Squirrel! Or dog friendly screening of Up at the Lighthouse

Now here’s something you don’t see every day, a talking dog onscreen will be viewed by silently nodding dogs in the audience in the Lighthouse and Palas cinemas on Sunday.

There will be Dog Friendly Screenings of Pixar’s Up in both the Pálás Galway and Dublin’s Lighthouse on Sunday August 12th at 11am in honour of one of everyone’s favourite Pixar characters – the affectionate but easily distracted Dug. Dug the playful, optimistic, friendly, and lovable dog who is always kind to those he loves (which is just about everybody) is the Platonic ideal of man’s best friend, and what better way to celebrate him by inviting furry friends for special screenings of Pixar’s 2009 release.

 

Spaces are very limited so booking in advance is advised.

Pálás: https://palas.ie/showing/showing-41681

Light House : https://lighthousecinema.ie//showing/showing-41681

 

Up Dog Friendly Screenings are part of the Pixar Season running at the Lighthouse and Pálás from August 10th to 26th.

Tickets and full line-ups are available at lighthousecinema.ie and palas.ie

ADIFF 2018: Irish Documentaries

The announcement of the main ADIFF programme is  just under a week away, but a taste is being given with this year’s Irish documentary line-up being released early.

Festival Director, Gráinne Humphreys said ‘This year’s Irish documentary line-up, full of World and Irish Premieres, reveals a preoccupation with the tensions between long-held traditions and the contemporary society. These extraordinary films ask questions of what we can treasure and protect, what can be re-invented, and what we need to learn to let go of. These profound and searching documentaries give a glimpse of what’s in store when the full ADIFF programme is announced on 24^th January’.

One farmer’s courageous struggle to maintain a centuries-old lifestyle in the shadow of a huge multinational is traced in the Irish Premiere of Feargal Ward’s The Lonely Battle of Thomas Reid; the walk of the Camino is re-invented as a Kerry curragh sea journey in the Irish Premiere of Dónal Ó’Céilleachair’s The Camino Voyage, featuring Brendan Begley and Glen Hansard; and Paul Duane traces a hypnotic musical journey that brings us to the earliest Western music still in existence in the World Premiere of While You Live, Shine. The survival of dissident Republican vigilantism in pockets of the North, is explored in the Irish Premiere of Sinéad O’Shea’s much-anticipated A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot. The Troubles also reverberate through the Irish Premiere of Donal Foreman’s The Image You Missed, which sees the filmmaker grapple with the legacy of his estranged father, Arthur MacCaig, and the decades-spanning archive of the conflict in Northern Ireland that he created.

Each year the Arts Council’s Reel Art scheme, in association with ADIFF and Filmbase, commissions two films that offer filmmakers a chance to make highly creative, imaginative, and experimental documentaries on an artistic theme. Receiving their World Premieres at this year’s festival in the IFI are Rouzbeh Rashidi’s Phantom Islands, a visceral exploration of the boundaries between documentary and fiction, and Niall McCann’s reflective encounter with Irish musician and artist Adrian Crowley in The Science of Ghosts. Finally major Irish filmmaker Pat Collins returns to the documentary form with Twilight, a beautiful evocation of the end of day that was filmed over two years in Baltimore, West Cork.

Tickets for the Irish documentaries at ADIFF are available now at (www.diff.ie or 01 687 7974).

Season Tickets are also now on sale alongside tickets for the Fantastic Flix young people’s programme, the Paul Schrader season, the Surprise Film, Immersive Stories: Conference and Exhibition, and the silent film presentations in association with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The full ADIFF Programme will be released on Jan 24^th.

