Manchester Irish Festival to stage UK Premiere of New York Music Documentary

Manchester Irish Festival to stage UK Premiere of New York Music Documentary

This years’ 2012 Manchester Irish Festival will stage the UK premiere of an Irish Music documentary that was filmed in New York. The film which is called ‘Beautiful People’ documents the musicians behind New York’s longest running Irish seisiún at Dempsey’s Irish Pub in Manhattan.

The VIP screening will take place at one of the festival’s main entertainment hubs – M19 Bar in Levenshulme on Wednesday 7th March. The special event will be sponsored by Guinness who will be hosting a drinks reception and warm up gig. Annette Carey and Martin Hogan from the award winning Irish radio show – The Full Irish from ALLFM Radio will be broadcasting their show live from the venue and interviewing the VIP guests.

To win a free pair of tickets to the Guinness sponsored VIP screening just email your name and contact details to pressmif@gmail.com participants must be aged over 18. Please mark your email ‘Beautiful People VIP Screening’.

The Film is directed by Elzbieta Szoka who said about the documentary “My inspiration for this film came as lightening from a clear sky, as we say in Poland. Not expecting anything but a few hours of mingling at the post screening party of our last film, Welcome To Academia, I walked into Dempsey's Pub on Second Avenue and was struck immediately by its dreamlike atmosphere. It looked and felt just right for a project that had been buried in my sub conscious for a while. I felt like I had stepped into a painting by some of my favorite old masters, enhanced by the music that the people in 'the painting' were playing.”

Producer Sam Adelman of Paradox Smoke productions added “Elzbieta and I came upon this unique gathering of musicians at Dempsey's Pub where songs are called tunes and violins are just fiddles. Not only had we found a traditional Irish music jam session in NYC, but also discovered an environment of passion and camaraderie amongst its members. One could say that the spirit of these 'Trad music seisiún ' is truly akin to filmmaking.”

The film focuses on ten members of the longest running traditional Irish music group in New York City, who talk about not their interest in this type of music but also offer a peek inside their lives to try and find what draws them towards this activity. The film explores the true global appeal of the seisiún which features an Asian American that plays the fiddle, a charismatic twenty one-year-old Irish singer/guitarist, an 84-year-old Italian-American accordionist, and a 77-year-old woman that recently graduated from the police academy, who all exemplify the diversity of the group. They all get together every Tuesday night at a bar called Dempsey's Pub, located on Second Avenue in Manhattan's East Village.

It is currently the longest running traditional Irish seisiún in the city, and its unusual format permits anyone entering the bar with an instrument and a love of Irish music to sit and play. Typically, on any Tuesday night, somewhere around 35 to 40 musicians show up to play. Concentrating mostly on instrumentals, over the course of the evening a few classic Irish folk songs are thrown in for good measure.

The usual session lasts until midnight- and sometimes, on special occasions and holidays, it can go on quite a bit longer.
For more information or to view a trailer of the film visit the website www.beautifulpeopledocfilm.com