Ireland’s national festival, St. Patrick’s Festival, returns with a cast of thousands of talented homegrown and international musicians, dancers, storytellers and performers coming together for five days and nights of events from March 15th to 19th.

The theme for Festival 2018 is Home and is the inspiration for the artistic programme that includes a unique film commission project, street-theatre, talks, walks, spoken word, literature, music, Irish language, visual art and more.

This year the Festival has commissioned radio presenter, photographer and filmmaker Donal Dineen to create Pathways: Irish Routes to the Art of the Matter in response to the theme of Home. A documentary about successful Irish creatives who are making it abroad, it will uncover the story of how they got there and look at where and when the seeds for their success were sown. Filmed in London, Malmo, New York, Los Angeles, Belfast, Dublin and Kerry it includes interviews with Fiona Shaw, Enda Walsh, Annie Mac, Seán Curran, Eva Rothschild, Brian Cross aka B+, Aoife MacArdle, Richie Egan aka Jape, Brian Ormond and Richard Gilligan.

Pathways: Irish Routes to the Art of the Matter will have its premiere screening on March 8th in the Light House Cinema, with guests enjoying a pre-screening Hennessy cocktail reception and post-screening Q&A with Donal Dineen and special guests. The film will also be shown as part of Where We Live presented by THISISPOPBABY with St. Patrick’s Festival in The Complex in Smithfield on March 18th and will also be available to view on the Festival’s Facebook and YouTube channel from March 9th.

Fans of vintage Hollywood will have the chance to enjoy Screening and Live Score Performance: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on March 15th. Directed by Irishman Rex Ingram, the first major Irish film director and once described as “the world’s greatest director”, this rare screening of the 1921 American silent epic war film features a new score by renowned composers Matthew Nolan and Barry Adamson which they will perform live on the night accompanied by Seán Mac Erlaine, Adrian Crowley and Kevin Murphy. Barry has previously worked with David Lynch, Oliver Stone and Nick Cave.

Also as part of the Where We Live programme of events, City on Screen is a series of extraordinary film screenings which examine and question our sense of home, quietly and riotously throwing into question our past, present and future. Each one of these cult films will be introduced by one of the key artists involved. Screenings include funny, downbeat, bleak and beautiful comedy Adam & Paul which has achieved cult status among its devoted fans; Seaview which documents intensely close conversations with the residents of Mosney Direct Provision Centre, revealing their individual stories, from the epic to the everyday; and Notes On Rave In Dublin, a roller coaster ride through the birth pangs of dance music in our dirty old town and brilliantly nostalgic look back at 90s Dublin cloaked in a vivid sense of hedonism.

Tickets for Screening and Live Score Performance: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (€24.00) are available fromwww.stpatricksfestival.ie

Tickets for Where We Live City on Screen events (€8.00) are available from www.thisispopbaby.com

The full programme of events for St. Patrick’s Festival is available on www.stpatricksfestival.ie

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