News & Events

                               Huston School of Film & Digital Media and The Moore Institute                                  Present Q & A with Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn                                Directors of IFTA Best Film 2020 Ordinary Love Tuesday 17th November at 11am            The session will take place live on Zoom – please register to attend at: https://tinyurl.com/y55we38l.                                       It will also be broadcast live on the Moore Institute’s Facebook page.

NUI Galway’s Moore Institute will host a webinar on Sport, Film and National Culture on Thursday, 19 November, at 4pm to mark the launch of a major new volume on this theme edited by Dr Seán Crosson of the University’s Huston School of Film & Digital Media and leader of the Sport and Exercise Research Group in the Moore Institute. Sport and film have historically been key components of national cultures and societies. The Irish experience is particularly instructive in this respect, evident in the close and enduring association between Gaelic games and Irish identity, and its popular depiction in cinema. As we approach the centenary of Bloody Sunday, Irish cinema has provided one of the most memorable and unsettling depictions – in Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins (1996) – of the horrific events of that day when British forces fired upon players and supporters at a Gaelic football match. This webinar will provide a global focus on this topic, examining the critical role film has played in affirming the relationship between sport and national cultures internationally. Covering films of all types, from Hollywood blockbusters to regional documentaries and newsreels, Dr Crosson’s new book Sport, Film and National Culture considers how filmic depictions of sport have configured and informed a wide range of distinctive national cultures, societies and identities. Featuring case studies from eleven national contexts across six continents – including North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania – it reveals the common and contrasting approaches that have emerged within sport cinema in differing national contexts. The webinar brings together a broad range of contributors to this book, who are leading authorities on sport and film, to explore the intersection of these prominent cultural forces internationally. Chaired by Dr Crosson, contributors to the webinar will include: Dr Michael W. Thomas, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Ethiopian Screen Worlds, University of London Dr Grant Wiedenfeld, Assistant Professor of Media and Culture in the Department of Mass Communication at Sam Houston State University Dr Manuel Garin, Senior Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona Dr Stephen Glynn, Associate Research Fellow at De Montfort University, Leicester Dr Jesse Schlotterbeck, Associate Professor of Cinema at Denison University, Granville, Ohio Dr Ellen Wright, Senior Lecturer in Cinema and Television History, De Montfort University, Leicester Dr Francesco Buscemi, Lecturer in History of Radio and TV, Catholic University of Milan Pauline Peixoto Iglesias Vargas, PhD candidate in Physical Education, Federal University of Paraná, Brazil. Dr Gina Daddario, Lin Rong San Professor of Communication at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia. Attendance The session will take place on Zoom; register to attend at:  https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_K9QVeuSYTIOH2SkE3kWfAA.  The session will also be streamed live on the Moore Institute’s Facebook page. Further information is available at: https://mooreinstitute.ie/event/sport-film-and-national-culture/ Further information on the collection available at:  https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429327018

Please find in the link below the latest communication that has been issued to incoming visiting Students (EU and International)  by the International Affairs Office regarding supports and requirements for travelling to and arriving in Ireland to commence their studies. http://www.nuigalway.ie/international-students/covid-19/incomingstudents/  

To celebrate Galway’s wealth of artistic and creative talent both within the University and in the wider Galway Community, the NUIG Societies Office is partnering with local artists and creators for the first NUI Galway Virtual Summer Festival. The festival will feature Theatre, Visual Art, Music, Film, Gaming and Social events, for all age groups and interests. According to Festival Director and NUI Galway Societies Officer Ríona Hughes “After the success of our Summer Drama Festival last year and in response to the Covid-19 lockdown we wanted to explore what was possible virtually, we invited creative people within and outside the university to work with us in creating this exciting programme, We hope you will join us." The festival runs from August 26th -29th. Full Details on www.nuigalwayevents.ie ‌

Thinking about postgraduate study? Join us on Wednesday July 15 at 3pm for a webinar to learn more about Huston School of Film & Digital Media (NUI Galway) postgraduate programmes, including our MA in Film Studies: Theory and Practice Visit , MA in Public Advocacy and Activism , and MA in Digital Media Visit https://www.nuigalway.ie/findyourmastersweek/ to find out more and register for the event.

