Films from the Archive will feature as far afield as the Kilkenny Arts Festival, the Knock Museum, the Jackie Clark Libraries and Archives, Ballina, and in Dublin City Council Libraries.
This August the IFI Irish Film Archive will be on tour bringing exciting films from its collection to audiences around the country. This is a fantastic chance for people to delve in to the richness of the Archive’s Irish film collection which is carefully preserved and catalogued in its Eustace Street premises.
The touring starts at Kilkenny Arts Festival with a look at film adaptations of the work of one of Ireland’s most celebrated writers on August 8th in ‘William Trevor on Screen’. Trevor’s work often returns to themes of hardship and marginalization, yet a wry humour and lively eccentricity act to brighten the landscape of his stories. The Irish Film Institute will be presenting four film adaptations of Trevor’s work on the day (detailed below) featuring Bob Hoskins and Donal McCann with a special introduction by Colm Tóibín.
The second event at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, on August 10th featuring material from the Archive is ‘GAA Night Blood and Thunder: Hurling and Life in 1930s Ireland’. This fascinating evening of presentations, introduced by Diarmaid Ferriter, will look at one of the most exhilarating decades of GAA history and will be illustrated with footage from the IFI Irish Film Archive’s extensive GAA collection.
In August Heritage Week (22nd-30th August) the Archive will be presenting the third part of the very popular ‘Dublin in the Rare ‘Oul Times’ series. As in previous years, this trip down memory lane will tour Dublin City Council Libraries reaching audiences in Dublin city centre and suburban libraries and will appeal not just to nostalgia addicts but also to anyone interested in social, economic and architectural changes in Dublin from the 1930s to the 1970s. IFI events during Heritage week will also include screenings in The Jackie Clark Libraries and Archive in Ballina of films made by Clark who was a documentarian of local and national republican history.
Religion is the theme at the end of Heritage Week on the 29th and 30th of August in May with a trip to the Knock Museum where the Archive will be presenting ‘Glimpses of Knock’ – a programme of amateur and professional documentary films from the Shrine, dating from the 1930s to the 1970s. The screenings include footage of thousands of pilgrims arriving for 50th and 100th anniversary of the Apparition.
Announcing the touring season Sunniva O’Flynn, IFI Curator said, “The Irish Film Archive is a national collection which includes a rich tapestry of local-interest material. The Archive on the Road series capitalises on partnerships with regional exhibitors to bring bespoke film programmes back to the communities from which they came. We are delighted to share these collections, which are preserved in the Irish Film Archive, with the audiences who will be most appreciative of them.”
