Culture Night 2023 boasts a variety of events for Irish film fans this year, including screenings of Sing Street and North Circular, and a chance to see behind the scenes at IFCO and Windmill Lane.
There are plenty of screenings and workshops for Irish film fans to attend at this year’s Culture Night. Featured below are a few events that will be of interest to anyone with a passion for cinema.
Irish Film Screenings
Screen Ireland is hosting a special screening of Sing Street for Culture Night 2023, bringing the film back to the location it was set and shot in, Synge Street CBS. Doors open at 7.30pm, and the screening will begin at 8pm. A 1980s dress code is encouraged.
D-Light Studios will hold a screening of North Circular, with director Luke McManus in attendance. It is accompanied by a programme of short films, including a World Premiere screening of the director’s cut of Circular Line, an 11-minute exploration of the Circular Line of the Grand Canal soundtracked by Dublin-based electronic musicians Mount Alaska. Circular Line which was commissioned by Waterways Ireland for Culture Night. The event takes place from 5:30pm to 10pm.
The IFI is screening a programme of personal films about the Irish border made by a group of young filmmakers, incorporating extracts from collections at the IFI Irish Film Archive. The screenings will take place from 6:30pm to 7:30pm.
Film production company Motherland, who are based on Hill Street in Dublin, will present a series of short films, documentaries and music videos hosted and curated by a selection of their directors. The event runs from 6.30pm to 11pm.
Galway City of Film facilitated by Ardán, and with the support of Galway City Council, will be celebrating Culture Night with an open-air screening in Eyre Square from 8pm to 10pm. This screening will be free and open to the public, presenting a programme of short films made as part of Galway City of Film activities over the last two years.
Behind the scenes
IFCO will open its doors and invite the public into the world of film classification. There is a small cinema onsite and participants will have the opportunity to view a short film with a classifier, followed by a discussion between the classifiers and the audience about the guidelines that underpin all decisions made in IFCO, and how and why a particular age rating would be applied to the film. The event takes place in Smithfield, with several screenings between 4pm and 9pm.
Also in Smithfield, Brown Bag Films will be holding Animation Screenings & Kids' Workshops. Their artists will be on-site running drawing and activity workshops for kids. The workshops are suitable for children ages 4+, and all children must be accompanied by a guardian. Workshops take place between 4pm and 8pm.
Windmill Lane, the longest running post-production facility in Ireland, will also open their doors to the public for a studio tour covering their core functions: VFX, audio, grading, animation, editing and delivery. The studio tour takes place from 4pm to 5pm.
International film screenings
As well as many screenings of Irish films on Culture Night, film fans will have the chance to attend several screenings of international films.
The Embassy of Portugal will be screening Variations, a film about the life of famous Portuguese pop and folk singer, António Variações, his artistic journey throughout the 1980s and the battle against prejudice that he faced. Directed by João Maia in 2019, this feature film will be screened in Portuguese with subtitles in English. (5:30pm - 9pm).
In the Savoy Cinema on O’Connell Street, the Taiwan Centre for Mandarin Learning in Ireland will host a screening of Lee Yi-fang’s Little Blue, a coming-of-age tale about navigating intimacy. (6pm - 8:30pm).
Nine Italian short films selected by Centro Nazionale del Cortometraggio, will be screened in the Italian Cultural Institute in Dublin (5pm - 8:30pm).
Culture Night 2023 will take place on Friday, September 22nd.
For more information about these events, and to see what other film events will be held on Culture Night, click here.
