Spaces of Ruin in The Banshees of Inisherin

Presented by: Prof. Jason Jacobs and Dr Matthew Cipa

Date: Friday 13 October 2023
Time: 12-1pm
Location: Online via Zoom and in-person at the SCA Writer's Studio (Level 6, Michie Building)


Abstract

The figuring of friendship in cinema is a relatively unexplored area of study. While there are many movies that depict various kinds of human companionship far fewer take it up as a central theme. The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022), set in 1923 on a fictional Irish island, begins at the point when the friendship between Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson) ends. We never see them as the friends that they once were; we witness, instead, the ruins of what is left behind. As a medium attuned to surfaces, cinema is optimally suited to the representation of the mysterious masks and theatrical peculiarities of human intersubjective relations. Our paper explores how such relations accrue aesthetic force in the film by attending to moments that articulate the consequence of estrangement.


Presenters

Matthew Cipa is lecturer in the School of Communication at the Queensland University of Technology. His monograph, Is Harpo Free? And Other Essays of the Metaphysical Screen is forthcoming with SUNY Press. Jason Jacobs’s latest book is Reluctant Sleuths, True Detectives, also with SUNY Press.

Jason Jacobs is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Queensland and author of the BFI TV Classics book on Deadwood, and Reluctant Sleuths, True Detectives in the SUNY press series, Horizons of Cinema.


 

About Research Seminar and Workshop Series

 


School of Communication and Arts Research Seminar Series

The research seminar and workshop series occur each semester, each with a different topic and guest speaker from UQ or otherwise.

Friday, 16 August
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Archives: A Knowledge Café on Ways of Knowing, Seeing, Being, and Accessing

A conversation hosted by Kate Newey, Bernadette Cochrane, Madelyn Coupe, and Hannah Mason

Friday, 23 August
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at 09-738

Dispatches from Trump-World: Preppers, Climate Disasters and a Front Row Seat the 2024 Republican National Convention

Dr Tom Doig

Friday, 30August
12-1pm

Indigenising the Curriculum Pedagogy JamDr Amelia Barikin and Prof. Anna Johnston

Friday, 13 September
12-1pm

Assessment Security Pedagogy JamDr Amelia Barikin and Dr Maureen Engel

Friday, 20 September
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Upside Down: Adaptation and Digital Affordances in Stranger Things

Dr Bernadette Cochrane

Friday, 11 October
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Linking research, teaching and engagement – the PEATLI project

A.Prof Elske van de Fliert

Friday, 25 October
1-2pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at 09-738
(Level 7, Michie)

Dissonances: Aesthetic Beauty, Moral Beauty, and Deformity in Crimes of the Future (2022)

Dr Matthew Cipa

 

Venue

Online via Zoom and in-person at the SCA Writer's Studio (Level 6, Michie Building)