Drive-In Movies At The Westport Arts Festival


Established in 1976, Westport Arts Festival is not only one of Ireland’s longest running festivals, but an on-going celebration of the arts in and around Ireland. With over 100 events spanning ten days, this year’s festival represents one of the most ambitious to date. Amongst the array of events at this year’s festival is a drive-in movie event. That’s right; you can watch films from the comfort and safety of your own automobile! A 200-year-old courtyard at Westport House, built by the 2nd Marquess of Sligo no less, will be transformed into a state-of-the-art drive-in movie theatre for a series of screenings of classic movies as part of the Westport Arts Festival.

This year there are ten feature films on show ensuring there will be something for everyone, from the epic western Once Upon a Time in the West to the equally epic science fiction spectacular 2001: A Space Odyssey.

For fright fans there’s the classic terror of Jaws, the ultimate horror summer blockbuster, and the darkly disturbing Dutch psychological thriller Spoorloos, a film that can be described as a genuine horror. Horror fans will also be delighted to know that the Wyatt Hotel will host a screening of the classic silent chiller Nosferatu with musical accompaniment by Aisling Smyth.

For those less inclined to the dark side of cinema, fear not - other titles to be screened at the drive-in cinema include Casablanca, Dirty Dancing, This is Spinal Tap and Harold and Maude.

The Drive-In Movie series runs from Friday, September 23 to Sunday, October 2. All screenings commence at 7.30pm in the Courtyard behind Gracie’s bar at Westport House. Admission is free, but ticketed. Parking spaces costing €20 are optional and may also be reserved online. The film soundtrack will be broadcast on FM radio.

Organised entirely by volunteers, the annual Westport Arts Festival has been a fixture in the Irish arts calendar since 1976, making it one of the longest-running festivals in the country. It has proved itself time and again to be a beacon in Clew Bay for both aspiring and internationally famous artists, performers, writers and musicians, giving them an opportunity to showcase their talents to a passionate West coast audience.

For further information, the low-down on all other festival events and to buy tickets, visit their website.

To keep up with the latest news find it on Facebook and on Twitter.

Popular posts from this blog

Whistle and I’ll Come to You (2010)

Image
Dir. Andy de Emmony After placing his senile wife in a care home, retired astronomer James Parkin (John Hurt) heads for the coast to revisit their ‘old haunts’, including the now out-of-season hotel they honeymooned in. By day he is stalked along the windswept beaches by a spectral figure dressed in white, and by night he is terrorised by strange sounds and someone, or something, attempting to enter his room… In the 2000s BBC4 attempted to reignite the old Ghost Story at Christmas tradition by adapting MR James’s A View from a Hill (2005) and Number 13 (2006). This series was seemingly short lived though, as their next outing wasn’t until 2010, and an unusual reinterpretation of James’s classic chiller Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad . While de Emmony’s direction captures the atmosphere and tone of James very well, this film differs significantly from other adaptations, including Jonathan Miller’s supremely unsettling 1968 take . Neil Cross’s screenplay only incorpo
Read more

Caveat (2020)

Image
Isaac, a brooding drifter suffering from memory loss, agrees to look after Olga, the niece of his acquaintance Moe. A troubled woman prone to bouts of catatonia, Olga lives in an old, ramshackle house on an isolated island in the middle of a dark lake. Isaac agrees to wear a chained harness that prevents him from going into certain rooms. He gradually comes to learn of the unsettling history of the house and the unquiet dead it harbours within its walls... Written and directed by Damian McCarthy,  Caveat  is steeped in the Gothic tradition. With distinct echoes of the work of Edgar Allan Poe, it is ripe with a lingering atmosphere of morbidity and decay. McCarthy's screenplay toys with themes such as psychological rot, dark family secrets, and the aftermath of unspeakable violence and cruelty. The story unfolds within the creepy confines of the lonely, mouldy house, with myriad forbidden rooms, hidden passageways and concealed bloody secrets. The house itself is cut off from civili
Read more

Otherworldly Encounters on Halloween

Image
Oíche Shamhna shona duit. To celebrate All Hallow’s Eve, my dear friend Marie – a writer and folklorist based in Missouri - has put together a podcast exploring first-hand paranormal experiences that took place on Halloween. The stories and accounts are shared from r/Paranormal , The Fairy Census , and the Dúchas Schools Collection (part of the National Folklore Collection UCD Digitization Project).  Between the stories, one of which is read by yours truly, Marie explores some of the history and folklore surrounding the traditions of Halloween, or Samhein, as it was known in Ireland where it originates from. An important festival in the ancient Celtic calendar to mark the end of summer, Samhein (Irish for November), is the night when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead becomes thinnest, allowing souls of the deceased to pass through into our world and roam freely. The night we call Halloween in English, is Oíche Shamhna: literally Samhain (November) Eve. To listen t
Read more