The Irish Film Institute’s Documentary Festival is back for its 17th year with a line-up that includes 15 feature films and one screening of a collection of short documentaries. The festival runs from September 25th to September 29th.
The festival begins on Wednesday with The Amazing Johnathan Documentary, which follows the comeback tour of magician–comedian The Amazing Johnathan who, given a year to live in 2014, retired from public life, only to find himself still alive three years later.
The films on display hail from the four corners of the earth. Ziad Kalthoum’s Taste of Cement looks at the lives of Syrian labourers working on skyscrapers in the heat of Beirut. Suhaib Gasmelbari’s Talking About Trees follows the attempts of a group of retired Sudanese filmmakers to screen classic movies in defiance of censorship. Iván Osnovikoff and Bettina Perut’s Los Reyes documents the happenings of a Chilean playground by accompanying two stray dogs on their everyday adventures.
The festival’s gaze is politically panoramic. Fredrik Gertten’s Push examines the global commodification of housing, Reetta Huhtanen’s Gods of Molenbeek looks at the lives of two six-year-olds living in a part of Brussels now synonymous with terrorist cells and Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaiche’s Advocate studies the work of an Israeli lawyer who spent 50 years defending the human rights of Palestinian prisoners.
On a lighter note, Angeliki Aristomenopoulu and Andreas Apostolides’s Citizen Europe records the Erasmus experiences of five European students, and Mads Brügger’s Cold Case Hammarskjöld investigates the mysterious circumstances behind the death of Dag Hammarskjöld, the former Secretary General of the UN.
On the music front, Paul Duane’s Best Before Death follows musician and artist Bill Drummond on his visits to Kolkata and North Carolina to build beds, bake cakes, make soup and shine shoes. Other music documentaries include Alan Leonard and Niall Carver’s Heyday, an ode to the Mic Christopher.
Seamus Murphy’s A Dog Called Money documents Murphy’s travels through Afghanistan, Kosovo and Washington DC with musician PJ Harvey, as Murphy collects landscape images and Harvey collects the words that will later form the basis of her album, The Hope Six Demolition Project.
The festival’s closing film, Renaud Barret’s Système K, examines the emerging art scene in Kinshasa, bringing many of the festival’s different strands together from the political to the artistic.
Individual screening tickets are €11.50, though a special multi-film pass is available in person from the Irish Film Institute’s box office and gives access to five films for €50. Tickets for the opening night film, The Amazing Johnathan Documentary, are €15 and feature a post-show reception while tickets for Best Before Death are €18 due to the screening being bookended by a short play in two parts, White Saviour Complex, which will be performed by Bill Drummond and Tam Dean Burn.
