Tag Archives: Solas Nua

Capital Irish Film Festival screens today’s Ireland

The 20th annual Capital Irish Film Festival (CIFF) runs February 26-March 1. The event is presented and produced by Solas Nua, a Washington, D.C.-based contemporary Irish arts organization, in partnership with the American Film Institute’s Silver Theatre & Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. See the full program, several individual films are linked below. Last year, a record €544 million was invested in the Irish economy across film, television, documentary, and animation projects, a 26 percent increase from 2024, according to Screen Ireland.

Maedhbh McCullagh became director of CIFF in 2022. The County Cavan native has worked as a multidisciplinary cultural producer, arts programmer, and creative consultant on both sides of the Atlantic. The transcript below is edited from our Feb. 18 Zoom call and email exchanges. MH

Maedhbh McCullagh

MH: Tell us a little about the history of the film festival and how it serves the mission of Solas Nua.

M. McCullagh: Solas Nua means new light in Irish. It’s a multidisciplinary arts organization that is dedicated to bringing the best of contemporary Irish arts to the Washington, D.C. area. It’s a nomadic organization presenting work in different parts of the city and is renowned for its innovative programming; commissioning, producing and presenting thought-provoking work throughout the year. And so, I suppose one could say that it’s an ambassador for Irish arts in D.C. and beyond.

The organization was founded in 2005 by Linda Murray who wanted to see work directly from Ireland being presented in D.C. She wanted to make people aware of Ireland as it is now. That was the seed of Solas Nua and the first film program was presented in 2006. The work reflects contemporary Ireland, not a nostalgic view of  Ireland of a bygone era that maybe wasn’t necessarily making its way to DC at that time. And so I think that set it apart. And that’s where the mission of Solas Nua grew from.

MH: Are audiences really still clinging to nostalgic views of Ireland?

M. McCullagh: Nostalgia is something we all feel but I’ve never heard of any CIFF patron complaining about a lack of films that depict Ireland in a traditional “Quiet Man” kind of way. Solas Nua is a presenter of contemporary Irish arts and this program is on a mission in that regard. But the thing about these films is they are neither one thing or another, they are a reflection of a diverse, pluralist, modern Irish society that is multilayered and complex, with an ever-evolving set of identities. This is what the Irish people do. We hold a multitude of things at once. We are the essence of contrasts, darkness and light, contemporary and yet steeped in tradition with these deep ties to the land, to our history, to our understanding of what our history is, and it’s continuously changing.

And in saying this, one of the through lines of this year’s program is the fact that several films use rare archival footage to great effect, evoking nostalgia for historical moments and events. Our opening night film, the East premiere gala screening of Lisa Barros D’sa and Glenn Leyburn’s “Saipan,” is a nail-biting, darkly comic drama recount​ing one of the most fractious falling-outs in the history of sport! The film explores the explosive clash between international soccer star Roy Keane (Éanna Hardwicke) and manager Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan) on the island of Saipan just days before the Irish national football team competed in the 2002 FIFA World Cup. The directors use some historic footage, including news reports of the time, which roots the film in the period, and brings the viewer right back to that time.

MH: This year’s festival includes films by 15 women directors and 17 women writers. Tell us about how women’s contributions to Irish film have evolved over the last 20 years?

M. McCullagh: Over the last 20 years, the contribution of Irish women in film has gone from being quietly overlooked to being recognized and openly celebrated and getting the recognition it deserves. Back in the mid‑2000s, women were doing the work — writing, producing, shooting documentaries, keeping indie film alive — but rarely getting the credit, funding, or visibility. Over the past ten years, thanks to women-centered social movements, the determined work of academics and journalists, and the ongoing activism and advocacy of women professionals across the AV sector, critical focus and attention have illuminated and reflected the truth of women’s experiences and the lack of parity in pay and opportunities in the industry. Studies from groups such as Women in Film and Television Ireland and the National Women’s Council and publications such as Dr. Susan Liddy’s Women in Irish Film: Stories and Storytellers showed that women have driven innovation in screenwriting, documentary filmmaking, editing, and producing, often pushing Irish cinema toward more socially conscious and community‑rooted storytelling.  They’re driving some of the most exciting writing, directing, and documentary work, despite pervasive systemic barriers and an ongoing lack of representation.

Some of the 42 films being shown at the 20th Capital Irish Film Festival in DC.

MH: What else do you want people to know about this year’s festival?

M. McCullagh: First-off, with 42 films across 22 screenings, the program has something to offer everyone! Expect gripping dramas, Irish-language thrillers (BÁITE,AONTAS), music documentaries (CELTIC UTOPIA, BP FALLON ROCK’N’ROLL WIZARD VOL. 1, IN TIME: DONAL LUNNY), profiles of political leaders who lead with peace (GERRY ADAMS: A BALLYMUPRHY MAN, DANIEL O’CONNELL: THE EMANCIPATOR), and women fighting for justice (TESTIMONY).

Our program lifts up marginalized voices, with stories featuring trans relationships (GIRLS & BOYS, PUREBRED), the deaf community (A QUIET LOVE), and Ireland’s Traveller community (TRAVELLING BACK).

