IFI presents Focus on Pat Murphy

steven | July 9, 2012 | Comments (0)

Maeve (Pat Murphy)

The IFI presents Focus on Pat Murphy; an examination and celebration of the work of the internationally renowned Irish feminist filmmaker

Pat Murphy is one of Ireland’s most examined filmmakers, understandably so as her work provides an effective feminist re-positioning of Irish history, and resists mainstream cinematic conventions in favour of creative and successful experimentation. The IFI will screen her three feature films Maeve (July 21^st ), Anne Devlin (July 21^st) and Nora (July 22^nd) and will welcome Pat Murphy on July 22^nd to discuss her career with IFI Curator Sunniva O’Flynn at a talk that will feature some of her shorter work.

Born in Dublin, Murphy studied Film and Television under leading feminist academic and practitioner Laura Mulvey at the Royal College of Art, London and started to make her own works that reflected the radicalism of the 1970s culminating in a film Rituals of Memory. Her first and most experimental feature Maeve followed in 1982. Focusing on the Northern Irish Troubles, it follows Maeve (Bríd Brennan) returning to Belfast after a long absence in London and reconnecting with her community. Interrogating the relationship between feminism and nationalism and challenging the objectification of women, the film is one of the stand-out achievements of Irish feminist film.

Murphy cemented her international reputation two years later with Anne Devlin (Bríd Brennan), a reconstruction of the life of the woman usually described as Robert Emmet’s housekeeper whose voice Murphy was keen to retrieve from the historical margins.

Nora, another historical reconstruction made sixteen years later in 2000, looks at the relationship of Nora Barnacle (Susan Lynch) and James Joyce (Ewan McGregor). This film offers many of the conventional pleasures of cinema with much of the tempestuous love story playing out against a lush Italian back-drop but nevertheless this is unmistakeably the work of a feminist filmmaker with an emphasis on Nora’s uninhibited sexuality and the effect she had on Joyce’s writing.

Focus on Pat Murphy Schedule

Maeve July 21^st 13.40

Anne Devlin July 21^st 16.00

Nora July 22^nd 14.00

Pat Murphy: In Conversation July 22^nd 16.00

Tickets are available from the IFI Box Office on 01 679 3477 or www.ifi.ie.