IFI Going to Rock Your Summer this July

This July, the Irish Film Institute is going all Rock ‘n’ Roll, with screenings of three must-see music documentaries.

Summertime is music festival time, and the Irish Film Institute (IFI) is running a series of three music documentaries this July to keep us all in the rock ‘n’ roll frame of mind.

Julien Temple’s The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson reunites him with Johnson, after Temple presented Dr. Feelgood’s story so brilliantly in Oil City Confidential. Here Temple charts Wilko’s response to terminal illness, which was to throw himself into music, collaborating with Roger Daltrey on a successful album and embarking on a farewell tour. And he carried on living…

Julien Temple will take part in a live Q&A after a special preview screening on Tuesday, 21st July at 8:30pm. The film opens at the IFI on Friday July 24th.

Notoriously the first British punk group to release a record but, by their own estimation, never afforded the respect given to their contemporaries, The Damned’s riotous story is told in the superior rock documentary The Damned: Don’t You Wish That We Were Dead (Thursday July 23rd, 8:30pm). Director Wes Orshoski celebrates the true scintillating brilliance of the band at their best and also nails how bad behaviour and bloody mindedness are among factors that influence how they are perceived.

Wes Orshoski will take part in a live Q&A after this screening which is the Irish premiere for the film.

Coming exclusively to the IFI, Scott Crawford’s film, Salad Days: A Decade of Punk in Washington DC (1980-90) (Friday July 24th, 8:30pm), charts the American capital’s underground music scene through the 1980s. With righteous punk ethics, DIY evangelism and extraordinary energy, bands such as Bad Brains, Government Issue, Scream, Void, Faith, Rites of Spring and Marginal Man would emerge to create a cultural watershed that made it impossible to ignore alternative rock in the 1990s.

At the centre of that watershed Ian MacKaye, founder of Dischord Records and leader of key bands Minor Threat and Fugazi. MacKaye is an articulate and self-effacing interviewee so it is left to others such as Henry Rollins, Dave Grohl and Thurston Moore to celebrate the legacy of MacKaye and other scenesters. The interviews are complemented by great archive footage illustrating how vital the bands were and how hugely influential they remain.

This screening will be followed by a free DJ set in the IFI Café Bar from Niall McGuirk from the Hope Collective.

CONTACT DETAILS
Irish Film Institute (IFI)
6, Eustace Street
Temple Bar
Dublin 2