St Mary's Academic to Co-Curate 'Irish Lives' Film Festival in Brazil

Professor in the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s University, Twickenham Prof Lance Pettitt and Federal University of Santa Catarina’s Prof Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos are co-curatoring a week-long film festival exploring the links between film, biography and famous Irish lives in Florianópolis and São Paulo in May 2016. The festival at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), in Florianópolis, forms part of longer collaboration between Prof Pettitt and Prof Kopschitz Bastos, a researcher and theatre producer based at UFSC, which has enjoyed the support of the Consulate General of Ireland in Brazil and the Embassy of Ireland in Brazil and is partly funded by Culture Ireland. In São Paulo, there will be a book/DVD launch of The Road to God Knows Where / A Estrada Para Deus Sabe Onde (1988), co-edited by Prof Pettitt and Prof Kopschitz Bastos which is the third volume in their bi-lingual series Ireland on Film (EdUFSC, 2015). The programme for the week-long, two venue event features a retrospective of the films of award-winning director, Alan Gilsenan. His most recent works are Unless (forthcoming in 2016), based on Carol Shields eponymous novel, and A Vision: A Life of W. B. Yeats (2014), which also featured as an installation in last year’s 150 year commemorative exhibition on WBY at Dublin’s National Library. Gilsenan began his career in filmmaking with The Road to God Knows Where (1988) and he went on to make biographical films about Roger Casement and Eliza Lynch, both controversial Irish figures with South American connections. As well as show-casing his films, the festival will feature lectures by distinguished figures in Irish criticism, such as Owen Dudley Edwards, speaking on Casement, addresses by the Irish Ambassador to Brazil His Excellency Brian Glynn, and the Consul General of Ireland in São Paulo Sharon Lennon, lectures by Prof Pettitt, Prof Anelise Corseuil, Prof Margaret Kelleher, Prof José Gati, Dr Maria Rita Viana and Dr Alinne Fernandes, and Q&A sessions with Gilsenan. Prof Kopschitz Bastos said, “I am really pleased and honoured to be hosting the festival in Brazil, and to bring the work of Alan Gilsenan to new audiences, who are looking forward to discussing the films with the director.” Details of the programme will be posted on the St Mary's website, the Centre for Irish Studies Twitter and on the Centre's Facebook Page.