Author: isaanz

2 April 2023, The Academy Award winning short film, An Irish Goodbye, will be shown at ACMI, Federation Square, Melbourne on Sunday 2 April 2023 from 4:00 - 5:30pm, to raise funds for the Inclusion Foundation. The film will be followed by a conversation with the lead actor, James Martin. Following the death of their mother, a young man with Down syndrome and his estranged brother discover her unfulfilled bucket list. What happens when a parent dies? Many parents worry about this. So do their children. Sometimes magic happens. Sometimes your relationship with your siblings can change in surprising ways. Join us for this half hour short movie followed by conversation with young people with Down syndrome about their acting and working lives. Ticket costs will be donated to Inclusion Foundation to support young people with Down syndrome preparing for the workforce.

3 May 2023. Lament: A one-day (hybrid) celebration of the tradition of Irish Keen featuring poetry, music, performance and new research, on the 250th Anniversary of the poem 'Lament for Art O’Leary'. Presented by The Cambridge Group for Irish Studies. The Irish Caoin or Keen was a vocal ritual performed at a wake or graveside. Highly stylised and yet capable of being intensely personal, it recognised the life of the deceased whilst also honouring grief of their loss. Performed (traditionally in Irish) by a group of women made up of professional ‘keeners’ and the female bereaved, its unique sound featured spontaneous utterance, repeated motifs, crying and elements of song. It has been described as ‘A very melancholy chant, rhythmic … Almost a spontaneous choir…’, and as ‘extremely beautiful’. The event will have two strands: in the morning, papers on Lament, its context, history and tradition will be presented by a range of respected Irish scholars, with ample time for discussion, questions and audience participation. The afternoon sessions will feature a poetry reading by Irish poets Martina Evans, Fran Lock and Mícheál McCann, who will consider the lasting impact of ‘Lament for Art O’Leary’, and the theme of the public performance of mourning and grief. Poets Paul Muldoon and Vona Groarke will then discuss their translations of ‘Lament for Art O’Leary’.  The day will close with a premiere performance of an extract of Irene Buckley’s opera, ‘Lament for Art O’Leary’, conducted by the composer, along with other settings of extracts of the poem composed by students of Cambridge University.