As part of this year’s Galway Film Fleadh aemi is thrilled to present the world premiere of Jenny Brady’s The Glass Booth alongside Nancy Holt and Richard Serra’s Boomerang from 1974. 

A post-show discussion will follow with Jenny Brady and aemi co-director Alice Butler. 

In her new film, The Glass Booth, Jenny Brady casts a cinematic gaze on the figure of the interpreter, examining the origins of the interpreting profession and the contemporary landscape of interpretation. First employed prominently during the Nuremberg Trials, simultaneous interpretation is closely linked to conflict resolution, bilingualism, and the establishment of the United Nations. Through vignettes set in both extreme and familiar environments, the film portrays the processes of listening, speaking, and forgetting within acts of formal and informal interpretation. In this fragmented portrait, The Glass Booth highlights the often-hidden work of interpreters and its complex, intersubjective nature.

In Boomerang—which was broadcast live on a TV station in Amarillo, Texas—Holt’s words are fed back to her through headphones with a one-second delay. She describes the experience, in which her words are suspended in time and space, as “a world of double reflections and refractions.” As her voice echoes back to her, she continues, “words become like things,” disconnected from their individual meanings and from their contexts. This interferes with Holt’s thought process and establishes a distance between the artist and her sense of self, an effect intensified when pre-recorded sound samples are played or when glitches in the broadcast cause momentary periods of silence.

As video technology became more widely available in the early 1970s, many artists were drawn to the medium’s immediacy and ease of reproduction, which allowed works to be shown on television or through other modes of distribution that bypassed the walls of museums or commercial galleries. Serra, known primarily for his large lead and steel sculptures, made a number of films and videos in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Holt, a pioneer of land art, also worked with film, video, and photography throughout her career.

(The text above is from MoMA’s website: see www.moma.org for more information)

FILM INFORMATION:

Boomerang, Directors: Richard Serra with Nancy Holt, 1974, USA, 10’

The Glass Booth, Director: Jenny Brady, 2025, Ireland, Belgium, 31′