CIFF presents two 2026 Oscar entries, SANATORIUM (Ireland’s official entry for Best International Feature Film) and RETIREMENT PLAN (Nominee, Best Animated Short), and BAFTA-nominated A WANT IN HER (Outstanding Debut By A British Writer, Director Or Producer)

The festival opens with the East Coast premiere of SAIPAN, described above. The 5th annual Norman Houston Award will be presented as part of a double-billing of THREE KEENINGS and the third-ever screening of NO ORDINARY HEIST, with a reception sponsored by the Northern Ireland Bureau. The festival closes with Brandan Canty’s phenomenal feature directorial debut, the internationally renowned CHRISTY, a powerful, big-hearted coming-of-age story that won the Grand Prix at the 2025 Berlinale and just this week won Best Film and Best Director at the Irish IFTA Academy Awards.

It’s a fantastic four-day celebration of creativity and community, where you will see a rich and diverse program of world-class Irish films about Ireland or by Irish filmmakers. It’s an incredibly sociable and welcoming environment where you’ll meet like minded people who also love film, love Iearning about Ireland and discovering Irish talent, all in one space. There’s plenty of opportunity to meet up in between the screenings and in the evenings at our receptions and parties and our partner venue McGinty’s next door to the venue. I hope these films will inspire, uplift, spark dialogue, and cultivate an appreciation for the amazing craft of filmmaking and the value of seeing these artists’ work on the big screen.  Right now, more than ever before we need these diverse stories and perspectives to help foster a more inclusive, united, and engaged society. Pease join us February 26 – March 1.

Catching up with modern Ireland: November

Joe Biden’s election as U.S. president was the big story of November on both sides of the Atlantic. Here’s a sampling of early analysis:

Ballina, Co. Mayo artists Padraig ‘Smiler’ Mitchell and Leslie Lackey in September installed this mural of Biden in his ancestral hometown. Biden visited Ballina in 2016 as vice president. RTÉ photo.

More news:

  • The Republic of Ireland is set to begin easing second-round COVID-19 restrictions on Dec. 1, as Northern Ireland tightens measures to control the spread of the virus. “For months, public health officials have argued in vain that the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland should be coordinating pandemic restrictions, taking advantage of their island status as a natural barrier to disease. Instead, government leaders in Dublin and Belfast complain that they learn of each other’s divergent plans only through the media,” Politico.eu reported.
  • “Many whose attendance at church services before the pandemic was fragile will never return to public worship. … The post-pandemic church will look significantly different to the church we traditionally knew.” Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said in a  mid-month homily at St. Mary’s Pro Cathedral.
  • A Belfast man was arrested in connection with the 1974 bombings of two pubs in Birmingham, England, which killed 21 people and wounded nearly 200 others. The IRA has been accused of the bombings. Six men were jailed in 1975, then released in 1991 when their convictions were overturned.
  • Ireland inflicts the ninth highest level of lost tax revenue on other countries around the globe–3.7 percent of total worldwide losses, or the equivalent of $15.83 billion, according to the first “State of Tax Justice” study compiled by Tax Justice Network.
  • A new freight ferry route will open Jan. 2, 2021, linking Rosslare, Ireland, and Dunkirk, France, bypassing non-EU member England, the Independent (UK) reported.
  • Paleontologists have found the fossilized remains of two Jurassic dinosaur species in Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland. These are the first dinosaur remains reported from anywhere in Ireland and some of the most westerly in Europe, says Sci-News.com.
  • Solas Nua, Washington D.C.’s contemporary Irish arts organization, named Miranda Driscoll as its interim executive director. She formerly served for five years as director/CEO of Sirius Arts Centre in Co. Cork. Watch her video message. These are challenging times for all non-profit arts groups, to say the least.

Previous months:

Catching up with modern Ireland: May

Irish voters overturned a 35-year-old constitutional abortion ban by a decisive two thirds margin. More about that at the bottom of this post. First, a quick look at some other Irish news in May, from both sides of the Atlantic:

Let me make it plain: the departure from the EU of our nearest neighbour is not a good thing for Ireland. This development generates unwelcome challenges and uncertainties for us. It deprives Ireland of an influential, like-minded country around the EU negotiating table. It complicates our bilateral relations with Britain at a time when we continue to need to work closely together as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement so as to promote peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. 

  • Researchers in universities across Ireland are embarking on an effort to help Irish bees survive and thrive. Their work grows from the 2015 All-Ireland Pollinator Plan.
  • Solas Nua, the Washington, D.C.-based Irish arts group, staged “The Frederick Douglass Project” over several weeks. The “project” is  actually two short plays about Douglass’ 1845 lecture tour of Britain and Ireland – D.C.-based Psalmayene 24’s An Eloquent Fugitive Slave Flees to Ireland, which deals with Douglass’s life before his eastward journey across the Atlantic, and Dublin-based Deirdre Kinahan’s Wild Notes, which explores his arrival. As The Irish Times reported:

The aim of the production is to highlight this critically-important time in Douglass’s life to an American audience. “This is about exploring the parallels of the Irish and African-American experience – Douglass arrived in Ireland during the Famine – but it is also about what happens when two worlds meet and the perceptions and misperceptions that both sides hold,” said Rex Daugherty, the show’s artistic director.