Our university is working to ensure that our students’ experience will be the best that we can deliver in September 2021, whether they are starting a new course this September or returning for another year of study.At all times we will prioritise our university community’s health, safety and wellbeing as we structure the learning experience around the realities of a changed environment and will therefore at all times make decisions that adhere to public health advice. For the vast majority of students, including First Years, the semester will begin on 28 September. For First Years this is predicated on the Leaving Certificate results being released on or near the usual mid-August release date. Full dates can be found here: www.nuigalway.ie/media/Semester-Dates-2020-21-rev-Jun-2020.pdf .  Undergraduate orientation will take place in the week commencing 21 September and comprise a mix of online and on-campus activities to help First Year students familiarise themselves with the university, understand the structures and demands of student life, learn about the supports available to them and get to know their fellow classmates who will in time become lifelong friends. Course Delivery All taught programmes will be delivered in a blend of online and on-campus classes. Irrespective of the size of the class, we will have on-campus learning built into the student experience, typically through on-campus tutorials, seminars, distanced meet-ups and/or laboratories according to the needs of various courses. At all times capacity in rooms will conform to public health advice. We will work to accommodate the small number of students who cannot come to campus for health, access or other reasons, so as not to disadvantage their academic journey. We are working hard to ensure that all learning will be made available online, or accessible through some alternative means, to allow for students who may face delays in arriving in Ireland, allow for limits to student numbers in teaching spaces, accommodate those who cannot attend for health reasons, and to provide a backup in case of a rise in COVID-19 transmissions.  A final decision on the structure of Semester 2 will follow later when the COVID-19 scenario is clearer. Further Information Available http://www.nuigalway.ie/alert/ 

Huston Main Room , Thursday Nov 21st 3pm DEFEND THE DEFENDERS: A SHORT DOCUMENTARY Emmet Sheerin, Trócaire Campaigns Outreach Officer, will speak about his journey in writing and directing this documentary, as well as the communities affected by big business, and Trócaire’s campaign on Business and Human Rights. Emmet is a graduate of the MA in Public Advocacy and Activism Some private companies are responsible for serious human rights violations, including threats and violent attacks on communities and individuals, known as human rights defenders. This short documentary by Trócaire examines such realities in Guatemala, one of the world’s most dangerous countries for human rights defenders. The film is linked to Trócaire’s campaign calling for an international treaty on Business and Human Rights.           Consuelo, Honduras, is refusing to back down against logging and mining companies that are exploiting her land.

GRAINNE HUMPHREYS - NOVEMBER 7TH  3pm Huston Main Room Grainne is festival director of the Audi Dublin International Film Festival. She was previously Assistant Director in the Irish Film Institute, where she was Director of both Stranger Than Fiction Documentary Festival and the Dublin French Film Festival from 2002- 2007. She is a board member of the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris and has served as a jury member on several international film festivals and has coordinated a number of film programmes at numerous international events. During her visit to Huston she will speak about her long and varied experience of festivals and offer advice for film makers. She will also speak of the forthcoming student day at ADIFF and a special film competition aimed at third level students.  

Gaelic Games on Film: From silent films to Hollywood hurling, horror and the emergence of Irish cinema  by Seán Crosson Irish Screen Studies Seminar, Huston School of Film & Digital Media, NUI Galway Thursday 9 May @ 5.30pm Introduced by Professor Philip Dine All welcome! Gaelic games have repeatedly provided filmmakers with a resonant motif to represent perceived aspects of Irish identity, perceived as these representations have been neither straightforward nor unproblematic. In international productions in particular, Gaelic games have been employed on occasion as a short hand for regressive stereotypes associated with Irish people, including their alleged propensity for violence. For indigenous producers, on the other hand, Gaelic games afforded distinctive Irish cultural practices and as such were employed to promote and affirm the Irish nation, particularly as an indigenous film culture began to develop in the aftermath of World War II. From the late 1960s onwards, a critical turn became evident in these indigenous productions though contemporary depictions of Gaelic games still occasionally reveal the more problematic stereotypes associated with Ireland and Irish identity. This study provides the first major monograph examination of filmic representations of Gaelic games, charting these representations from the earliest years of the twentieth century, including silent films such as Knocknagow (1918) to more recent productions Michael Collins (1996) and The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006). Among the areas examined are newsreel depictions of Gaelic games; Hollywood’s fascination with hurling in the mid-20th century (including in the work of Oscar-winning director John Ford), which led to a range of productions featuring the sport culminating with the Oscar-nominated short Three Kisses (Paramount, 1955); the importance of the depictions of Gaelic games to the emergence of a distinctive Irish film culture post WWII; and the role of Gaelic games in contemporary cinema. Seán Crosson is Co-Director of the MA Sports Journalism and Communication and Director of Graduate Research in the Huston School of Film & Digital Media, National University of Ireland Galway. His previous publications include Sport and Film (Routledge, 2013) and (as co-editor) Sport, Representation and Evolving Identities in Europe (Peter Lang, 2010). Further book information available at: https://www.corkuniversitypress.com/Gaelic-Games-on-Film-p/9781782052470.htm

