On The TownLike seasoned film-goers, 10- and eight-year-olds congregated in the Irish Film Institute in Dublin this week to hear about the National Film Festival for Young People, Lights Out! They posed for photographs, gave impromptu interviews and discussed their favourite films.
Gino Cooney, Brian Gaffney, Ellie Lawlor, Michael Quinn McDonagh and Pauraic Cleary, all students at St Joseph's National School in Dundalk, were among those who came to see a preview of Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest, and who plan to take part in the inaugural festival, which will be held in July this year. One of their teachers, Aidan Brady, said film-making helps students "tap into skills they didn't know they had". Last year, the school won the Films in Schools competition with a five-minute film set in an ice dome. One "highly disruptive child became a different person altogether" when he was put behind the camera, said Brady.
Eight-year-olds Emma O'Connor, Bróna Saunders, Orla Walsh and Nicole Martin from Dublin's Catherine Mc Auley National School, chatted about their favourite films, including Enchanted, The Simpsons Movie and Happy Feet. Why do they love films so much? "Because they're hilarious and funny and there's loads of imagination," they chorused. And films are great if "you can't really read books because you're dyslexic", they added.
The inaugural festival, which is being co-ordinated by the IFI, will include screenings, workshops and "hands-on film fun".
Film "is about storytelling", said Sheila de Courcy, RTÉ's commissioning editor of young people's programmes. Film is a medium "in which children can get completely immersed, and experience a wide range of emotions. It's also a shared experience, something they can discuss with their friends and which raises issues, problems and ideas that are important to them."
The Ombudsman for Children Emily Logan, and Kathryn McKiernan, the presenter of RTÉ's Kazoo, will both be involved in the festival.
Others at the festival's official launch included Film Censor John Kelleher, Maretta Dillon, of the Light House Cinema, which will be re-opening soon in Dublin's Smithfield, and Kasandra O'Connell and Sunniva O'Flynn, of the Irish Film Archive.
The National Film Festival for Young People, Lights Out!, will take place in July at venues around the country. For more information visit www.lightsout.ie or contact 01-6795744
The chance to maintain a higher profile
The shy men and women of Dublin City Council's maintenance department, not used to the limelight, smiled at their likenesses on the wall, as painted by Cathy Henderson. They gathered for the opening of an exhibition of their portraits, called Beneath the Surface, at the Lab on Dublin's Foley Street this week.
"I don't think anybody really knows what they actually look like," said Mick Hardord, who works in St Anne's Park in Raheny. "It's very flattering," he said. "My wife, Violet, loves it. She feels it captures me but that it makes me look older than I am."
"That's the way I was on the day she caught me," said Mick Devereux, of the city's Rathmines depot. "You'd know there was something nice hidden behind that little smile," said his sister, Noeleen Devereux, and his wife, Lesley, agreed.
"It's the real thing," said a delighted Kevin Murray, who works in the city centre's cleansing department. His partner, Josephine Murray, and their son, Christopher (10), were also pleased with the portrait.
Her portraits capture "the charm, the humour, the character and the personalities" of the subjects, said city manager John Tierney, who opened the show.
Henderson wanted to focus on some of those "who work anonymously to clean the city", as opposed to "figures of national importance".
Meanwhile, upstairs at the Lab, a collaborative show in association with the Asia-Europe Foundation also opened to the public in Dublin. Entitled Flat Earth Society, Alan Butler and Hazel Lim worked together to examine the globalisation of contemporary art.
The show "is about the similarity between formats and methods of communication in different parts of the world," said Butler. "It's all become standardised and similar," he said.
Beneath the Surface continues at the Lab, Foley Street, Dublin 1, until Feb 7 and continues at Civic Offices, Wood Quay, Dublin 2 from Feb 18 to Feb 22
Flat Earth Society continues at the Lab until Feb 7
What happens next at Imma?
Major art from Mexico, Brazil, Mali and Denmark, will form part of the programme of exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art this year.
Shows by Irish, American and German artists as well as a show called Order, Desire, Light, with 250 works from painters around the world, will all be on view during the year.
Launched at a reception this week, Imma's director, Enrique Juncosa, said the 2008 programme boasts a show from the Gelman collection in Mexico, which includes work by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera; a survey of the work of the Spanish artist Miquel Barceló, which he created while he was in Mali in west Africa; as well as work from the younger artists Janaina Tschäpe from Brazil and Ulla von Brandenburg from Germany.
An exhibition of work by the American artist Jack Pierson will open in March. And the final part of the James Coleman trilogy, Background, will be shown in August.
Imma's Seán Kissane will curate the Cecil King exhibition, working with the visual arts specialist, Oliver Dowling, who knew and represented King when he was alive. This show will run from February 27th.
Josephine Kelliher, owner of the Rubicon Gallery, said she's really looking forward to seeing the work of Mexican artist Carlos Amorales, which became part of the Imma collection in 2005. "I can't wait to see it," she said - this is the first time it is to be shown.
Exhibitions of Irish artists will include a show by the Tyrone-born artist William McKeown, while Imma's Marguerite O'Molloy will curate What Happens Next?, which, she says, will be taken from the Imma Collection and "will be in permanent flux - it's going to change regularly".
The Imma programme was launched by Minister for Arts Séamus Brennan.
For more information about upcoming exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, visit www.imma.ie
'You would appreciate being jarred'
A large crowd gathered at the US embassy in the Phoenix Park on Thursday night to view works by some of the biggest names in the contemporary art world today, including Rothko, LeWitt and Hopper.
"Nothing pleases me more than the opportunity to combine my love of the arts with diplomacy," said Ambassador Thomas C Foley, when he welcomed guests to the Art in Embassies exhibition.
Artists Louis le Brocquy, Anne Madden, Lee Welch, James Hanley, Dermot Seymour, Ayelet Lalor, Robert Ballagh, Brendan Earley, Orla de Brí and Paul Gregg, pianists Finghin Collins and Thérèse Fahy, composer Melissa Earley, and the Knight of Glin, Desmond Fitzgerald, were among those who gathered to enjoy the private viewing.
Foley "is one of the most active diplomats for the arts we've ever had," said Noelle Campbell-Sharp, a board member of the Arts Council and director of the Cill Rialaigh Artists' Retreat. Barbara Dawson, director of the Hugh Lane Gallery (which celebrated its centenary last weekend with a series of events including public sculptures by Julian Opie along O'Connell Street), was there, as well as Raymond Keaveney, director of the National Gallery of Ireland.
"The concept of putting art like that [Sol LeWitt's wall drawing] in a classical building is fascinating and innovative," said Brian Lalor, editor of the Encyclopedia of Ireland. The exhibition is part of a global initiative, which began 40 years ago when the public rooms of 180 American diplomatic residences around the world began to exhibit original works by US artists.
Recent visitors to the embassy had found the newly unveiled minimal, geometric work of Sol LeWitt in the hallway of the classically elegant Georgian house to be a "jarring" experience, explained the ambassador. Not so for artists, he continued. "You would appreciate being jarred," he added without a hint of irony. And the gathering erupted with hoots of laughter.