Cork audiences have the opportunity to meet not one but two filmmakers this June at Triskel Arts Centre. Jim McBride and Nick Kelly will be in Cork to take part in Q&As following the screenings of their films. There’s one chance to watch Kelly’s The Song Cycle on Thursday June 11 while McBride will attend two of the three films showing at the arts centre from June 22-24. Tickets are on sale now.
The Song Cycle is Kelly’s first documentary project and also won the Best Independent Film at the 56th Galway Film Fleadh and the Audience Choice Award at the IFI Documentary Festival. A road movie, a musical, and an engaging, funny and moving meditation on art, mortality and friendship, it tells the story of Kelly’s attempt to travel by bicycle from Ireland to perform at the 2022 Glastonbury Festival, accompanied by his great friend and fellow musician Seán Millar who tracks his progress on public transport and performs onstage with him in venues along the route each night.
Chris O’Neill, Triskel’s Head of Cinema, regularly schedules cinema seasons as part of his ambitious programming so including American director Jim McBride was an easy choice. He said, “McBride has an eclectic filmography. Emerging from the New York underground scene of the 1960s, he made one of the seminal films of the period: David Holzman’s Diary (1968), which was a fictional tale of a young director documenting his own life. Following this, McBride continued to be an independent filmmaker, making personal documentaries, offbeat dystopian science fiction, and even a softcore sex comedy.”
In the 1980s, McBride found himself working within the mainstream Hollywood system, creating three exhilarating features: Breathless is a remake of the Jean Luc Godard classic and is often highlighted as a favourite film by Quentin Tarantino; The Big Easy is the sassy and sultry crime thriller with a wicked sense of humour; and Great Balls of Fire is a biopic about Jerry Lee Lewis, the controversial wild man of 1950s’ rock ‘n’ roll. McBride will take part in Q&As following The Big Easy and Great Balls of Fire on Tuesday June 23 and Wednesday June 24 respectively.
