The Irish Times | Una Mullally on 'Irish experimental film-making is booming. All it needs now is a home.'

The Irish Times | Una Mullally on ‘Irish experimental film-making is booming. All it needs now is a home.’

Published date: 03 Sep 2024

With big thanks to Una Mullally for this feature on how ‘Irish experimental film-making is booming. All it needs now is a home.’

Monday 26th August 2024

Some extracts from the article below:

“While experimental moving image is often encountered in gallery or installation contexts, Aemi has always been about showing work “in a cinema or in an event-based way,” says Butler, “bringing people together to watch work from start to finish, and always trying to have a social aspect of it where there’s direct contact between audiences and artists”.

“The main impetus for Dissolutions, says Fitzpatrick, “was a feeling that there was just a lot of energy happening in the area of experimental film practice and artist film, not only in terms of people making work but of different people programming work too, [the experimental DIY film night] Fanvid creating new platforms. There was all this energy. We thought it would be useful to create a platform for that energy.”

“Over the past six months, according to Fitzpatrick, they’ve seen “a massive increase in artists coming to us for the first time”. The field of experimental moving image, he says, is increasingly diversifying, more people are entering the field, more people are making work and more are getting funded. A catalyst for this has, in part, been the Arts Council’s agility award – a support mentioned time and again by emerging artists.”

“A dedicated experimental and artist cinema space in Dublin is long overdue – not an art-house cinema but a place to exhibit experimental moving-image work and be a hub for the artist community creating such work. Given how much vacant commercial space the capital has, there are obvious opportunities for this to happen as the next stage for a burgeoning scene.”

About aemi:

aemi is a Dublin-based initiative that supports and regularly exhibits moving image works by artists and experimental filmmakers.

Since its formation in 2016 aemi’s key objective has been to provide support for artists working with the moving image in order to contribute to a developing infrastructure around these practices in Ireland. aemi is dedicated to expanding audiences for this material through regular curated programmes of Irish and international work with the intention of enriching the critical discourse that surrounds the wide range of activity in this area.

Alice Butler
Co-Director, aemi

Alice Butler is co-founder and co-director of aemi, an Arts Council-funded organisation dedicated to the development of artist film culture in Ireland. Previously, Alice worked at the Irish Film Institute where she curated film seasons and had responsibility for artist moving image programming. Solo curatorial ventures have included ‘The L-Shape’ at The Dock, ‘As We May Think’ at IFI and ‘New Spaces’ with VAI Northern Ireland. In 2021 Alice was guest curator for Pallas Projects’ Periodical Review for which she selected moving image work by Jenny Brady and Orla McHardy. Alice leads the Experimental Film Module with Dr Conor O’Kelly in the Film Department at Trinity College Dublin, and she has lectured on the moving image elsewhere including NCAD, IMMA and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. Alice has written for Sight and Sound, Vdrome, Paper Visual Art, CIRCA and Enclave Review as well as exhibition texts for Atoosa Pour Hosseini (The Lab) and Colin Martin (DIT). She wrote the career survey chapter for a recently published book on filmmaker Pat Murphy and the catalogue text about filmmaker Sylvia Schedelbauer for Oberhausen International Film Festival 2022 when she was also a member of
the festival’s jury for the international competition.

Daniel Fitzpatrick
Co-Director, aemi

Daniel Fitzpatrick is co-director and co-founder of aemi, an arts organisation that supports and exhibits artists and experimental film. Previous to this Daniel was one of the directors of PLASTIK Festival of Artist Moving Image. He was also Festival Director of Killruddery Film Festival for several years. Daniel has also lectured and given papers at a number of international events and conferences and been published in journals including DESIST Film and Alphaville. Daniel has also been a lecturer and designed modules at DCU, NUIG and NCAD.