If you only associate Irish culture with green beer and leprechauns, this year’s Capitol Irish Film Festival will surprise you. The largest Irish film festival in America, CIFF opens tonight at E Street Cinema and the Goethe Institut.
This year, CIFF is featuring over 50 contemporary Irish films that range from feature-length pictures to documentaries to short films. Special events like Q&As with directors and the usual social events,like opening and closing night parties round out the festival’s offerings.
CIFF was founded in 2008 by Solas Nua, Washington, D.C.’s association for contemporary Irish culture.
“We are trying to give a platform to contemporary Irish culture, but we are also trying to give a platform to young emerging artists who might not otherwise have a platform here,” Festival Coordinator Emma Madigan said.
One such up-and-comer is Mark Cantan, who directed Alarms, a “mock rock doc” about a fictitious Irish rock band. Cantan will be giving a lecture about making your first film on a shoe-string budget, as he did with Alarms.
Another film of particular interest is Maya Derrington’s film Pyjama Girls, a documentary about teenagers in Dublin’s inner city who wear pajamas as regular clothes that has received critical acclaim in Ireland.
Before Solas Nua started CIFF, it hosted other, shorter festivals that had more specific themes. Its first festival in 2008, for example, showed only films that were directed by women.
“It became clear that there was an audience out there not just for thematic films, and that’s when we adopted the name Capital Irish Film Festival.”
Some may find it unusual that the country’s largest Irish film festival is in Washington, a city whose Irish community is relatively small compared to other East Coast cities like Boston and New York.
Even though the Irish community does not define the identity of the city, there is a large number of outlets for Irish culture. Nearly every downtown neighborhood in D.C. has an Irish pub, and there is live Irish music somewhere in the District every night of the week.
“We have a very wide-ranging audience coming from all different areas and all different backgrounds,” says Madigan. “Some of them have no Irish background at all. It’s a testament to the strength and quality of the films being shown.”
In addition to its usual programs, CIFF will also feature two special programs from the Darklight Film Festival, Ireland’s largest film festival. In “Darklight: State of the Nation,” Darklight Film Festival’s artistic director, Nicky Gogan, will be showing a selection of films she believes show where Ireland is politically and socially today.
“We want to show as many films as we do to show the range out there,” Madigan said. “We have something for everyone, there are so many high quality films coming out of Ireland today.”
So if you can get away from your final week of classes, a night out at CIFF could give you more than enough Irish culture to hold you over until St. Patrick’s Day.
