The experimental film club is an afternoon of discussions and screenings of classic and rare alternative cinema conceived as an informal arena where diverse practitioners can meet and explore avant-garde film culture. It takes place once monthly upstairs at the ha’penny bridge inn, dublin.

It sounds very tempting since i was looking for Dublin’s underground Cine scene; did a quick search on Interweb and found out that they have simple yet neat blog too. What it says,

The Experimental Film Club is founded by Aoifa Desmond, Alan Lambert, Esperanza Collado, Donal Foreman and Katie Lincoln. They are each involved in different aspects of filmmaking and share a desire to create a forum for exploration of diverse film works. It is perceived that there are a large number of people interested and engaged in aspects of experimental filmmaking in Dublin but no meeting point to build on this shared interest ans knowledge. The club is open to all and will present a different series of screening each month.

Anyone had a chance to attend any screenings? Could be very interesting if you are into parallel cinema.

Link

Trinity College Dublin is the first university in Ireland and one of the first in Europe to launch its own iTunes U site that features free access to audio and video files on course material, public lectures and presentations and highlights of College life.

Trinity Press Release, TCD iTunes Store, TCD Podcasts, iTunes U

The Swedish Festival brings the best of modern Swedish culture to Irish audiences for the second year running. Don’t miss out on any of the delights on offer, as the Swedes attempt to do justice to their reputation of being at the forefront of new trends.

Via Totally Swedish Festival

Stay tuned (post ideas/comments in the meanwhile).

(Not) Find of the day is, there is no train map available in Connolly station once you cross the ticket-check; I think it’s the same case with most of the train station.

Sound very strange when you think of a capital city of western Europe, but again, DART is an exception. (i’m sure they’ll win the contract in Hell too)

One of them is very obvious insanely large queues and not sufficient space in check-in areas. With every visit, it seems that either the space is shrinking or the people are on travel spree, I hope something will be done in near future.

The other not too obvious change is around immigration process for non-eu citizens; til last year, it was just a matter of showing GNIB card and passport only. I understand that there’s a great influx of non Europeans for work or leisure reasons, but the recent two trips left a bad taste i.e. after being here in Ireland for seven years. In my last trip, on arriving to immigration counter, the guy just took a look at my passport, not even opened it or checked the GNIB card and asked me to go to adjacent counter. This other counter was closed and there was no way to return thru my original queue, anyhow, after I showed up to other counter, had to wait for a while for somebody to appear. The guy asked me straight away, without checking passport or GNIB card, “what is the reason to enter Ireland?”, for a split second I thought I am in states, “I live here”, I replied. Then a series of question, “What do you do?”, “How long you are here?”, “What kind of work?”, “What is the name of the company?”, etc etc, finally he opened the passport and took a brief look at visa and stamped the entry as if he is granting a personal favour to me. Now, he didn’t scan/read the registration card…? and I was wondering is he a moron psychic or psychic moron?

I wonder if and how this immigration madness will continue…?

Needless (and most probably useless too) to say, the Schengen countries has far more smoother process when it comes to enter the country; and that’s a total different debate that what make the Irish immigration so special that its not possible to enter Schengen zone. It will be interesting to see in 2009 when UK will introduce electronic border control system and CTA (Common Travel Area) will end.

One of them is very obviously new areas for departure gates, very well lit and neat. Some work is already under construction, hopefully we’ll see more improvements.

As a non-eu citizen, but long term resident, it’s usually not a problem entering the country i.e. returning. Wait for the turn, show the passport and green card and in you go, in some cases it was extremely smooth, no questions asked, i assume the immigration officials can get most of the info by scanning/reading the green card (GNIB card) and basically there’s no need to verify this information if you are long term resident. This smooth process had (yeah “had” not has, wait for the next post) feel to it especially when i compare to immigration process in USA.

Hopefully the immigration process will be improved even better.

Let us know any of the nice experiences you had on Dublin Airport.

The plan, entitled ‘Making it Happen’, also hopes to produce visitor revenue growth of 8% per annum, bringing total revenue to €1.8 billion by 2010.

via RTE

Dublin City Council has decided the plan would be contrary to EU law on state aid, as well as not financially possible. The project is estimated to cost €27m.

RTE News: No free wi-fi for Dublin

This includes price changing when changing “payment method”, forced selection of insurance, forced (and irritating) selection of checked number of bag (increasing the overall price). On top of all that, the free tickets crap.

More at BBC NEWS | Business | Airline websites ‘are misleading’