Cinema: Accessible Screenings at the Irish Film Institute for February
2 - 28 Feb 2024 (Past)
Upcoming open captioned and audio described screenings on at the Irish Film Institute this February. For booking information and more details, visit ifi.ie.
American Fiction
Open captioned screenings Friday 2 February at 1pm and Monday 5 February at 8.20pm
Audio described screenings from Friday 2 February
A brilliant Black author, tired of his culture being represented by crude, lazy stereotypes, takes it upon himself to pen a satirical lampoon in Cord Jefferson’s incendiary, insightful, and frequently hilarious debut feature, an adaptation of Percival Everett’s Erasure.
The Zone Of Interest
Open captioned screenings Sunday 4 February at 1.20pm and Wednesday 7 February at 6.10pm
Audio described screenings from Friday 2 February
The Zone of Interest follows the quotidian, almost boring life of Commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) as she runs the household at a concentration camp’s edge and he attends to the bureaucracy required for the mass murder of the camp’s population. Glazer’s clinical approach does not attempt to find the ‘why’, but instead focuses on the banal ‘how’, on the mental accommodations made by the couple to ignore utterly the horrors they have nurtured literally on their very doorstep. It is in juxtaposing the mundane with the devastating use of sound and the occasional background glimpse that the film derives its chilling power.
IFI Family: Migration
Relaxed screening 11.00am Saturday 14 February
In association with AsIAm
A brand new animation from Illumination, the creators of Minions, Despicable Me, Sing and The Secret Life of Pets. This action-packed original comedy invites you to take flight into the thrill of the unknown with a funny feathered family vacation like no other. As the Mallard family make their way south for the winter, their well-laid plans quickly go awry. The experience will inspire them to expand their horizons, open themselves up to new friends and accomplish more than they ever thought possible, while teaching them more about each other—and themselves—than they ever imagined. Showing in association with The Ark animation workshops.
The Settlers
Open captioned screenings Tuesday 13 February 4pm and Thursday 15 February 8.50pm
Audio described screenings from Friday 9 February
Chile, at the end of the 19th century. José Menéndez (Alfredo Castro), a rich landowner, hires three horsemen to mark out the perimeter of his expansive property and delineate a new trade route. The expedition, composed of Segundo (Camilo Arancibia), a young mixed-race tracker, American mercenary Bill (Benjamin Westfall), and led by the reckless British army captain MacLennon (Mark Stanley), soon turns into a macabre mission to clear the land of indigenous people for the powerful, relentless man who owns it. In his debut feature, Felipe Gálvez Haberle explores a crucial part of Chile’s colonial past in a visually stunning period drama that highlights the gulf between truth and history. Taking its cue from the classic American western, The Settlers is an immersive tale of brutal colonialist violence set against a stunning geographical backdrop.
Open captioned screenings Friday 16 February at 1pm and Wednesday 21 February at 8.30pm
Mads Mikkelsen brings his seemingly effortless charisma and intensity to bear in this engrossing historical drama which reunites him with director Nikolaj Arcel, with whom he worked on 2012’s A Royal Affair. Mikkelsen portrays the real life figure of Captain Ludvig
Kahlen, a man of poor origins who defied the usual trajectory for low-born men in 18th century Denmark and rose through the ranks of the military on the strength of his tenacity and valour. In 1755, Kahlen set out to cultivate the uninhabitable Heath of Jutland and ready it for settlers in the name of the King. But the sole ruler of the area, the merciless Frederik de Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg), who arrogantly believes the land belongs to him, will stop at nothing to thwart Kahlen’s efforts to tame the savage wilderness.
Open captioned screenings Sunday 18 February at 8.30pm and Tuesday 20 February at 1pm
From Trân Anh Hùng, the Vietnamese director of The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) and At the Height of Summer (2000) comes this typically sumptuous and sensuous celebration of love and the culinary arts. In late-nineteenth century France, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), recently suffering a bout of ill health, and Dodin (Benoît Magimel) work together in his kitchen to create magnificent meals renowned far and wide. While their partnership has romantic elements, she has firmly refused all offers of marriage he has made over their years sharing a near-symbiotic relationship. Featuring long sequences of food preparation, this is a deceptively simple film. At its heart, it is about the joy of creation and of devoting oneself to artistry, and the particular pleasures of finding someone like-minded with whom to share a life spent in the pursuit of the extraordinary.
Open captioned screenings Friday 23 February at 1.10pm and Monday 26 February at 6.15pm
Audio described screenings from Friday 23 February
A sleepy seaside village in 1920s Sussex is rocked by a plague of elaborately profane poison pen letters in Thea Sharrock’s delightfully foul-mouthed comedy, which gives free reign to
the considerable comedic talents of Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley to uproarious effect. Edith Swan (Colman), a spinster living with her dictatorial father, Edward (Timothy Spall), is next door neighbour to Rose Gooding, (Buckley), a rambunctious Irish immigrant; relations between the pair are frosty at best, and when Edith starts receiving truly foul anonymous letters, accusing the god-fearing woman of all manner of unspeakable degradations, the finger of guilt would appear to point squarely at Rose. The letters prompt a national uproar, and a trial ensues. However, as police officer Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan) begins to investigate, she suspect that all may not be as it appears.
Open captioned screenings Tuesday 27 February at 8.40pm and Thursday 29 February at 1pm
Wim Wenders’s return to fiction filmmaking is a poignant character study that extols the virtues of simplicity and humility in its portrait of a man who appears to be genuinely contented with his lot, such as it is. Hirayama (Kôji Yakusho), a solitary, though not necessarily lonely man, is a cleaner of public toilets in Tokyo, an insalubrious profession that he nevertheless approaches with utmost seriousness. We are invited to follow Hirayama on his daily routine as he fastidiously polishes and scrubs the public conveniences under his jurisdiction, taking great pride in his work, while casting a baleful eye over the less attentive efforts of his young assistant, Takashi (Tokio Emoto). Hirayama is revealed to have a passion for books and music, and we share his pleasure as he listens to The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, and Patti Smith on his daily commute.
Open captioned screenings Wednesday 28 February at 11am
In another powerful late-career performance, Anthony Hopkins plays Nicolas Winton, the retired stockbroker who dedicated some of his early years to rescuing children from Europe, coordinating their transport to safety on the eve of WWII.
The broadcast clip that was aired in 1987 revealed Winton’s achievements to the wider public, but the film plays as a recollection, spurred on by his wife’s request to tidy old records. Helena Bonham Carter is excellent as his mother, exasperated by red tape that gets in the way. Although straightforward in style, the heroism of Winton and others underlines the impact of the story and the merit in its retelling.
The Irish Film Institute provide regular audio description and open captioning for selected screenings. For more information about accessible screenings visit www.ifi.ie/accessible.
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