Darklight Festival

This year’s Darklight festival gets back to the roots in a celebration of the spirit of grassroots filmmaking. Taking place at The Factory @ Grand Canal Dock from Thur 20 to Sat 22 Oct, there’s DIY SFX workshops and a screening of Evan Glodell’s acclaimed film Bellflower, as well as Jeanie Finlay’s Sound it Out, a feature doc about the last surviving record shop in Teesside. Other documentaries include Blood in the Mobile, showing the chilling connection between our phones and the civil war in the Congo, while We Are Poets follows 6 teenage poets from Leeds Young Authors as they prepare to represent the UK at Brave New Voices, the prestigious poetry slam in Washington DC. Irish artist Jesse Jones is the Artist in Focus; and there’s a late screening of the delightful-sounding Everything Is Terrible featuring seven furry, lovable internet monsters who live in a cave full of VCRS and take forgotten VHS tapes to edit them down into easily digestible viral videos. www.darklight.ie

Dun Laoghaire - Life in the Day

An interesting show coming up at the Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire on Fri 30 April. Dun Laoghaire - Life in the Day is a collaboration between jazz composer and bass player Ronan Guilfoyle, and musician and broadcaster Ellen Cranitch. Presented by dl Arts, it takes the form of a silent movie, filmed by Cranitch in and around Dun Laoghaire, that documents the ordinary day-to day life of this historic seaside town, with Guilfoyle’s specially composed score performed live by dlr Jazz Ensemble Metier. Guilfoyle, who’s lived all his life in the borough, celebrates his stomping ground through this evocative mingling of film, composition and improvisation. www.paviliontheatre.ie

The Habit of Art

A new play by Alan Bennett is definitely something to savour, even if it is on the big screen as opposed to the stage. This latest collaboration between the Dublin Theatre Festival and the IFI brings us The Habit of Art, live via satellite from London's National Theatre, as part of NT Live, which broadcasts live plays onto cinema screens around the world. It's at the IFI on Thur 22 April @6.45pm and it features Richard Griffiths, Alex Jennings and Francis de la Tour. Here's what the press release says:

Benjamin Britten (Alex Jennings), sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden (Richard Griffiths). During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station. Alan Bennett’s new play looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography.

www.ifi.ie