• Delirious Rhythm, 1936 – 2017 @ IFI

    October 9, 2017 - By 

    This week is the last to see the dual-exhibitions featuring the works of Vivienne Dick and Nan Goldin in IMMA. To coincide, aemi are presenting Delirious Rhythm 1936-2017, a personal selection of films that have influenced and inspired Dick’s oeuvre. The film will be shown in the IFI, with this one off event beginning at 6:30pm tomorrow. Artists whose works have been selected include Helen Levitt, D.A. Pennebaker, Len Lye, Sarah Pucill and Chantal Akerman, with the films chosen relating to ‘the street, the domestic and the unconscious.’  Dick will introduce the performance, with full details on the featured films available online here. Her 93% Stardust exhibition, and Goldin’s corresponding Weekend…

  • Looking at the Stars: Slum Cinema

    May 25, 2017 - By 

    After several years of transience and venue shifting, Dublin B-movie night Slum Cinema has found a new home at MVP on Clanbrassil Street, and kick starts its residency at the start of next month with the greatest martial arts movie of them all, Bruce Lee’s final performance, 1973’s Enter The Dragon. Started in 2012, Slum Cinema is the passion project of Canadian Anna Davies, but it’s ripe to be elevated to cult classic status if its new stint at MVP goes as well as it deserves. As described by its founder, Slum Cinema is an exploitation/vintage/trash/cult cinema club. Its previous…

  • Box Office Blues: Cinema as a Kind of Therapy

    May 17, 2017 - By 

    When I got depressed I would go to the movies. No doubt for many people the idea of sitting in the dark, on their own, in the middle of day, is itself depressing. ‘All by himself — how sad’. I’m also sure, though, that fellow pilgrims can relate to its pleasures, a solitary indulgence that is utterly pleasant at the best of times, and potentially restorative at the worst. There are, first, a bunch of very basic, practical mental health benefits to going to the movies, not all of them replicable with a Netflix subscription. You have to put on jeans and…

  • Cinema 16 For ’16: Hitchcock/Truffaut

    March 7, 2016 - By 

    An alternative guide to this year’s cinematic offerings, we trawl through the dilapidated rows of seats in the back alley ‘art’ cinemas and crumbling picture palaces so you don’t have to. Rescuing gummy Venus de Milos from sticky crevices and fishing midget gems out of cold cups of tea. Diaries at the ready cinephiles. Hitchcock. You barely need to say anything else. In fact, you don’t need to say anything at all, you could just scribble Hitch’s nine stroke signature line drawing – a caricature of the director in profile. No director has cast such a long shadow over the…

  • Cinema 16 For ’16: Janis: Little Girl Blue

    February 17, 2016 - By 

    An alternative guide to this year’s cinematic offerings, we trawl through the dilapidated rows of seats in the back alley ‘art’ cinemas and crumbling picture palaces so you don’t have to; rescuing gummy Venus de Milos from sticky crevices and fishing midget gems out of cold cups of tea. Diaries at the ready cinephiles. Documentary filmmaker Amy Berg (West of Memphis, Prophet’s Prey) turns her investigative camera inwards onto the all too brief life of rock icon Janis Joplin for her new film, Janis: Little Girl Blue, profiling not just the career of one of rock music’s first and still…

  • My Problem With Modern Horror

    October 31, 2013 - By 

    Fuck Horror. As grandiose as a statement that it is, I hate most modern horror films. Not because I intrinsically hate the genre, nor because I am a cynical, hate filled cretin. No, I hate modern horror because it categorically spoils the things necessary for horror films to work. To be blunt, horror has always been somewhat of a second string cinematic genre. With it’s central aim being prick-teasing animal instincts, it’s no wonder that most horror films have been the kind of cheese ridden b-movie that one associates with Hammer and Christopher Lee. For the greater part of cinema…

  • Man of Steel – Triumph or Washout?

    June 18, 2013 - By 

    There are mixed reports circulating the blogosphere with many flat out flunking Zack Snyder’s attempt to shape the controversial Superman franchise. Man of Steel has a dream team of Hollywood’s elite behind it but could it be a case of too many cooks? It’s easy to see where this film fails and the problem seems to lie almost solely with the direction. The pace of the film is completely off; a labored and awkward introduction eats into the film’s running time creating a knock on affect on the overall development of the plot. Throughout the film, time is allocated to…