Cinema: Accessible Screenings at the Irish Film Institute for July

Upcoming open captioned and audio described screenings on at the Irish Film Institute this month. For booking information and more details, visit ifi.ie.

Kinds of Kindness

Open captioned screenings Monday 1 July at 8pm

Kinds of Kindness is Yorgos Lanthimos’s second film to be released this year, coming hot on the heels of the all-conquering Poor Things; it represents, however, a shift away from the crossover appeal of that baroque, multi-Oscar-winning extravaganza, and a return to the bleak absurdity and chilly aesthetics of his earlier Greek-language films, such as Dogtooth and Alps. A coterie of actors (Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau) essay all roles across a triptych of independent tales: a man without choice tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was presumed lost at sea has returned a different person; and a woman is determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a spiritual leader.

Orlando, My Political Biography

Open captioned screenings Sunday 7 July at 2.20pm and Monday 8 July at 6.20pm

From acclaimed writer and activist Paul B. Preciado, Orlando, My Political Biography is a bold and joyous celebration of trans identity, told through the lens of Virginia Woolf’s iconic 1928 novel. Woolf’s Orlando follows the centuries-spanning life of a young nobleman who one day awakens to find that they are now a woman. Almost a century after its publication, Preciado claims that fiction has become reality and Orlando’s story lies at the root of all contemporary trans and non-binary life. Told through a myriad of trans and non-binary voices living today – our new ‘Orlandos’ – Preciado’s award-winning first feature offers a dazzling example of how life, poetry, and gender can meet in search of truth.

The Conversation (50 year Anniversary)

Open captioned screenings Tuesday 9 July at 1pm and Thursday 11 July at 6.10pm

Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is the best known surveillance specialist in the business; paranoid, and antisocial, he lives a solitary, guarded life. When a mysterious client and his assistant ask him to spy on a young couple in a San Francisco square, Caul accepts this job. But something feels peculiar about the conversation between those two people, and he begins to suspect they may be involved in a murder plot. Previously neutral about the ethics of his profession, Caul must decide whether to pursue his suspicions; as he does so, this professional eavesdropper and intensely private man finds his own privacy being violated. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, Coppola’s legendary conspiracy thriller, one of the key American films of the 1970s, is re-released in a glorious 4K restoration.

Sleep

Open captioned screenings Friday 12 July at 3.45pm and Tuesday 16 July at 6.30pm
Audio described screenings From Friday 12 July

An newlywed couple are plunged into a nightmare scenario when the husband develops a sleep disorder that may reveal a disturbing split personality with possible supernatural overtones in writer-director Jason Yu’s intense feature debut. Expectant mother Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) awakens one night to the eerie sight of her husband, Hyun-su (Lee Sun-Kyun ), sitting at the end of their bed, muttering that ‘someone is inside’, before collapsing into a deep sleep. In the days that follow, his disturbing nocturnal behaviours, of which he has no recollection, escalate, and the couple’s once-idyllic relationship begins to deteriorate under the mounting paranoia that Hyun-su might inadvertently hurt himself, Soo-jin, or their unborn child. Having worked under South Korean luminaries like Lee Chang-dong and Bong Joon-ho, Jason Yu displays a natural gift for character, story, and tension in this expertly calibrated genre piece.

The Commandant’s Shadow

Open captioned screenings Sunday 14 July at 1.10pm and Wednesday 17 July at 6.10pm
Audio described screenings From Friday 12 July

Daniela Volker’s eye-opening documentary follows Hans Jürgen Höss, the 87-year-old son of Rudolf Höss, as he faces his father’s terrible legacy for the first time. His father was the Camp Commandant of Auschwitz and masterminded the murder of over a million Jews; the life of Höss and his family was recently fictionalised in Jonathan Glazer’s Academy Award-winning The Zone of Interest. Now, The Commandant’s Shadow tells the story of the real people who lived on site at Höss’s death camp. The film shows how, eight decades later, Höss comes face-to-face with Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who as a young Jewish prisoner survived the camp. They are joined by their children, Kai Höss and Maya Lasker-Wallfisch, as Rudolf Höss comes to grips with the horrifying repercussions of his father’s actions and generational trauma it has engendered.

About Dry Grass

Open captioned screenings Monday 29 July at 1pm and Tuesday 30 July at 7.15pm

An unsparing character study of an everyday misanthrope, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s engrossing film continues in the intellectually stimulating, leisurely, dialogue rich vein of Winter Sleep and The Wild Pear Tree. Art teacher Semet (Deniz Celiloglu) is trudging through his mandatory four year assignment in a provincial school in the starkly beautiful Anatolian steppes where, as one character puts it, there are but two seasons, summer and winter, the latter being harsh in the extreme. Though he presents an amiable presence, Semat is disaffected, bored, and ornery; his disillusionment crystallises into anger when he and fellow teacher and roommate Kenan (Musab Ekici) are accused of behaving inappropriately towards several young female students. Further complicates ensue when both men fall for Nuray (Merve Dizdar), a teacher from a nearby school.

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.

Images courtesy of Sideshow and Janus Films, Cannes Film Festival, and Lotte Entertainment. Notes by David O’Mahony.