Renowned film theorist Professor Laura Mulvey, Senior Professor of Film Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, will give a public talk at the Huston School of Film & Digital Media at 2pm on Friday 10th May as part of the 15th Irish Screen Studies Seminar, to be held at  the Huston on the 9th and 10th of May 2019. This lecture will take place in the Huston Main Room.   Professor Mulvey’s talk will explore her use of digital technology to remix Hollywood films of the 1950s and will be followed by a screening of her avant-garde classic Riddles of The Sphinx, which she co-directed with Peter Wollen in 1977. Laura Mulvey is responsible for some of the most influential publications in the field of film studies over the past forty-five years, including her 1975 article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which remains a foundational text for feminist film theory, and her 2006 book Death 24x a Second, which explored the role new media technologies play in our experience of film.  To confirm attendance email hustonfilmschool@nuigalway.ie  

Thursday Mar 14th 2019 :  Huston Main Room   3pm Conor McGarrigle on Data Art   We are, according to Shoshana Zuboff, in the age of Surveillance Capitalism – "a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction and sales"  Today almost every aspect of everyday life produces data in unimaginable quantities to be captured and processed by neural networks to power ever-more sophisticated and totalising models of human behaviour. As the complexity of these systems grows the ability to understand and critique their workings diminishes, even as it becomes more urgent and necessary. Against this backdrop, this talk will discuss critical data art. How can artists engage with big data and artificial intelligence to provide a critical voice to current debates on surveillance capitalism. Conor McGarrigle is an artist, researcher and lecturer in Fine Art New Media. His practice is characterised by urban interventions mediated through digital technologies, and data-driven explorations of networked social practices. Projects include durational walking performances, large scale outdoor projections, smartphone apps and generative video installations. 

February 21st 3pm in Huston Main Room : Pierce Ryan: Screenwriter Black '47 (2018) and Standby (2014) - followed by screening of Black ’47 ‌ Screenwriter Pierce Ryan will speak in the Huston School of Film & Digital Media this Thursday, 21 February at 3pm, followed by a screening of Black ’47. Ryan is a three time IFTA nominated writer; his credits including  Black ’47 (2018), Standby (2014) and the IFTA nominated short An Ranger (2008) upon which Black ’47 was based. He will discuss his work in film, the Irish film funding landscape, and how to build a career in screenwriting. 

Sir Christopher Frayling is Rector of the Royal College of Art and Professor of Cultural History. He was until recently Chairman of Arts Council England and former Chairman of the Design Council. He is well-known as an historian, critic and an award-winning broadcaster. His many books include: Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula (1992); The Yellow Peril – Dr Fu Manchu and the Rise of Chinophobia (2014); Inside the Bloody Chamber: on Angela Carter, the Gothic and other weird tales (2015); Sergio Leone: Once Upon a Time in Italy (2005) Wednesday January 16th, 6pm (Huston School) Frankenstein - The first two hundred years (lecture - followed by screening of “Bride of Frankenstein”) Thursday January 17th,  3pm (Huston School) Once Upon a Time in the West: Shooting a Masterpiece   (lecture followed by screening “Once Upon a Time in the West”) _________________________________________________________________________ FRANKENSTEIN - the first two hundred years. Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' was first published on New Year's Day 1818. This illustrated lecture will celebrate the novel's 200th birthday by exploring its difficult journey into print, and its colourful afterlife on stage, in films, and within everyday culture. In the era of artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, IVF treatments, robotics, three-parent families and animal-human interfaces, the lecture will argue that the modern creation myth of 'Frankenstein' - the one where it is the scientist who does the creating - has never been more relevant. 'Frankenstein' is one of the most-filmed stories of all time - up there with Sherlock Holmes and Dracula. This lecture will discuss some of the reasons why... _______________________________________________________________ ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST - SHOOTING A MASTERPIECE Sergio Leone's film 'Once Upon a Time in the West' set out to be the ultimate Western - a celebration of the power of classic Hollywood cinema, a meditation on the making of America, and a lament for the decline of one of the most cherished of film genres in the form of a "dance of death". The original Italian title 'C'era una volta il West ' translates as "Once Upon a Time There Was the West". With this film, Sergio Leone said a fond farewell to the noisy and flamboyant world of the Italian Western, which he had created with 'A Fistful of Dollars' and sequels (1964-6), and aimed for something much more ambitious - an exploration of the relationship between myth ('Once Upon a Time...'), history ('...in the West') and his own autobiography as an avid film-goer.