Member spotlight
Esker Arts Centre / Eagla Fest, Tullamore, Co. Offaly
We’re into October, and with Halloween just around the corner, it is only apt that this month’s members’ spotlight focuses on a site with programming that embraces the spirit of the spooky season!
Esker Arts Centre in Tullamore, Co. Offaly is one of the country’s newest arts centres, and has been a member of the access>CINEMA network since its opening in April 2023. It has a regular film club, with upcoming screenings of titles such as The Zone of Interest and Poor Things.
The site also hosts Eagla Fest – a horror film festival that held its successful debut edition in 2023. The inaugural edition of the festival focused on folk horror, and featured titles such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and November.
This year, the festival’s thematic focus will shift to one of the most iconic and enduring figures in horror: the witch. The four-night festival (October 23rd-26th) will include classics such as Rosemary’s Baby, Häxan (the silent classic, presented here with a live score) and the family-friendly Hocus Pocus, alongside more recent titles such as The Witch and The Love Witch. It also includes a special documentary screening – Ireland’s Most Famous Witches. Tickets for all screenings are on sale now on Esker Art Centre’s website.
Esker’s Marketing Manager Lee Hamill explains more about this year’s Eagla Festival below:
“The festival opens with Robert Eggers’ The Witch on Wednesday 23rd October. The film that made Eggers’ name as one of the major modern horror directors is a perfect launch for this year’s festival. It brings us right back to the foundation myth of the modern witch so to speak as we explore 17th century puritanical colonies in which fear, oppression, and suspicion spread like wildfire to create the circumstances for the infamous witch trials. This paranoia is dressed in genuinely disturbing imagery that forces its audience to endure an unsettling journey into darkness. Nestled in the midst of the family is a sinister figure seducing and tempting not only the main characters but the audience ‘to live deliciously’.
“On Thursday 24th October, Eagla Fest continues with The Love Witch. The audience could be mistaken for thinking this beautiful film is straight out of the 60s or 70s as it drips in luxurious technicolour, but Anna Biller’s modern classic is in fact a love letter to those glory days of B-movie horror. This film embraces the power of femininity, an integral part of the witch, the only of the traditional monster figures that is inherently viewed as female as opposed to vampires, zombies, masked serial killers etc. who are dominated by male iconography. The audience is confronted by the power of female sexuality and may feel uneasy in the answers this film gives.
“Eagla Fest screens one of the most important films of the genre on Friday 25th October, Rosemary’s Baby. Roman Polanski’s 1968 classic is widely hailed as a redefining film for horror. The film takes the traditional witch that we know and resurrects them in the modern world of the 1960s. This film demonstrates that it is not just the eerie woods of New England where these creatures prowl, but the modern tower blocks and bright lights of New York. Mia Farrow gives a spell-binding performance as Rosemary Woodhouse is manipulated by nefarious players around her intent on getting their malevolent claws on her soon to be born child.
“One of the aspects of Eagla Fest that the team at Esker Arts were keen to do following last year’s season, was to expand the festival to cater to more people. The upcoming programme now includes a documentary, Ireland’s Most Famous Witches and a family friendly film, Hocus Pocus. Ireland’s Most Famous Witches focuses on the witch trials of Islandmagee telling the story of eight women sentenced to jail for the possession of a young girl. Hocus Pocus is a cult classic Disney film that finds the Sanderson sisters resurrected on Halloween night as a band of youngsters must stop them claiming the lives of the children of Salem before sunrise.
“Eagla Fest reaches its crescendo on Saturday 26th October screening Häxan with a live score by Nick Carlisle. Presented in partnership with Queen’s Film Theatre Belfast, the startling 1922 silent film by Benjamin Christensen is presented with a haunting score composed and performed live by Carlisle. Presented through a series of striking vignettes, Häxan charts the history of sorcery, demonology, and witchcraft, confronting the audience with set pieces guaranteed to linger in the mind. Nick Carlisle was commissioned by QFT to create a score for the film’s 100th anniversary in 2022. What he has created is a powerful electronic sound that dances perfectly alongside the hundred-year-old imagery, a perfect combination of the past and present and a perfect ending for Eagla Fest 2024: Season of the Witch.”
Best of luck to the Esker team with this year’s festival, and we can’t wait to see what else Eagla Fest – and Esker Arts Centre – has to offer in the years to come!
Member spotlight archive
August 2024 – Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford
September 2024 – My Little Film Club, Dublin 4
October 2024 – Esker Arts Centre / Eagla Fest, Tullamore
