"The Irish in Film," the free film series sponsored by the Irish Studies Program at Fairfield University, opens on Wednesday, October 2 with the first of four diverse films. The series, now in its sixth year, is part of Fairfield University's "Arts & Minds" season of cultural and intellectual programs, and is open to the public.
The films will be shown in the Multimedia Room of the University's DiMenna-Nyselius Library on Wednesday evenings at 7 p.m. Light refreshments will be served. All but one of the films will be introduced by members of the Irish Studies faculty, who will field questions from the audience after the screenings. Two special guests, novelist Mary Pat Kelly and screenwriter Naomi Sheridan, will introduce and lead the Q&A after "In America," the film slated for October 16.
This year each film will have a "Cities" theme, as part of the University's 2012-2014 interdisciplinary area of focus. The four cities featured in the films are Dublin, Limerick, New York, and Cork.
The series begins on Wednesday, October 2 with "Young Cassidy" (1965), based on the autobiographies of Irish playwright Sean O'Casey (1880-1984). Directed by Jack Cardiff, the film stars Rod Taylor, as a self-educated, working class Protestant, involved in political activities, who lives with his widowed mother in a Dublin slum, while struggling to become a writer. Filmed in Dublin, the film includes enactments of the 1916 Easter Rising, and the Abbey Theatre riot over O'Casey's first critical success, "The Shadow of a Gunman" (1923). The film also features Julie Christie, Maggie Smith, Michael Redgrave and Edith Evans. Nels Pearson, Ph.D., who teaches 20th Century Irish Literature, will introduce the film.
For more information, contact Marion White, Irish Studies Program, at (203) 254-4000, ext. 3021 or mwhite@fairfield.edu.