TWO locals, one a maths graduate from UL, the other trained in painting at LSAD, are blending resources and skillsets to create Limerick Avant-Garde Cinema.
This new, not for profit organisation is hosting an open night dedicated to Cinéma Pur at Ormston House at Patrick Street this Saturday 17 from 8pm onwards. Everyone is welcome.
LAGCinema is comprised of Peter Delaney and Keefe Murphy. It is Murphy who has programmed the weekend’s show of 11 short experimental films, each from the Cinéma Pur movement of France in the 1920s that declared cinema to be its own autonomous art form. Its ‘purité’ eschewed narrative and dialogue as well as influences from theatre, literature and visual arts.
“There will be a brief introduction to contextualise the historic background of these films, then the screening and an emphasis on discussion afterwards,” Keefe Murphy explains. “Future programmes won’t necessarily be silent or black and white but we felt that Cinéma Pur was a good place to start”.
According to Delaney, the idea is to do something monthly and hopefully in a year’s time, have something of a festival: “I put on a screening back in March at Ormston House and a few from the Experimental Film Society in Dublin came down for it and found it appealing to its members. There are a lot of local and national film makers for whom we can organise screenings and there’s an emphasis on audience involvement and discussion, that’s what we want”.
LAGCinema events are unfunded, free to the public and donations are welcome to fuel this generous platform for new works, educational programmes and to celebrate cinema’s auteurs.
“Ormston House has been very supportive and are keen to have people in,” Murphy adds. “The type of film that LAGCinema is putting on are more in the realm of art than anything else. Our idea to go forward is to offer a mix in canon, a mix of picks”.
