BETWEEN craft beer promotions, poets-in-residence and attempting to put Bob Marley on their official away jersey Bohemian FC has earned a reputation as Ireland’s trendiest club – but an event taking place at Dalymount Park next week will surely propel Bohs to peak hipster status.
On Thursday (July 5) the club is hosting a screening of an experimental, Avant-garde ‘70s German film that follows George Best around the pitch in an ordinary league match between Manchester United and Coventry.
But while certainly obscure, the long forgotten ‘Fußball, Wie Noch Nie’ (Football, As Never Before) by Hellmuth Costard is now regarded as a soccer classic after being rescued in 2015 by Dubliner Matthew Nolan who wrote a beautiful score for the revived film.
German director Costard used eight 16mm cameras to track Best’s every move during a bog-standard Saturday league game against Coventry City that had little riding on the result.
Made at the height of Best's fame and tabloid notoriety, the film focuses insistently on Best – warming up, looking restless and bored, and waiting tactically to unleash his genius – rather than the on-pitch action to arrive at a sublime and revealing rumination on celebrity and a tantalizing glimpse of the man behind the myth.
The match itself ended in a 2-0 victory to the Red Devils but it meant little as Man Utd were also-rans that 1970/71 season.
However, the film is inventive and its influence can be seen in Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s well known 2006 movie, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait.
The screening of Fußball, Wie Noch Nie at Dalymount Park is being presented by TU Dublin, Bohemian FC and Dublin Business School and it’s a rare opportunity to see George Best at Dalymount Park – 51 years after he last graced the Home of Irish football.
He last took to the field in Dublin 7 in 1968 in a benefit game and famously also took on Waterford that same year in the European Cup when Matt Busby’s Manchester United came to Lansdowne Road as European champions.
Costard’s film and Nolan’s score will be performed live on Dalymount’s hallowed turf for what promises to be a memorable occasion on Thursday, July 4.
The Dalymount bars will be open from 7pm with the screening taking place at 9.30pm.
Tickets cost €15 or €12.50 for Bohemian FC members and season ticket holders and are available online at tickets.bohemians.ie.
The film lasts 105 minutes and all proceeds go to support the community work of the Bohemian Foundation.