Irish Documentaries at ADIFF 2018 – Schedule

Saturday 24^th February
18.30 The Lonely Battle of Thomas Reid   Lighthouse 1
Filmmaker in attendance: Feargal Ward

Monday 26^th February
18.30 The Science of Ghosts   IFI
Filmmaker in attendance: Niall McCann

Tuesday 27^th February
18.30 Phantom Islands   IFI
In attendance: Rouzbeh Rashidi

Wednesday 28^th February
17.50 Twilight   Lighthouse 2
In attendance: Pat Collins

18.45 While You Live, Shine   Lighthouse 2
In attendance: Paul Duane

Thursday 1^st March
18.15 The Image You Missed   Lighthouse 2
In attendance: Donal Foreman

Friday 2^nd March
18.15 The Camino Voyage   IFI
In attendance: Dónal Ó Céilleachair

Saturday 3^rd March
18.15 A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot   Lighthouse 1
In attendance: Sinéad O’Shea

9 Days of 90s Horror

Hallowe’en comes to the Lighthouse with 9 days of 90s horror films from 23^rd to 31^st October culminating in a Scream-themed party before a screening of the late Wes Craven’s third reinvention of horror cinema.

While the IFI’s Horrorthon unleashes a slew of new genre entries, the Lighthouse will hark back to the 1990s; the origin of the ‘ironic slasher’ sub-genre which was murdered by torture porn, and found-footage, which, like many a horror bogeyman, just won’t die. In association with the Bram Stoker Festival the 90s Vampire strand brings Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 adaptation of Stoker’s text back to the big screen, placing it beside other 90s vampire movies Blade, From Dusk Till Dawn, and the original iteration of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The most important film being screened, however, is Scream. Wes Craven redirected the current of horror cinema three times: Last House on the Left, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream. Teamed with razor-sharp screenwriter Kevin Williamson he delivered a totemic movie well worthy of a Scream-themed Hallowe’en night costume party.

FROM DUSK ‘TILL DAWN

Friday 23^rd October 10:30pm

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s first blood-soaked collaboration is presented in a digital restoration; that won’t make QT happy… A grimy, violent B-movie about a seedy Mexican bar that happens to be crawling with vampires this had its origins in VFX guys wanting a showcase script for their handiwork. So, after some quintessentially Tarantinoesque build-up, with fugitives George Clooney and Tarantino trading taunts and riffs with their hostages Harvey Keitel and Juliette Lewis, Rodriguez’s aesthetic takes over: Salma Hayek and energetic mayhem.

BLADE I & II – (Double Bill)

Saturday 24^th October 9:00pm

Never let a high concept get in the way of a good double bill! Guillermo Del Toro’s 2002 sequel sees humans and vampires form an uneasy alliance to defeat the mutated vampires known as ‘Reapers’, who threaten to infect and/or eat everyone. But first we have to see Wesley Snipes’ vampire superhero take down Stephen Dorff, with some help from Kris Kristofferson, in the 1998 debut of the ‘Daywalker’. All together now: “Some motherf****** are always trying to ice-skate uphill.”

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

Sunday 25^th October 10:30pm

Nothing bad is ever Joss Whedon’s fault. That trope began here. His script for this 1992 teen comedy was apparently neutered in production, leading Whedon to dream it all up again for TV; where, even as show-runner, season 4 was also somehow not his fault. Buffy’s cinematic origin story isn’t a patch on the TV development, and, while Donald Sutherland’s Watcher and Rutger Hauer’s Master Vampire add class to proceedings, this is more interesting as a time capsule (Look! It’s Luke Perry!).

BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA

Monday 26^th October 3:30pm

Director Francis Ford Coppola’s screenplay differs wildly from Stoker’s book. Coppola fixated on a ‘true love never dies’ doppelganger love story between Gary Oldman’s Count and Winona Ryder’s Mina Murray, that shaped Jonathan Rhys-Meyers’ recent steam-punk TV adaptation. Cast adrift amidst outré sets that bellow their obvious artifice, Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing and Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker try to ground things, but the best verdict remains Winona Ryder’s acidic “I deserved an Oscar for the job I did promoting that movie…”

SILENCE OF THE LAMBS – (Cinema Book Club)

Tuesday 27^th October 8.00pm

The Halloween edition of the Lighthouse’s Cinema Book Club is Jonathan Demme’s film of Thomas Harris’ best-selling chiller. Harris’ universe has been thoroughly mined, most recently in Bryan Fuller’s hallucinatory series Hannibal, but this 1991 Oscar-winner was the breakthrough adaptation. Jodie Foster’s FBI rookie Clarice Starling and Anthony Hopkins’ imprisoned cannibal Hannibal Lecter are indelible performances. It’s become fashionable to disparage this in favour of Manhunter, but there’s a reason few people ever saw Brian Cox as Hannibal Lecter…

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT

Wednesday 28^th October 8.30pm

The greatest horror producer of the 21^st century Jason Blum passed on this at Sundance, and has been kicking himself ever since. Some people at early screenings in 1999 thought that this was real; giving its unnerving ending enough power to create a buzz that made it a sensation. It wasn’t real. It was, however, the moment where found-footage horror stomped into the multiplex and declared it would never leave, all because of an unsettling walk in the woods in Burkettsville, Maryland.

WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE

Thursday 29^th October 8.30pm

Wes Craven wrote and directed this late meta-instalment in the franchise he had kicked off with his original vision of Freddy Kreuger. Heather Langenkamp, Nancy in 1984’s Nightmare on Elm Street, plays herself; plagued by dreams of a Freddy Kreuger far darker than the one portrayed by her good friend Robert Englund. Featuring cameos from several of the original cast and crew Craven produces a postmodern musing on what happens when artists create fictions that take on a life of their own.

CANDYMAN

Friday 30^th October 8.30pm

Bernard Rose’s cult classic, an adaptation of genre legend Clive Barker’s The Forbidden, follows a thesis student who is researching urban legends. Unfortunately for him he discovers the terrifying world of ‘Candyman’, the ghost of a murdered artist who is summoned by anyone foolish to say his name out loud into a mirror five times. Masterfully made, still absolutely terrifying, and the reason we all cheer whenever Tony Todd makes a cameo ever since, this also features the unlikely bonus of a Philip Glass score.

HOCUS POCUS, Kathy Najimy, Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, 1993

HOCUS POCUS

Saturday 31^st October 3.00pm

A token film for the kids is 1992’s Hocus Pocus. Why the misfiring hi-jinks of Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy’s trio of Salem witches is perennially on TV is a mystery, but to present it as the essential kids’ Hallowe’en film is an enigma wrapped inside a riddle. Especially when Nicolas Roeg’s film of Roald Dahl’s The Witches, starring a scary Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch, dates from 1990…

SCREAM I & II – (Double Bill & Party)

Saturday 31^st October 9.30pm.

Neve Campbell confidently carries this 1996 classic, a blackly hilarious self-aware dissection of slasher clichés which is also a brilliant slasher filled with tense sequences. Williamson’s delicious dialogue (“Movies don’t create psychos, they just make psychos more creative…”) is brought to memorable life by an ensemble on truly top form, with star-making turns from Jamie Kennedy, David Arquette, Rose McGowan, and Skeet Ulrich. 1997’s sequel isn’t quite as good, but Kevin Williamson’s dialogue remains a joy, there are some nail-biting moments, it’s as subversively self-aware as 22 Jump Street of its sequel status, and uses Timothy Olyphant, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jerry O’Connell, and David Warner to great effect.

‘9 Days of 90s horror’ ends with a Scream-themed Hallowe’en party preceding the Scream double bill, beginning at 8pm. Dress as your favourite 90s horror icon and enjoy the ironically-named cocktails, soundtrack of 90s hits, and general japery all related to Wes Craven’s classic slasher.

TICKETS FOR 90S VAMPIRE FILMS:

http://www.lighthousecinema.ie/newsarticle.php?sec=NEWS&_aid=8323

 

TICKETS FOR 90S HORROR FILMS:

http://www.lighthousecinema.ie/newsarticle.php?sec=NEWS&_aid=8455

JDIFF: William Klein

Photographer and filmmaker William Klein is to visit the IFI as part of JDIFF’s tribute to his work, Delirious Fictions – The Films of William Klein.

After a career of nearly 60 years, renowned photographer and filmmaker William Klein is to visit Dublin to present his most famous film, Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, as part of a season of his works running between the 14^th and 20^th February and presented as a collaboration between the IFI and JDIFF, with screenings also taking place at the Lighthouse. A fashion photographer and street documentarian based in New York, Klein remains one of the most influential of 20^th Century photographers. He began to create films in the 1960s through his association with the likes of influential and experimental French directors Chris Marker (La Jetee) and Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad), and in the decades since he has made many films, documentaries, and commercials. Audacious, satirical, anarchic and controversial, his subjects cover areas as diverse as Algerian folklore, Eldridge Cleaver, Muhammad Ali, Little Richard, Hollywood, the French Open, and the Parisian fashion scene.

