Alliance Française – Flashback Memory Festival

The Alliance Française in Dublin is launching an unusual cultural event that takes place on the 11th, 12th and 13th of May this year

April 1916 – May 2016, After being confronted by striking events, nations have been built, have established an identity, and have forged a collective memory. Between subjective construction and objective reality, societies have risen. But what place do these facts hold in the memory of today’s generations? Do people identify themselves as being part of history or wanting to create their own?

Flashback, an association of young Parisian students, has wanted to open the debate and give artists and scientists the chance to speak on the subject of the need for a collective memory. As Ireland was preparing to commemorate the 100 years of the Easter rising and Paris was hit by attacks on French soil, the Flashback association reached out to the Alliance Française Dublin to create a bi-cultural, multidisciplinary artistic festival: the Flashback – Memory Festival.

For this event, plotting the lines between debate and thought through the spectrum of art – theatre, dance and photography, is close to our heart. We hope that, thanks to sensibility and the French and Irish artists’ individual expression, we can propose an original perspective on the theme of the collective memory. We invite you to come contemplate and participate in this opening of the world through the means of a different approach, one more distanced, more poetic, you might say more abrupt.

A mix of art and cultures, Flashback Festival will rekindle the Franco-Irish ties through dialogue and inter-cultural exchanges aimed at leaving a long-standing, viable imprint on life. With Le Quai (see main pic), a contemporary play by young French playwright Elie Triffault, we rewrite the story of the birth of cinema by following the tracks of a mysterious story. From the beginning of May will be exhibited photographs by two young

French (Université Paris 8) and Irish (Dublin Institute of Technology) photographers on a common theme. We will also take the time to understand, with the help of specialists and researchers, the need for and the place of collective memories in society. And finally, through all of this talk relating to theory, the practical creation of a common, collective memory will be done through the learning of an original choreography specially created for the festival by Matthieu Bajolet, French dancer, accompanied by young Irish dancers on Physics Square in Trinity College Dublin.

The organiser hope that this first edition will be memorable and they invite you to follow them all the way to Paris!

PROGRAMME OF EVENTS

Wednesday 11 May:

• Photographic Exhibition (Franco-Irish co-creation).

6pm – 7.30pm: Opening of the exhibition and Festival.

7.30pm – 9pm: Conference (1916, 2016, so what?).

Thursday 12 May:

• Theatre: « Le quai » (A story of cinema).

7.20pm – 7.50pm: Explanation and mediation of the play by the Flashback festival team.

8pm – 9.10pm: « Le Quai », la CTC, mise en scène Eli Triffault.

9.20pm – 10.10pm: Meeting with the actresses.

Friday 13 May:

• Bal Moderne/Dancing Around (Create our collective memory together).

1pm – 2pm : Bal Moderne/Dancing Around, Matthieu Bajolet at the Trinity College’s Physics Square.

(For further information, see www.alliance-francaise.ie)