From our friends at Solas Nua...
The delightful and poignant documentary Older Than Ireland will open Solas Nua’s 10th Capital Irish Film Festival March 3. The director of The Irish Pub, Alex Fegan, has rounded up 30 centenarians for a very personal look at the nation’s first hundred years since the Easter Rising, when Irish men and women challenged British rule.
Ireland’s Sunday Business Post called Older Than Ireland, “an essential document, a living history of who we were and who we are.” It will show at the E Street Cinema at 7:30 PM with a Q&A after with the director.
The film festival, which will run through March 6, continues Friday at the U.S. Navy Heritage Center with two films that imagine murder for profit, one a documentary, the other a darkly comedic fiction. Name Your Poison, which starts at 6 PM, chases the true story of a Depression-era Irish immigrant who became the target of an insurance scam and earned the nickname “The Rasputin of the Bronx.” Traders, which will start at 8 PM, imagines a form of cut-throat Capitalism that has laid-off financial whiz kids fighting to the death with winner take all. Filmmakers from both movies will hold a post-screening Q&As.
Saturday takes the film festival to the First Congregational Church of Christ, otherwise known as "Live at 10th & G" with a shorts program starting at 1 PM and three films from Northern Ireland in the evening, including Made in Belfast, which won Best Foreign Film at the Flagler Film Festival. Together in Pieces and The Immaculate Misconception will run as a Double Feature at 5:30 PM. Poison Pen will show at 3:30 PM. The screenings will be followed by reception with filmmakers sponsored by the Northern Ireland Bureau.
The Sunday shorts program will screen at the Angelika Pop-Up at Union Market, starting at 1 PM, followed by a screening of One Million Dubliners at 4 PM and a talk with producer Rachel Lysaght.
The festival will close Sunday night, March 6, with a 7 PM E Street Cinema screening of a series of short films about The Rising, both factual and fiction, called After '16. Produced by the Irish Film Board as part of the 1916 Commemoration, it represents filmmakers’ response to the defining activity of Ireland’s march to nationhood.
Solas Nua, meaning “New Light” in Irish, is a Washington D.C.-based Irish arts organization that presents cinema, theater, music, visual arts, literary events and visual arts. The Capital Irish Film Festival is sponsored by Culture Ireland. For more information, go to www.SolasNua.org.