15.30 14^th Feb Messiah

Messiah is Klein’s impressionistic visualisation of Handel’s Messiah, as performed by numerous international choirs including the Dallas Police Choir, a drug rehab choir in Harlem, and the Lavender Light Gay & Lesbian Interracial Choir. The film takes the viewer and listener all over the world and includes female boxers at the Taj Mahal Las Vegas, a Paris Christmas party for the homeless, wealthy arts patrons at Houston’s annual Hair Ball, and a Danish woman having her belly covered in religious tattoos.

18.30 17^th Feb The Model Couple

In the prescient televisual hyper-reality of The Model Couple, the French Ministry of the Future chooses a couple to inhabit a prototype living space. The constant televisual broadcast of their experience represents a pschyo-sociologial experiment which will determine what is needed for the French citizen of the future. But as the audience loses interest, the experiment quickly descends into utter farce and mere anarchy.

18.00 20^th Feb Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?

Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, Klein’s first feature, is a stunning black-and-white art-house parody positioned somewhere between the mockumentary and the moralistic fairytale. With Parisian high fashion and haute couture in the satirical crosshairs, the film pre-visualises contemporary society’s obsession with the transitory nature of media and celebrity. William Klein will take part in a post screening Q+A with James Armstrong, Lecturer in Visual Culture at NCAD.

www.jdiff.com has information on other JDIFF screenings of William Klein films at the Lighthouse. Tickets cost €11 for evening screenings and €7 for matinees. Tickets and further information are available from both www.ifi.ie and www.jdiff.com.

To the Lighthouse?

The court-case winding up the Lighthouse cinema has been adjourned until April 15th; but will it be mere stay of execution, as in the case of the Sunday Tribune, or a commutation of the sentence?

Last autumn I complained about Cineworld busting thru the psychological 10 euro mark for ticket prices. The Lighthouse was one of the cheapest cinemas that I listed in a price comparison of my regular haunts, but it was never a particularly frequent haunt of mine. Sure, I enjoyed seeing Let the Right One In, Moon, and Mesrine: Public Enemy No 1 there, but most of my trips to Smithfield were for press screenings. That’s because of the cinemas I frequent (Savoy, Screen, IFI, Cineworld, Dundrum, Ormonde) the Lighthouse is the furthest away from my suburban southside lair, and the hardest to get to as well: no direct bus link and a 20 minute walk between Luas lines. It was an impractical cinema to get to for a lot of Southsiders who weren’t near the Red line, and no doubt, like me, they were happy to stick with the IFI. Which is a pity as the Lighthouse is a gorgeous cinema aesthetically; even features that shouldn’t work, such as the quirky multi-coloured seats in one screen, do work, making it a notably comfortable cinema experience with a great atmosphere because it has its own distinct and loveably eccentric personality.

But its physical personality rather dwarfs its cinematic personality. It’s great at screening films long after their IFI run has ceased, witness Of Gods and Men running there since Christmas and Animal Kingdom still playing, and their regular re-releases such as The Godfather and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes have been excellent. But the Lighthouse didn’t really stand out as much as it would’ve if it had opened in 2002. The question which the existence of the Lighthouse always begged must now be asked – are there too many art-house cinemas in Dublin? To appropriate the language of politics, where Battle: Los Angeles is Sarah Palin and Submarine is Ralph Nader, just how big is the left-leaning vote? Since the explosion in the number of its screens in 2003, when it took over the adjoining IMAX, Cineworld has screened a huge amount of foreign films and American indie productions that would previously have only played at the IFI. This has pushed the IFI to the left of centre, witness Inception last year playing at the Savoy, Cineworld, and the IFI simultaneously. All too often the Lighthouse, Cineworld, Screen and IFI are redoubtably running the same films at the same times. Given that art-house cinema is a niche to start, can it really be fragmented across four city-centre cinemas and remain a profitable niche?

The dimming of the Lighthouse’s beacon of intelligent cinema would be lamentable, but if the economic logic is against it, it’s inevitable.