Pint and a Picture Show (with some shameless self-promotion thrown in for good measure)
The irrepressibly enthusiastic Howard Linnane restarts his Pint and a Picture series of free weekly film screenings in Russell’s of Ranelagh this Monday the 1st. September, with a program that includes two films by yrs truly. The screenings and Q & A’s are a lot of fun – if you make it there, please say hello.
Mon 1st 7pm programme: you’ll like Mondays now
We’re back to Monday nights at the weekly free ‘picture show’ screenings at our usual venue in Ranelagh this week, but we start at an earlier time this Monday. The programme for Monday 1st September kicks off at 7pm with the usual Irish Short Films Slot starting the show but at 7.30pm we show ‘Yellow Gate Women’ (dir Margaretta D’Arcy (2006); running time 60 mins), a documentary about the Greenham Common Women’s protest that began in the early 1980s against the siting of Cruise missiles at an airbase in England and went on for years. The film was screened at Galway Film Fleadh last year (and again this year, I believe) and it was shown a while back at the Portobello Film Festival in London and has been shown elsewhere.
The screening of the documentary will be followed by a Q&A with the director about the making of the film and about the Greenham protest at which she was present in its earliest days (which I’m old enough to remember and about which I have recently been reading a book written by former protestors – hence my interest in putting the film on, as soon as I read of it). I’m hoping it will develop into a full-blown discussion about Greenham, feminism, writing plays, filmmaking (esp documentaries), working for peace … and whatever else occurs to the audience on the night.
Following the Q&A and any ensuing discussion we’ll be screening ‘Happiness’ (dir Conor Horgan (2005); running time 27 mins), which involves a wide variety of people all around Ireland expressing their idea of happiness to camera. I expect this film to start screening at 9.30pm, if not earlier. We screened Conor’s award-winning first short ‘The Last Time’ on 26th May and again more recently. His latest film ‘About Beauty’, a documentary about Irish artist Dorothy Cross, is being broadcast on RTE1 later on the very same night that our ‘picture show’ is showing ‘Happiness’ ie this Monday 1st (at 10.30pm or thereabouts) and will be screened at the IFI during the forthcoming ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ Documentary Film Festival 2008 in late September. (Conor has kindly agreed to our showing ‘About Beauty’ after that festival screening and will be doing a Q&A about it with us then.) The rest of our programme for this Monday night will be detailed later.
