A mix of documentaries and fiction films will be screened at the Westside venue over a three-day period, starting Thursday, Jan. 29, all of them previously premiered at the fleadh’s downtown home at NYU.
The documentaries address Irish politics, music and sport. “Living the Revolution,” a biopic of Gerry Adams, charts the transformation of the Sinn Fein president from shadowy figure on the margins of Irish politics to formidable force at the center, trailing a whiff of cordite along the way. Prominent figures in the shaping of the Good Friday agreement give their insight on the burgeoning peace process, capturing on camera an optimism that is currently in short supply following the recent shifts in the Unionist camp. The film’s Jan. 29 showing is sold out. It will be shown again the following evening at 6:30 p.m.
Sarah Share’s “If I should Fall From Grace” (Jan. 31, 7 p.m.) gives us an access-all-areas portrait of Shane McGowan, decadent but indestructible songwriter and legendary lead singer of the Pogues. Using a mix of candid recent interviews and riveting archival footage, Share’s film explores the influences that made The Pogues’ folk-punk hybrid a worldwide success, tracing McGowan’s roots from the urban English anarchy of his teenage years back to his rural Tipperary childhood. The film features interviews with colleagues, family and admirers in the music business, among them Nick Cave, Elvis Costello, and Sinead O’Connor.
Irish Olympic boxer Francie Barrett is the subject of “Southpaw” (Jan. 31, 5 p.m.), Liam McGrath’s documentary about the Galway welterweight’s attempt to win the gold at the Atlanta Games. The first member of Ireland’s 60,000-strong traveler community to represent his country at the highest level in sport, Barrett grew up in a caravan on a halting site in Galway without electricity or running water. He trained for the Olympics in a makeshift gym set up in a metal container at the site, under the tutelage of former Connacht champion and legendary figure on the Galway amateur boxing circuit, Chick “The Barber” Gillen. “Southpaw” is as much about the charismatic trainer as his determined prot