The College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and the Alvin Sherman Library is partnering with the Irish Film Institute and the South Florida Irish Studies Consortium to host the 12th annual Irish Film Festival. All the films being shown are independent films made by rising Irish filmmakers, including Nick Kelly and Maurice Sweeney. The film festival will start on Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. with the documentary “Lomax in Éirinn.”
According to David Kilroy — the interim chair for the Department of History and Political Science and the Department of Literature and Modern Languages within the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences — “the goal of the film series is to highlight Irish-made films that don’t get a huge release in or get a lot of attention in the U.S. [This year] we have two documentaries and one feature, and they run a range of issues.” Last year’s featured films were “No Stone Unturned,” “Older Than Ireland ” and “A Date for Mary.”
The first film, “Lomax in Éirinn,” focuses on music and anthropology in Ireland. The documentary shows parallels between traditional Irish folk music, country music, and bluegrass music. According to the Irish Film Institute, “American Musicologist Alan Lomax [traveled] to Ireland, guided by piper Séamus Ennis, [to begin] recording and collecting traditional Irish songs and music. Released as the album [“Ireland”], and credited with the folk and traditional music revivals of the 1960s and 1970s, these recordings sparked Lomax’s ambitious journey to gradually record the folk music of the world.” Lomax works to archive the music of these traditional bands and shows how this music has interacted with other genres. “Lomax in Éirinn” will be featured on Monday, Nov. 4 in room 4009 in the Alvin Sherman Library at 7 p.m.
Another documentary, “I, Dolours,” tells the story of Dolours Price, who was one of the Irish Republican Army’s first female leaders. The documentary is “about a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army, the IRA, which carried out a campaign against British forces in Northern Ireland. There was a long conflict there, and the IRA was at the center of it until the 1990s,” said Kilroy. “There was a huge effort to figure who was a part of it and why, and to record their stories before they passed away. She was a particularly interesting case. Of course, the IRA was seen by the British and by a large population of Northern Ireland as a terrorist organization and a lot of their tactics were indiscriminate.”
The Irish Film Festival will be going on until Nov. 10 with the showing of “The Drummer and the Keeper.” For more information on the films go to lib.nova.edu/irishfilms.
Photo: Y. Ming
