20 free cinema tickets on offer for Kneecap

Irish-Australian Arts News – July 2024

This month’s roundup has been hijacked by Kneecap! – the sensational new Northern Irish, Irish language comedy that is breaking all records! (p.s. they’re also touring Australia in March 2025 – tickets)

The film screens for Melburnians this weekend at the Melbourne International Film Festival plus the Irish Film Festival is partnering with Dendy Cinemas with special ‘Próvaí Previews’ to launch the film around Australia. Best of all we have 10 double passes to give away to Kneecap screenings in 5 cities.

PLUS…we announce the dates for the 2024 Irish Film Festival; Oct 17 – Nov 3, with full city and dates breakdown below.

All this plus our monthly wrap up of Irish movie news and for sports fans a wrap up of Irish achievements at the Olympics so far.

Last but by no means least is our diary of Irish events around Australia in our Events Diary at the bottom of this email. Beir Bua!

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IFF Announces 2024 Dates

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Kneecap Coming to Australian Cinemas 29th August

Win 10 Free double passes here

In cinemas nationally from August 29, 2024

In post-troubles Belfast, the riotous rap trio KNEECAP emerges, setting the stage for the Irish language’s resurgence against the establishment. Self-proclaimed ‘low life scum’ Liam Óg and Naoise, along with school teacher JJ, become a political symbol and the defiant voice of Ireland’s restless youth.
As they struggle to make their mark on the world, and family and relationship pressures threaten to pull the plug on their dreams, the trio weave a narrative that transcends music. A true-life fable about man’s intrinsic urge for identity, the allure

WATCH THE TRAILER

FIND A SCREENING NEAR YOU

GIVEAWAY!
We have 10 Double Passes to give away for screenings in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Perth.
For your chance to win email info@nixco.com.au
Put “Kneecap Irish Film Festival Competition” in the subject line
And the put your name, address and your choice of city in the body of the email.

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Dendy Cinemas and Irish Film Festival bring you special ‘Próvaí Preview’ of Kneecap

Don’t miss Dendy Cinemas’ PRÓVAÍ PREVIEW of the acclaimed new comedy KNEECAP, on Wednesday August 21, co-presented by The Irish Film Festival! Enjoy an Irish Whiskey drink on arrival and witness the rise of the Belfast trio who became the voice of a generation in the raucous, rude, and riotously entertaining new comedy from director Rich Peppiatt. Winner of the Audience Award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, this subversive, sexy, and unfiltered music biopic hits all the right notes. Screening at Dendy Newtown, Canberra, Coorparoo, and Southport, with a Live DJ spinning craic Kneecap tracks in the foyer at Newtown before the Preview.
 
When a Belfast schoolteacher crashes into the orbit of two unpredictable and raucous best-friends, the needle drops on a hip-hop act like no other. Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin, and JJ Ó Dochartaigh leap onto the screen to play themselves in this heightened comedy-drama about the anarchic group, Kneecap, who become unlikely figureheads of a civil rights movement to save their mother tongue. Armed with a blend of native Irish and English verses and furious, politically charged rhymes, the trio must overcome police, paramilitaries and politicians trying to silence their defiant ketamine-fuelled sound. In this fiercely original sex, drugs, and hip-hop biopic, also starring Michael Fassbender, KNEECAP is a rollicking trip into the meaning of pure defiance.
 
“Mind-blowing.” -Hey U Guys
“The Hype is 100% real” -FM104
“Bursting with unruly energy” -Variety
“Big, booming and fearless” -RogerEbert.com
“Audacious” -The Wrap

TICKETS

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Irish at the Olympics

The 2024 Paris Olympics had its Opening Ceremony on the 27th of July featuring track star Sarah Lavin and golfer Shane Lowry as the Irish flag bearers. 

This year holds the best results for Ireland in its 100-year history of competing at the Games. As of sending this newsletter, they’ve won 7 medals, 4 of those being Gold.

3 medals were won in the pool, with Daniel Wiffen earning a Gold in the 800m Freestyle (also setting an Olympic record) and a Bronze in the 1500m Freestyle while Mona McSharry raced her way to a Bronze medal in the 800m Freestyle.

Ireland’s Men’s Rowing team were successful in medaling with Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy winning Gold in the Lightweight Double Sculls and Phillip Doyle and Daire Lynch winning Bronze in the Double Sculls. 

