There are many cultural touchstones to be found in Phibsborough – popular pubs, a hopping flea market, a clothing line for influencers that occasionally poses as a football club – and these hotspots and more will be showcased during the latest Phizzfest, the D7 celebration. The Phibsborough Community and Arts Festival returns across the neighbourhood from 9 – 11 May, and included are some really interesting and entertaining film events showing the best in cinema from Ireland and beyond.
Curated classics, hot docs and modern shorts are among the selection that film fans can check out at Phizzfest. Across the weekend, keep an eye out for CoisCéim’s Cinematheque on the billboards in the area for a moving multimedia moment.
On Saturday 10th May, the festival celebrates Edna O’Brien, who once lived local. At 3pm they’re showing The Girl with the Green Eyes, a big screen adapatation of her novel The Country Girls. Tickets are €5 for the film, which shows views from across the fair city of film that are still familiar today. Shot on location in Dublin and Wicklow, the film details the exploits of a shy County Clare girl and her exuberant flatmate as they explore the temptations of city life.
Later the festival will be showing Sinead O’Shea’s inspiring and provoking documentary Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story which explores the author’s life and work with a brightly brilliant open eye, between archive footage, late-stage interviews with Edna herself and excerpts of her diary as read by Jessie Buckley. Tickets are a tenner, and the 5pm screening will be followed by a Q&A with O’Shea.
Also on Saturday, you can see dance doc Breakin’ Brothers at the Pillar Centre of the Mater. David Bolger and Martha O’Neill present a hybrid drama /dance /documentary film that tells the story of Cristian & Cosmo, two brothers who arrive in the Irish seaside town, Tramore, from the Dominican Republic in 2014, in an entrancing and energetic film that captures the brothers’ talent spectacularly.
On the Sunday, there will be a pair of screenings at the Pillar Centre. Two of the films of Dennis Harvey will be double-billed from 4pm, with 10 euro tickets for the combo of I Must Away and The Building and Burning of a Refugee Camp, with Harvey on hand for a Q&a to talk about the insights and empathy in his work. Then our friends at GalPal Collective will present a curated progamme of shorts exploring ‘home’ in its various guises, from the literal to family, identity and cultural belonging. That will be starting from 7pm, with tickets at the door for a fiver.
There are visual arts and much more to be seen, and tickets for the events of Phizzfest are available now here.