Solus is an independent film
collective and platform for film-makers working in Super-8mm /
16mm and DV. The group was formed in 1998 in Dublin, Ireland.
Solus has the dual aim of showing Irish short
and avant-garde films abroad and international short and avant-garde
films in Ireland. The first programme Solus compiled was screened
in the Irish Film Center’s ‘First Cut’ in December
1998, and was then brought to Anthology Film Archives in New York
in May 1999. In ‘Ocularis’, an independent venue also
in New York which recently had a 10 year retrospective in MOMA,
this programme was modified as ‘Flix & Kicks’.
Flix & Kicks premiered new work by Solus members and invited
guests in super-8mm, 16mm & VHS. Then Xeno, presented by BAM
Cinematek ( Brooklyn Academy of Music ) & the New York Underground
Film Festival, presented a sampling of do-it-yourself shorts by
young Irish film-makers and international members of Solus. Described
as “ Low budget but serious”, “contemplative,
rockin’, atmospheric and clever”, it featured Moira
Tierney and Giles Packham’s ‘Ride City’, a twin-screened
tavelogue through an urban horseshow
and the Brooklyn shot ‘Seven Ways ‘Til
Sunday’, winner of the Best New Irish Short at the Cork
Film Festival.
In 2005 a new Solus programme was compiled for
The Contemporary Arts Centre in St.Petersburg. This programme
united some of the original members of Solus with a group of film-makers
from Feenish Productions in Dublin. The Russian programme was
compiled by Moira Tierney and Masha Godovannaya. This programme
was then adapted, with the addition of some Japanese and Canadian
films, for another Anthology Film Archives programme in May 2006.
This screening featured work from the following film-makers;
Moira Tierney ( Ireland / US ), David Stalling
( Germany ), Anthony Kelly ( Ireland ), Zoe Greenberg ( Canada
), Dennis Kenny ( Ireland ), Alan Lambert ( Ireland ), Donal O’Ceilleachair
( Ireland / US ), Stom Sogo ( Japan ), Masha Godovannaya ( Russia
). Solus also programmed the Irish Animations for ‘Animae
Caribe – Animation and New Media Festival’ in Trinidad
in October 2007. The current programme was screened in Marseilles
in January, Luxor Unversity, Egypt in April and was launched in
New York in November.
