Joe Palmer is a co-founder of Cabaret Noise, a film club dedicated to presenting obscure films to a Dublin audience through specially curated seasons. Speaking to The University Times, Palmer states: “Irish filmmaking is having a really successful period at the moment.” However, the film aficionado is not satisfied with Ireland’s success in the industry: “I find that the types of things that are getting funding right now is stuff that is safe – it’s stuff that will find an audience with Irish expats or it’s literary stuff like Room.” Palmer would rather see Irish filmmakers “go out of their comfort zone”.
Palmer spent 2017 living in New York and working in the now-demolished Sunshine Cinema as part of his Graduate Visa. This job gave Palmer free access to many other cinemas throughout New York, where he became exposed to a wide array of films. Upon returning to Dublin, Palmer asked himself: “Why couldn’t we do something similar here?”
Palmer, along with his friend Adanusch Shafaatian, sought to fill this void. Together they created Cabaret Noise. He acknowledges that many brilliant, rarely-seen films get shown in both the Irish Film Institute (IFI) and the Lighthouse, but insists that “there’s a whole category of stuff that they’re missing out on”.
The name Cabaret Noise comes from the nightclub Cabaret Joker in Fighting Delinquents and the “really perplexing but original phrase ‘fuck your noise’” from the film Deadbeat at Dawn. I, like most people, had never heard of either of these films before. The club’s name speaks to its intention “to show films in different venues” throughout Dublin, and its aim to present films that have a “particular noise that hasn’t been heard or hasn’t been heard enough”.
Cabaret Noise presents film seasons that unite disparate titles under a specific theme. Their current season is called Harvest Blood Moon and is composed of three horror films, all of which depict characters who undergo irrevocable changes. By presenting these films as part of a season, Palmer argues that it helps to “focus the audience”. He explains that, because they appear within a specific season, these films become “a bit more accessible than they might first seem”.
Palmer believes that in “the right context” films can take on new meanings. In their first season, for example, Cabaret Noise screened a 1971, South African “James Bond rip-off” called Joe Black. This screening was part of a season dedicated to exploring international depictions of masculine action heroes, and was entitled You Will See that Giant of a Man. Joe Black could easily be dismissed as cheap, genre fodder but Palmer points out that it was one of the first films to have an all-black cast in South Africa. The film was banned from many mainstream cinemas but was shown in villages throughout South Africa. “Could you imagine young kids seeing this strong black man on-screen?”, Palmer asks. “I imagined this as one of the positive aspects of what masculinity could be and I felt it was important to show both the positives and negatives of masculinity.”
Palmer has high hopes for Cabaret Noise and intends to produce multimedia seasons, screening a variety of “music videos, news reports and short and feature films”. Palmer’s dream is for Cabaret Noise to have its own venue, showing “two films a night at a cheap cost”. Palmer asserts that “the city needs new creative, cultural spaces rather than new hotels”, and what sort of left-wing Trinity student could possibly disagree?
Cabaret Noise’s Harvest Blood Moon season will continue with a screening of In My Skin on October 18th in the Dark Room, Stoneybatter.
