arts and culture
« Previous Entries Next Entries »Emigrant film dominates Irish awards
Friday, January 11th, 2008The emigrant-themed film Kings has dominated the nomination for the Irish Film and Television Awards. The film, which tells its story mostly through Irish, depicts the troubled lives of a group of Irish emigrants who left Galway for London in the 1970s. It received 14 nominations, including the categories of best Irish film, best actor (Colm Meaney), best supporting actor (Donal O’Kelly and Brendan Conroy) and best screenplay (Tom Collins). The awards ceremony will be held on 17 February.
The film, based on Jimmy Murphy’s play “Kings of the Kilburn High Road”, has also been put forward by Ireland to the Oscars for consideration for the best foreign language-film. The film is getting mixed reviews in the US, however. Several commentators have noted their opinion that the film is too confined by its theatrical roots.
Visit the IFTA website.
Read the reviews on the Reuters and Boston Globe websites.
Emigrant film an Oscar nominee?
Thursday, September 20th, 2007A film featuring the experience of Connemara emigrants in London has been nominated by an Irish jury to be put forward for the Oscars. The film, produced and directed by Tom Collins, is a bilingual Irish-English production. It is the first Irish-language film to be nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film category.
Kings is a heart-breaking depiction of a group of young men who leave Galway in the 1970s for London. Thirty years later, the men, in varying states of homesickness, hopelessness and addiction, meet up for the wake of the youngest of the group.
Director Collins told the BBC that it was “a universal story – it’s not just about Paddies… I know it is always dangerous to have messages in films, but I hope people will watch Kings and empathise with the whole experience of emigrants in a foreign land and how hard it is for them to find their way home.”
The film has already won Ireland’s Directors Finders Series; it will be screened in Los Angeles on 28 September to an audience of potential US distributors.
Irish Theatrical Diaspora focuses on Dublin Theatre Festival
Monday, August 20th, 2007The Irish Theatrical Diaspora group will hold its 2007 conference in association with the Dublin Theatre Festival and the Irish Theatre Institute.
The conference will explore the history of the Dublin Theatre Festival in its first five decades, focusing on
- landmark Irish plays first staged at the DTF
- visiting companies and productions from abroad that have influenced Irish theatre practice, and
- Â DTF plays and productions that have highlighted social and political issues of their time.
The conference will be held at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre from 4-5 October.
Irish Theatrical Diaspora’s purpose is to develop and co-ordinate research on the production and reception of Irish drama in its local, national and international contexts. By “Irish drama” is defined as all theatrical performances within the island of Ireland, and any theatrical performances outside the country involving Irish-born personnel or having substantial Irish content.
The group’s previous conferences focused on “Irish Theatre on Tour” (in 2004), “Irish Theatre in England” (2005), and “Irish Theatre in America” (2006). Conference proceedings of all these events have been published or are in process.
Visit the Irish Theatrical Diaspora website.
Immigration scholar retires
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007One of the leading scholars of Irish immigration to the US is retiring. Charles Fanning, who founded the Irish and Irish immigration Studies programme at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, is leaving teaching after 14 years there, reports the Southern Illinoisan.
Dr Fanning has written and edited more than ten books, including “Exiles of Erin: Nineteenth-Century Irish-American Fiction�, and “The Irish voice in America�, both of which won awards. He began his academic career with a doctoral dissertation entitled, “Finley Peter Dunne and Mr Dooley: the Chicago Years�. Mr Dooley, a creation of Chicago-based Dunne, was a fictitious Irish born-bartender. He says that he will continue to write, and is planning a work of fiction as his next effort.
The new director of the Irish Studies programme will be creative writing professor Beth Lordan.
Read the report in the Daily Illinoisan.
Potato patch inspires thoughts of home
Monday, July 23rd, 2007Kevin Connolly, a US-based Irish emigrant, wrote in Saturday’s Irishman’s Diary in the Irish Times of his experiences growing potatoes in his home in Indiana. While the topic may seem prosaic, the writer creates a particularly moving snapshot of a simple link with home.
He notes that he grows Kerr’s Pinks, and adds, “Inspired by a nostalgia for seed types that I grew up with and which were developed in Scotland or Ireland, I sought out a variety that might even remind me of home. Watching them grow through their various stages is like looking at the garden in Sligo where I grew them for years.”
Mr Connolly elevates the humble spud to iconic status, admitting that he sends digital photos of them over to his father in Ireland, while the tubers themselves allow him to feel a sense of continuity. He also gives bemused house guests tours of his tiny patch.
He concludes the article:
“Here in the Indiana night air with the sound of the locusts and katydids cranking up the volume of their nocturnal cacophony, and amid the flickering lights of the fireflies, I think of a poem by Rupert Brooke, with slightly altered words and greatly altered sense: “That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever Ireland”.
Read the entire article at the Irish Times website (subscription required).
Essays on emigrant writer welcomed
Wednesday, May 30th, 2007Fiction by emigrant writer Colm McCann will be the subject of a collection of essays, according to the Irish Times. The Dublin-born, New York-based writer, born in 1965, has won awards for his fiction, which has been translated into 26 languages. The Irish Times notes his role as part of “an interesting generation of the Irish diaspora in the US – an aspect of his writing career that would be worth exploring critically”.
Submissions of up to 7,500 words are welcome by June 30, 2008. Contact Dr Eóin Flannery (eoin.flannery@ul.ie) or Dr Susan Cahill (susan.cahill@ul.ie) or sent to Dr Eóin Flannery, English Section, Department of Languages and Cultural Studies, College of Humanities, University of Limerick
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