Visions of Experimental Film – Special Guest Panel

Saturday March 9th, 3.40pm, The Regal Cinema

Different Frames brings together a distinguished panel of filmmakers and curators to explore the boundless possibilities of alternative forms of filmmaking from distinctive points of view. Outside of the usual patterns of film storytelling there dwells a vast cinematic palette that falls under the loose category of ‘experimental’. This can include anything from artist films to music videos, the visionary to the intimate, the poetically personal to the radically political. Experimental film is currently enjoying an upsurge in both production and audience interest in Ireland. This eye-opening panel featuring visual artist Asha Murray, filmmakers Bob Gallagher and Maximilian Le Cain, and curator Daniel Fitzpatrick, will provide four inspiring insights into what film can be when seen through a different frame.

Asha Murray, born in 2001, is an Irish Artist. Asha graduated from The Limerick School of Art & Design in 2023 with BFA in Sculpture and Combined Media. As a multidisciplinary artist Asha creates experimental films in tandem with textile work of wool tufted collages. Mixing the two mediums have created a form of non-linear and non-conventional, experimental storytelling. Asha explores concepts surrounding Identity, memory, the internal conscious stream and emotions in relation to temporality. These ideas prompt her to experiment with narrative, through visual rhythmic collages of sounds and moving images and textiles.

Daniel Fitzpatrick is co-director of 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.

Bob Gallagher is an award-winning filmmaker declared a ‘good soldier of cinema’ by Werner Herzog and described by Totally Dublin as ‘one of the nation’s premiere creative forces in the visual arts’. Gallagher came to prominence as the creator of some of the most iconoclastic music videos to emerge from Ireland in recent years, collaborating with acts such as Gilla Band, Lankum and Villagers. His music videos have received international attention, and multiple awards. With a darkly experimental aesthetic, his work explores the psychological impacts of juxtaposing music and image, often in collaboration with artists from other disciplines. He is currently in pre-production on his debut feature drama The Song Collector.

Maximilian Le Cain has created a prolific body of experimental moving image work including features, shorts, installations and film-related performances which, according to VAI, “expand the expressive palette of Irish cinema”. He was the Arts Council/UCC Film Artist in Residence 2023. His most recent feature Solitaire (2023) premiered at Cork International Film Festival 2023 and recently played at the IFI. His filmmaking proposes a personal relationship with cinema as a site of haunting. He is affiliated with Experimental Film Society (EFS), an influential Dublin-based company dedicated to the production and distribution of experimental cinema. He is also a film programmer and critic. He currently co-curates CineSalon, a regular Cork-based experimental film evening.