The Dublin Community Blog

We in Dublin had our fair share of festivals this year already – the Dublin Writer’s Festival, the Dublin Soul Festival and the Latin America Festival to just name a few – but we’re not done yet. Which is a fact I very much appreciate. So, without further ado, here are my favourite festival picks for the upcoming months:

Image by Absolut Fringe

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In case you are still looking for something to do this weekend, and feel the need to spice up the Irish version of the season otherwise know as “Summer” with some tango-rythms, salsa-sounds and spicy food, maybe the first festival launched by the Latin American Native Community in Ireland (or LANCI for short) is worth a visit:

2010 is the bi-centenary of the independence of Latin America. LANCI is launching a new festival to commemorate and celebrate this year . This will incorporate the 8th International Tango Festival.

The LANCI Festival aims to give international recognition to the varied cultures of Latin American Countries. This Latin American Festival offers a variety of artistic and traditional presentations including music, and dance in the form of salsa, samba and tango, traditional foods and film, photographs and paintings from Latin American artists.

This is the first time that a festival of this kind is being held in Dublin. A cosmopolitan city like Dublin guarantees that this type of event will be a success.

You will find the full programme on the festival-website, and I’m especially lookign forward to the Latin American fair or “feria” in Temple Bar on Sunday.

The good people of Dublin hit the streets of Dublin in their thousands over the weekend to check out the Street Performance World Championships. We made it along but not quite in time to participate in the world record attempt. From what I read on Twitter it seems like too many people hopped along! Congratulations to all who particpated in this wonky bit of history!

Congratulations too to the staff and volunteers at SPWC for organising another great free festival. We managed to catch JP Koala, Dr. Kaboom and Thom Sellectomy. We couldn’t get next or near last year’s winners, USA Breakdancers, but had we managed to catch them we would have missed our favourite this year, Dr. Kaboom so all’s well. Like last year the Festijeux were a big hit with three generations of our family and I eventually had to drag my father away!

I was listening to the Sean Moncrief show and they interviewed Chris Maher the founder of the Dublin Soul Festival which is on this weekend. It starts tonight in Meeting House Square and there will be 3 days of music and food around the city.

Their mission statement is:

Soul ain’t nothing but a feeling so why not come out and celebrate with us, let the music capture your heart, the fine food fill your tummy and the laughter soothe your soul!

Plus he did have a bit of a pop at Jedward, which made me support his event even more, pointing out there are better musicians coming up in Ireland some of who will be performing at the Rising Stars concerts in Meeting House Square over the next three days. There is a Soul Picnic in Merrion Square on Sunday and other events over the weekend covering music, food and comedy in different venues.

The organisers try to make most of the events free to attend but they have to organise this on an ever decressing budget with large cuts in funds for festivals this year so hopefully a big turn out will help secure the future of this and other festivals.

This year’s Dublin Writers Festival kicks off on June 1st, and I have to say that this year the list of featured authors is impressive: Ian McEwan, Anthony Beevor, Joseph O’Connor, Anne Enright, Hanif Kureishi, Yann Martel a. m. m. mark this year’s edition a festival not too miss. You’ll find the full programme here, and you can follow the festival both on Twitter and Facebook as well.

I’m really disappointed to miss it, as I’ll be on holidays at the time, but if you’re into books, please give it a go – tickets are between 12 and 20 €, and events take place at different venues throughout town, such as the Project Arts Centre, the Sugar Club and the Dublin Writers Museum. Go bookworms!

Yay, the long-awaited long May weekend is almost upon us. And if you’re still looking for something to do over the weekend, we are here to help. You could try these things:

First of all there’s the SoGo Arts Festival in and around South Great George’s Street all weekend. This 3 day bonanza kicked of today, but there are loads of activities and things to see over the next 2 days as well, like “The Best of Busking” featuring the Mighty Steph, a screening of “Once” in Walton’s music store and a flea market on Sunday.

Next on the list is the recently opened Glasnevin Museum – a museum on Dublin’s most famous graveyard, dedicated to Irish heritage & genealogy, and the history of the graveyard itself.

If a proper Indie rock festival is more of your liking, you could also head to Balbriggan on Saturday, where the Sibin Festival officially opens the Irish open air-festival season. For those of you who prefer electronic tunes, you can either keep on partying or start your own festival season on Sunday with the Yes Festival down in Clontarf.

And if this is too much activity for you, you can always relax in one of Dublin’s beer gardens – the weather permitting…

Image via

Or: Cold feet on the red carpet.

Here’s a fact: Chuck Taylors with leaky soles are not the right footwear for the red carpet. Especially when it’s around 2 degrees Celsius and icy rain is lashing down. And even more so when you are supposed to stay on the carpet, armed with an umbrella to escort all stars and VIPs into the cinema. And some will come late. Very late.

