The Ghosts of Baggotonia (12A)

85 minutes - Ireland 2022 - Documentary - Dir: Alan Gilsenan 
Featuring the voices of Camille O’Sullivan and Alan Gilsenan 
 
Ghosts of Baggotonia is a haunting and visually captivating film-poem exploring the literary and other ghosts of the bohemian quarter bordering Dublin’s Baggot Street during the mid-20th century. “Baggotonia” - as it has become known - was both a permeable geographic area and a cultural movement, populated by writers, artists and other intellectuals living an anarchic life at odds with the overarching drabness and the conservative mores of the time. 
 
Inspired by a rare collection of photographs from artist Nevill Johnson, the film is shot in starkly beautiful Leica monotone and draws upon writings from the period, including Patrick Kavanagh, Elizabeth Bowen, Samuel Beckett, Blanaid Salkeld, John Montague, Eavan Boland, Paul Durcan, Ethna McCarthy, Thomas Kinsella amongst many others. 
 
There will be a Q&A with director Alan Gilsenan after the screening on Sunday 11th December. 
 
“Ghosts of Baggotonia is at once a work of art, and a moving invocation of a lost world” John Banville Hide