Glucksman Ireland House presents
Screening of documentary John Connolly:
Of Blood and Lost Things
Friday, October 23rd at 7pm
at Cantor Film Center, 36 East 8th Street between Broadway and University Place
Filmmaker Yvonne Nolan introduces her documentary about John Connolly, who in 1998 won the largest advance ever then paid to an Irish writer (£1.3m); though he does not write about Ireland or the Irish, his grisly crime novels set in Maine have been compared to those of Stephen King and Thomas Harris.
In Connolly’s dark, lyrical world, supernatural forces hide behind the membrane of reality and wait to mete out justice to the fallen. Connolly’s is an utterly original voice in Irish writing and his masterly evocation of a series of gruesome villains has seen him hit the bestseller lists in the U.S., U.K and Ireland.
John Connolly: Of Blood and Lost Things examines Connolly’s influences from Ireland to Maine and looks at how his 12 book oeuvre combines gritty realism with elements of the classic ghost story resulting in a hybrid that is distinctive both in Irish and international writing.
This project was commissioned and solely funded by the Irish public service broadcaster RTÉ where it will premiere in 2010. This exclusive screening has been made possible by special permission of RTÉ.
John Connolly and Yvonne Nolan will discuss his work and the documentary after the screening.
About Yvonne Nolan
Starting with BBC Radio 4, Yvonne Nolan has worked in television and radio for over 20 years. In that time she has worked in live studio programming with some of Ireland’s flagship talk shows such as The Late Late Show, The Tubridy Show and Livelinealongside cultural programmes like First Edition, Booklinesand Writer in Profile. In 2006 she produced Arts Lives – Pop Fiction (RTÉ/Independent Pictures), an examination of the world of Irish chick-lit. In 2005 she approached John Connolly with a view to making a documentary about his work and life – it took 4 years and many drafts before Ireland’s public service broadcaster RTÉ became the sole funder for the project that evolved into John Connolly: Of Blood and Lost Things. She is also a freelance literary critic and a regular contributor to The Irish Times books pages. Her own abiding interest in writers and writing is, in part, informed by her late brother, the writer Christopher Nolan author of Under the Eye of the Clock who died in February 2009.