Michael Shannon & Bodies That Can Never Tire

 

Brace yourselves! Michael Shannon has been confirmed to attend International Literature Festival Dublin on Friday 22nd May to participate in Bodies That Can Never Tire, the Festival’s celebration of William Butler Yeats’ 150th Birthday.

“That he follow with desire/Bodies that can never tire”

In WB Yeats’ great play, An Baile’s Strand, Cuchulainn is asked to take an oath to defend the country. Against his will he agrees and sings the oath, including the lines above. Being half man, half god, Cuchulainn himself is a ‘body that can never tire’, but in these lines Yeats focuses on the artist’s inner drive to satisfy dreams, visions and supernatural impulses. These ‘bodies that can never tire’ are different for everybody, and fuel ambition, obsession, and revolution. They are central to artistic creation, and the stuff of ‘the foul rag and bone shop of the heart’.

A unique celebration of the legacy of Ireland’s great national poet, Bodies That Can Never Tire will enchant in the beautiful surroundings of the historic Smock Alley Theatre at 6pm on Friday 22^nd May, with proceeds from the event going to Temple Street Children’s Hospital.

A specially commissioned piece interwoven with music, poetry, and spoken word, Bodies That Can Never Tire will showcase Irish actors Clark Middleton (Birdman), Sean Doyle (Fair City), Aoife Duffin (What Richard Did), Aoibhin Garrihy (The Fall), Lorcan Cranitch (King Lear, The House), and Maeve Fitzgerald (Gate’s Pride & Prejudice). Spoken word contributions will come from Katie Donovan (Rootling: New & Selected Poems), Deirdre Kinahan (Spinning), Patrick McCabe (The Butcher Boy), with music from composer Tom Lane (HARP | a river cantata), Songs in the Key of D choir, folk trio The Evertides, and hip hop artist Lethal Dialect.

And of course the star attraction is the spoken word contribution of Michael Shannon, a man whose name has graced the top of the best acting awards lists hereabouts numerous times in the last few years. Shannon is probably best known for his turn as General Zod in Man of Steel, and his driven government agent in Boardwalk Empire. But his most productive creative partnership has likely been with writer/director Jeff Nichols on Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, and Mud. Shannon has done acclaimed theatre work as well as explode off the big screen with snarling charisma, so the chance to see him in the flesh on the Dublin stage is a rare one and to be grasped with both hands.

Booking

Tickets to all events are available online via www.ilfdublin.com

Box Office Filmbase, Curved St, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 (11am-6pm Mon-Sat, 12-5pm Sun)

T: +353 (0) 1 687 7977

E: boxoffice@ilfdublin.com

International Literature Festival Dublin features over 90 events in 19 venues over 9 days. Now in its 17^th year the Festival has grown to become one of the most prestigious events in Ireland’s literary calendar. This year attendees include Irvine Welsh, Jon Ronson, Paul Muldoon, Anne Enright, Alexander McCall Smith, Anne Applebaum, Elif Shafak and Oliver Jeffers.

Fingal Film Festival 2014

Fingal Film Festival gets underway on the 26th of September with a programme featuring some of the best independent films of 2014 from Ireland and abroad.

Friday afternoon sees a screening of Irish feature documentary One Ocean: No Limits, which follows a young novice Irish rower through the highs and lows of rowing across the Atlantic Ocean from Morocco to Barbados as part of a crew of six. That evening, the festival will officially open with the Irish premiere of Gia Coppola’s astonishing debut feature Palo Alto, an unflinching portrait of adolescent lust, boredom and self-destruction, starring Emma Roberts and James Franco.

Saturday the 27th’s programme features award-winning Colombian film Jardín de Amapolas, which tells the story of a farmer and his son forced into the dangerous but lucrative world of cultivating poppies following their exile by rebels. Irish docudrama A Terrible Beauty / Áille an Uafáis tells the story of the men and women of the Easter Rising – the ordinary Irish volunteers, British soldiers and innocent civilians caught up in a conflict many did not understand. The Saturday evening feature is coming of age tale Calloused Hands, the tale of talented young baseball player Josh trying to ignore the violence at home and do whatever it takes to rise up out of Miami’s roughest neighbourhood.

Sunday afternoon showcases Iranian drama The Corridor, followed that evening by documentary Dah Zivota, which focuses on twelve babies born to the civil war in Bosnia Herzegovina who were deprived of oxygen due to air and ground blockades. The festival then closes with Blitzfood, a comedy about hate, in which volatile lost soul Perigrin Ship staggers through a nervous maze of self-inflicted disasters.  Could this suffering be transformative??

These features will be accompanied by a programme of short films including animation and Irish language submissions. In addition to screenings, the festival is offering a number of workshops. Award-winning animation company Boulder Media (Randy Cunningham 9^th Grade Ninja) will host the Animation Workshop, led by Emmy-nominated Robert Cullen (Friday 26^th September). A workshop on Sound Design and Supervision will be lead by Niall Brady of Screen Scene Post Production House, whose recent film credits include Frank, and Steve Fanagan of Ardmore Studios, whose credits include The Guard and Game of Thrones (Saturday 27^th September).

Tickets can be purchased here, http://entertainment.ie/festival/Dublin/Fingal-Film-Festival-2014/4928.htm, and the festival website is www.fingalfilmfest.com.