But I will not complain too much, because it was the official Jameson Gala Night at Lighthouse Cinema, and we were welcoming actors Patricia Clarkson and Doctor Bashir from Deep Space Nine errr Alexander Siddig. Fittingly the featured movie in which both are starring was Cairo Time, a drama set in sunny, hot Cairo. The best contrast possible to miserable Dublin on a February evening.

Volunteering on the red carpet wasn’t that bad as I said, most people really liked the fact that two handsome boys (me and fellow volunteer @paddy2K ) were doing their best to protect them from the rain. At least for the 4 meters from the beginning of the red carpet to the entrance of the cinema. What it looked like after people entered the cinema can be seen on JDIFF TV. And hell, there were even some (2, actually) autograph hunters lining the red carpet. Ah, the glamour of a film festival. Did I mention the fact that I did not feel my feet for the rest of the evening?

Here are some impressions, courtesy of entertainment.ie. You can actually make out two green Jameson-umbrellas in the back.

Or: hard times bring out the best in people. And volunteers.

Volunteers are at their best when they become real grunts. Imagine: a cinema full of people who are enthusiastic about the movie they’ve just watched and don’t want to leave, a Q&A-session with the same people and the director from Spain, the need to get all these people (plus the director) out in under 2 minutes, and the need to clean the whole cinema in under 1 minute. And then imagine 200 unhappy people (including a Latvian director and his whole family) queing outside said cinema because the movie they want to enjoy was supposed to start 10 minutes ago. But JDIFF-volunteers are tough cookies. We’ll get the people out, clean the cinema and shoo the people in, all while ripping of tickets, handing out audience award ballots, helping elderly ladies and babies and smiling and saying “enjoy the film!” – while we are thinking “GUNG-HO! GUNG-HO!”.

But after all the madness has ebbed away and the gun smoke is gone, I always appreciate the fact that our great venue captains (brilliant people all of them, whatever the venue) allow volunteers to sneak in and watch a movie in between shifts. Like this I was able to watch the surprisingly good German movie “Same Same but Different” – based on a real-life story of a German backpacker falling in love with a prostitute from Cambodia. Well worth a look, therefore I hope it will be shown in Irish cinemas after the initial festival run.

Here’s one of the songs from the Soundtrack, “Heaven can wait” by Charlotte Gainsbourge & Beck with scenes from the movie:

There are two great things about volunteering for the JDIFF. The first thing is that you are virtually in the middle of things. One the one hand you are not really “working” (as you are not paid) for the festival, and do not have the responsibilites of all the volunteer captains, box office people and production managers -so there’s plenty of things to see and do in between your shifts. For example to see how tiny Colin Farrell is in real life (and I did not even had to wear a tie to be at the opening gala) And on the other hand you are not a visitor and member of the audience, so you do represent the festival and are involved in the realisation of the festival, which mosty takes place in dirty basemenst or boring break rooms without much glamour. Brilliant.

The second thing for me is the discovery of new films. I’m not that much of a film buff myself, but I’m always surprised of the quality of movies shown at the festival. And even though I have my main picks, I always discover new movies when on shift or through recommendations from other volunteers. My first discovery this year is the opening film of the festival, Neil Jordan’s Ondine.

Not that I expected the opening movie to be a total blackout, but the last Neil Jordan movie I watched must have been Michael Collins – so I was a bit unsure about the whole mermaid/fairy tale-story of the movie. But even as the unromatic naysayer that I am I have to confess I loved the movie. It thoughtfully plays with the whole idea of a real-life fairy tale, without ever becoming fantastic or supernatural – and the great cast, above all the brilliant Alison Barry makes the film really enjoyable. Plus, a movie that was scored by Kjartan Sveinsson of Sigur Ros and that features songs by Lisa Hannigan can’t be bad, can it?

Yes, it is that time of the year again. Like last year, I’m planning to entertain you with my adventures as a volunteer for the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. The Festival officially opens on February 18th; so from then on you’ll get regular updates on what it’s like to rip of tickets, collect sticky rubbish from under cinema chairs and meeting the occasional celebrity, all while serving in one of the many venues of the festival. Plus also try to provide some insight on this rare occasion that World Cinema and Hollywood make a stopover in Dublin.

Whereas last year’s motto was “finding favourite films”, this year the festival seems even more diverse with spotlights on Korean, Russian and of course Irish cinema. And it is officially dedicated to one of it’s founders, Michael Dwyer, who passed away recently.

Among my personal picks this year are:

City of Live and Death - a Chinese movie about the so called “Rape of Nanking” in the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, directed by Lu Chuan. Warning: graphic images in the trailer!

Capitalism – a love story – Michael Moore’s inimitable look on capitalism and world economy.

Same Same but different – German director Detlev Buck tells the story of a German backpacker who falls in love with a Cambodian prostitute.

And last but by no means least: Valhalla Rising – Nicholas Winding Refn’s (Bronson) grimy Viking movie:

Please stay tuned for more movie madness on this channel errr blog.