Festival promises lots of Phizz

PREPERATIONS are under way for one of the Northside’s most popular annual festivals.

Details of this year’s Phizzfest, which celebrates the very best that Phibsborough has to offer in terms of music, culture and art, were announced at the festival launch last week.

Phizzfest is now in its fifth year and this year’s events are running over the May Bank Holiday weekend from Thursday May 1 to Monday, May 5.

Headlining this year’s music programme is the unique Julie Feeney who’s performing an intimate concert in All Saints Church and there’ll also be music by the OffBeat Ensemble over the weekend.

Savage Eye comedians, John Colleary and Pat O’Donnell, will be providing a few laughs during the festival and there’ll be events to mark the 75th anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s masterpiece, Finnegan’s Wake

Other highlights include a public launch event with Ireland Professor of Poetry, Paula Meehan, a public conversation between poet Dermot Bolger and novelist Carlo Gébler and a commemoration of Brendan Behan with a talk by his nephew, Colbert Kearney entitled

‘The Homer of the North Circular Road’.

The theme of this year’s Phizzfest is based on a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the arrival of cinema in Phibsborough, and there’ll be an outdoor screening of

‘The Commitments’ in King’s Inns Park to help mark the centenary.

There’ll also be a pop-up cinema with movies from 1914 and a cinema night entitled

‘Back at the Boh’ in Woodstock Café, the site of the original Bohemian Picture House.

A screening of

‘Shake Hands with the Devil’ will be shown at Glasnevin Cemetery Museum, where the first scene of the movie was filmed.

Phizzfest will also feature award-winning theatre with

‘Boys and Girls’ by Dylan Coburn Gray and for the first time ever Dublin Guitar Night comes to Phibsborough.

Organisers are also promising lots of visual arts, local history, music, water events and plenty of free family fun events.

Full details of events can be found online at phizzfest.ie where bookings can be made for ticketed events.