Rhys McClenaghan won Ireland’s first gymnastics medal by performing a stunning routine to get Gold in the Men’s Pommel Horse. Irish Boxer Kellie Harrington fought it out with China’s Yang Wenlu in the gold medal match and earned herself the Gold.

An honourable mention goes to the Irish Rugby Sevens team who lost the Quarter Finals to Australia, track cyclist Lara Gillespie who finished 10th in the gruelling Women’s Omnium, Ireland’s 4x400m Women’s relay team who finished the race in 4th, and Rhasidat Adeleke who finished 4th in the fastest 400m Olympic final of all time.

https://www.irishcentral.com/news/daniel-wiffen-ireland

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Irish Films at MIFF, The Guinness story on Netflix and other tasty film morsels

 

• Kneecap to tour Australia in March 2025
  Popular Irish rap trio and stars of the film Kneecap will be touring Australia next year visiting Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Freemantle. 
  Get your tickets before they sell out!
   
• Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness Review
  There is a peculiar power to the number three. It suggests asymmetry, an imbalance, the discord of the ‘third wheel.’ In Kinds of Kindness, director Yorgos Lanthimos takes up these associations with absurdist glee, presenting a triptych film where bad things really do come in threes.
  screenhub.com.au/news/reviews/kinds-of-kindness-review
   
• Netflix series House of Guinness announces Cast
  Netflix are producing an 8-part series from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight reimagining the period immediately after the death of Dir Benjamin Guinness, the man responsible for the extraordinary success of the brewery. 
  Anthony Boyle, Louis Partridge, and Fionn O’Shea will be playing Arthur, Edward and Bejamin Guinness respectively, while Lakelands star Danielle Galligan will be playing Lady Olivia Hedges.
   
• Irish actor Ian McElhinney stars in Binge crime show High Country
  Derry Girls and Game of Thrones star Ian McElhinney swops Derry’s Walls for the
  windswept landscapes of the Victoria Alps for this crime series where he stars
  alongside the wonderful Leah Purcell.
  https://tvtonight.com.au/2024/04/ian-mcelhinney-drawn-to-high-countrys-script-
  tension-and-this-bloody-landscape.html
  Watch on Binge
   
• Melbourne International Film Festival: 8-25 Aug
  This winter, MIFF takes over Melbourne with one of their most exciting programs ever, featuring more than 250 films from over 62 countries. They’ve got the hottest picks from the worldwide festival circuit, new Aussie films, future award contenders and films showing for the first time in Victoria.
  Irish films include: Kneecap, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, Oddity, September Says and the short Calf. Details here:
  miff.com.au/program/films?q=ireland
   
• Queer Screen Film Fest: 28 Aug – 8 Sep
  Running 28 Aug – 1 Sep In Cinemas Sydney and 2-8 Sep on demand Australia wide the 11th Queer Screen Film Fest is coming to lure you out of hibernation and warm your heart with 35 fresh LGBTIQ+ films, representing every continent in the world!
  Queer Screen are bookending the festival with two fabulously flirty and romantic films, and we’re continuing that theme with an incredible documentary in the program. Enjoy appearances from well-known faces like Elliot Page, Evan Rachel Wood, Lukas Gage, and Australia’s own Keiynan Lonsdale.
  queerscreen.org.au/
   
• New book from Irish author Sally Rooney – Intermezzo
  Release Date: 24 September
  An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family, from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney. 
  For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.
  https://www.dymocks.com.au/book/intermezzo-by-sally-rooney-9780571365470
   
• New edition of Tinteán
  Melbourne based Irish Online Magazine Tinteán dropped a new edition on the 10th of July and all the articles are now available to read on their website.
  tintean.org.au/
   
• Fenian Hunter Book Launch in Bunbury, WA
  A new novel by Peter Murphy will be celebrating it’s launch on the 11th of August at the Bunbury Museum + Heritage Centre. The launch will feature music by Glenn Breslin and poetry by Lachlan Kelly.
  fenianfear.com

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2024 EVENTS DIARY!

Click on the link above to check out our events diary from August 2024 onwards which includes some exciting news on Irish music national tours and other riveting stuff.

Add your event to our Monthly Newsletter
We have had some enquiries from Irish organisations about publicising their events in our newsletter. If you have an event coming up  then get the info to us by the 21^st of the month and we will do our best to include it in our newsletter. It helps if you can provide the text ‘ready to go’ and remember – a picture tells 1000 words so send some pics too!

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Slán agus beannacht
Natalie O’Neill & Enda Murray (director)
Irish Film Festival