THE BIG PICTURE
It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day... it’s a new decade, and 2020 is already promising to be a year of outstanding culture. MEG WALKER has your hit list for the next two months.
Your arts calendar for January, February and beyond
It’s been a long wait, but at last, 2020 has arrived, and with it comes an incredible line-up of cultural musts mixed with a choice selection of literary releases. Get ready to fill your spanking new calendar... 1 Flex your new shopping vouchers with this stunning tome: Entre Nous: Bohemian Chic in the 1960s and 1970s: A Photo Memoir by Mary Russell, edited by Pierre Passebon (Flammarion, €25, out January 1) features a collection of American journalist and photographer Mary Russell’s photographs mixed beautifully together with her personal memoirs. In the 1960s and 1970s, as Paris fashion correspondent for Glamour, Vogue and The New York Times, and photo stylist for David Bailey, Helmut Newton, Lord Snowdon and Henry Clarke, Russell captured the creative elite on her Nikon as she travelled from fashion events in Paris and London to glamorous holidays in Saint Moritz, Saint-Tropez and the Venetian Lido. From Andy Warhol’s visit to Paris with the Factory to the circle of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, Karl Lagerfeld, the Rolling Stones, Jerry Hall, Charlotte Rampling, Jane Birkin, and many others, it paints an intriguing picture of an iconic era.
2 Cork-born singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist LYRA embarks on a headline tour beginning in Limerick on February 29, hitting Cork and Galway on March 1 and 3, and ending in Dublin’s The Academy on March 5. Hit singles “Mother”, “Falling” and “Never Let Go” are just the beginning... this star is very much on the ascent. 3 He may not mean all that much to those who didn’t spend their childhood in the US (or the 20th century), but Mr Rogers meant a great deal to anyone growing up in 1980s America, and finally his importance is being acknowledged with a long-awaited biopic starring Tom Hanks as the lovable children’s entertainer who would like to be your neighbour. A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood hits cinemas January 31. Here’s what else January and February has in store... WATCH This year’s Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival, February 26 to March 8, features an epic 14-hour documentary by Belfast-born Mark Cousins called Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema, which features contributions from Tilda Swinton, Jane Fonda, Thandie Newton, and Debra
Winger; a public interview between Mark O’Halloran and filmmaker Charlie Kaufman ( Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind); the Irish premiere of Sea Fever, a female-driven Irish thriller by BAFTA-winning Irish writer/director Neasa Hardiman; and a gala screening of Herself, a female-led drama starring Irish actress Clare Dunne and directed by Phyllida Lloyd, fresh from its world premiere at Sundance. For more, see diff.ie. HEAR Swedish-born, West Cork-based singer Camilla Griehsel will perform her Mamasongue show – a mix of songs and monologue loosely based on her life, which celebrates female energy and motherhood and touches on the grief Camilla experienced through the loss of her husband and mother – at the Mother Tongues Festival Dublin on February 23. Check out other performances running throughout the festival (February 21-23) at mothertonguesfestival.com. MOVE Thrive Festival returns to the Convention Centre Dublin for its second year February 29 to March 1, showcasing the latest fitness, wellbeing and health trends with speakers including Holly White, Sinéad Delahunty and Finn Ní Fhaoláin, mixed with plenty of yoga, HIIT, Kobox, FlyFit, Pound, Zumba and Pilates classes, plus a host of spiritual and mindful meditation moments. If your 2020 resolutions need a bit of a reboot at the end of February, this is sure to do it, thrivefestival.ie.