Walter Hill fans are in for a treat at the inaugural Naas Film Festival on Thursday, April 17th as the auteur director’s 1984 musical action film Streets of Fire will be screened at Naas Library & Cultural Centre.
Set to a rousing rock n’ roll soundtrack (featuring music by Ry Cooder, Jim Steinman, Tom Petty, Petty, The Blasters, and more) in a dystopian metropolis where rock star Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) is kidnapped by a biker gang known as The Bombers, headed by evil Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe). Aim’s ex-boyfriend Tom Cody (Michael Pare) takes charge in bringing Aim out of the clutches of the terrorising gang and back to the stage where she belongs.
Hill’s film is a thrilling mix of musical, film noir, and action adventure, and this screening will feature a Q&A with two special guests: film historian and author of the acclaimed book Walter Hill: The Cinema of a Hollywood Maverick, Wayne Byrne, and director (and Film Ireland writer) Paul Farren, who also contributed to the book which details Hill’s career as well as the making of the much-underrated Streets of Fire. These inveterate Hill enthusiasts and experts will discuss the director, the film, its legacy, and their experience of documenting the film for the book.
Author Byrne, who curated the event on behalf of the Naas Film Festival admits a personal indulgence in choosing Streets of Fire: “This film festival is quite music oriented, so when the idea of programming a musical came up I thought it was a perfect opportunity to screen Streets of Fire, and for several reasons – the fact that I love Walter Hill and I honour him any chance I get, and because I wrote about the film in detail in my book and believe it to be one of his best works. It was its 40th anniversary recently and deserves to be seen again in such a great setting as Naas Library & Cultural Centre, which was itself a cinema going back a hundred years, so there is great cinematic history there. Also, it’s a great opportunity for Paul and I to celebrate the film and talk about everything we learned from speaking to Walter and other people involved in its making, including the producer, the screenwriter and various actors. It really was an ambitious film, but it got lost among other high-profile blockbusters that came out in 1984. But here we are screening and discussing it forty years later to hopefully an audience of old fans and potential new ones. It should be a great evening.”
The screening will take place in Naas Library & Cultural Centre on Thursday, 17th April at 6.30pm. The event is not ticketed, seats are assigned first-come first-served. For further information, contact at naaslib@kildarecoco.ie or on 045 980795
For more information on the Naas Film Festival visit them on social media and on their website: https://naasfilmfestival.com/
Wayne Byrne, Author of ‘Walter Hill: The Cinema of a Hollywood Maverick’
