding of the 35mm reels. Baton up. Overture played.  And then Irish Destiny burst forth  in all its splendour.  And all were thrilled– from President to pauper.  And IFI staff collapsed with relief and thought, never again.  

Sunniva O'Flynn

IFI Curator

As part of the 2012 Culture Night and IFI20: Celebrating 20 Years in Temple Bar, we present a special 20th-anniversary screening of Far and Away on Friday, October 21st (20.00). Tickets are FREE and available only in person in Meeting House Square on the night of the screening.