My wife and I enjoyed the production. I think it would do well in Ireland, where there is probably more awareness of Douglass’ 1845 visit than in America. The themes of human subjugation are universal, as made more clear in Kinahan’s play.

Is Catholic Ireland dead and gone? Probably not

The most predictable commentary about the 25 May abortion referendum has focused on the diminished role of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Some examples:

The New York Times headlined the referendum result as a “Rebuke to Catholic Conservatism.” A follow up story described Ireland as “a country that is clearly part of Europe’s secular sprint out of the Roman Catholic fold” and noted Pope Francis’ focus on the Southern Hemisphere. But an opinion piece by Eamon Maher, co-editor of the 2017 title Tracing the Cultural Legacy of Irish Catholicism: From Galway to Cloyne and Beyond, offered more nuisance:

The importance of Friday’s vote as a blow to the institutional Catholic Church should not be understated.  … But if it’s clear that the institution of the church no longer commands the moral authority or the loyalty in Ireland that it once did, the end of Catholic Ireland, too, is an overstatement. Ireland remains defined by its relationship with Catholicism, because it has yet to develop another way to be.

Patsy McGarry, the religious affairs correspondent at The Irish Times since 1997, added some historical perspective in his column, which described as “out of kilter” those observations that the referendum outcome represents the end of Catholic Ireland:

More accurately, what it illustrated was an end to a particular model of clerically dominated Catholic Church in Ireland. … What we are witnessing is the disappearance of what might be described as “the church that Paul built,” a reference to Cardinal Paul Cullen. Archbishop of Dublin from 1852, he “Romanised” the church, centralized its structures, and introduced processions and devotions from Europe. He laid the foundations for an Irish Catholic Church which became a powerful alternative institution in the late 19th century so that by independence in 1922 it was more powerful than the new state itself, particularly in education and healthcare. It dominated Ireland through most of the 20th century. [That institution may be gone, but with] 78.3 per cent of Irish people still identified as Catholic … reports of the death of Catholicism in Ireland are, to borrow from Mark Twain, “greatly exaggerated.”

Finally, some voices from the Irish Catholic Church itself, as reported in Crux:

Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh said the referendum result “confirms that we are living in a new time and a changed culture for Ireland. For the Church it is indeed a missionary time, a time for new evangelization.”

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin added, “The Irish Church after the Referendum must renew its commitment to support life. … Reshaping the Church of tomorrow must be marked by a radical rediscovery of its roots.”

There will more about this issue in the run up to Pope Francis’ scheduled August visit to Dublin for the World Meeting of Families.

 

“Coolatully,” a play about rural Ireland, makes U.S. debut

“Coolatully,” a fictional village in rural Ireland and the title of a 2014 one-act play by Fiona Doyle, is making its U.S. debut in Washington, D.C. Solas Nua (new light), a contemporary Irish arts organization, is presenting the play at Mead Theatre Lab at Flashpoint through 26 March.

The play is set in post-Celtic Tiger rural Ireland, where jobs are tough to find and the fictional town can no longer field a hurling team because too many players have left for Canada, New Zealand and Australia. (If there’s any mention of America, I missed it, reminding U.S. audiences that we aren’t the only option for emigrants.) Kilian, the hero of a long-past teen league championship match, is torn between staying or leaving.

More in this short Solas Nua video featuring members of the D.C. cast:

In a review of an earlier London production, The Guardian said the play “paints a plausible picture of the modern Celtic twilight … [and] tells us, very touchingly, what it is like to be young in rural Ireland today and pins down vividly the tendency to romanticize the past and future to make up for the disquieting present.”

Doyle has written nearly a dozen plays, according to her literary agency bio. She studied in Berlin and London, and lives in County Kerry.

 

 

Solas Nua prepares for Irish Book Day in D.C.

Forget the parades and over emphasis on tipping pints, a Washington, D.C. organization called Solas Nua (new light, in Irish) brings something more meaningful to St. Patrick’s Day: contemporary Irish arts.

Since 2005 group volunteers have dedicated most of their March 17 to handing out free copies of Irish literature and poetry. The “Irish Book Day” event is a “celebration of the richness of Irish culture.”

WTS Front

This year, Solas Nua is introducing a new collection of short stories and poetry by Ireland’s best contemporary writers. What’s the Story? includes work by Mary Costello, Kevin Barry, Elaine Feeney and others in the 139-page book.

Solas Nua volunteers will give away thousands of copies of the book at Metro stops including Dupont Circle, Gallery Place/Chinatown, Judiciary Square and Columbia Heights during morning and evening rush hours. Other locations will be tweeted throughout the day by @SolasNuacht. Readers are invited to share their responses using #whatsthestory on Twitter and Facebook.

The organization also has two film screenings coming up in its Irish Popcorn! series: Anam An Amhráin (Soul of the Song) on March 15 and The Irish Pub on March 31.

Visit the Solas Nua website for more details about these and other film, theater, literature and music events during the year. Consider volunteering your time or making a donation. You’ll enjoy the parades and pints even more if you help.