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The Passion of Joan of Arc - Film & live musical performance


Friday, 15 September 2023 19:30 - 22:30

Ranelagh Arts are delighted to host a live presentation and world premiere of a new soundtrack for the 1928 Carl Dreyer film The Passion of Joan of Arc. Produced by Matthew Nolan in collaboration with Seán Mac Erlaine, Sharon Phelan, & Thomas Haugh and featuring singers from the Sandford and St Philip’s Choral Union. Matthew Nolan – electric guitar / synths / electronics / percussion Seán Mac Erlaine – reeds / piano / electronics / percussion Sharon Phelan – vocals / field recordings Thomas Haugh – percussion

Spiritual rapture and institutional hypocrisy come to stark, vivid life in one of the most transcendent masterpieces of the silent era. Chronicling the trial of Joan of Arc in the hours leading up to her execution, Danish master Carl Theodor Dreyer depicts her torment with startling immediacy, employing an array of techniques—expressionistic lighting, interconnected sets, painfully intimate close-ups—to immerse viewers in her subjective experience.

It’s difficult to envision a purer, more pared-down work of cinematic art than Carl Theodor Dreyer’s wrenching, intensely focused 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc. The film is often talked about in terms of its use of the close-up, and indeed, its most memorable visual component is the central, repeated image of Renée Falconetti as the martyred Maid of Orleans, her haunted face so tightly framed, looming so large that we can’t escape her fear, sadness, and horror—or her final spiritual elation. The Passion is perhaps a tribute even more to the power of the cinematic image than to its sainted subject; it reveals that certain elements of human feeling are constant through the centuries. Dreyer wrote, “I did not study the clothes of the time, and things like that. The year of the event seemed as inessential to me as its distance from the present. I wanted to interpret a hymn to the triumph of the soul over life.” Cast: Renée Falconetti – Jeanne Antonin Artaud - Jean Massieu Eugène Silvain - Pierre Cauchon André Berley - Jean d’Estivet


Location: Sandford Parish Church. Sandford Road D06 A9P8

Doors - 7.30pm Show - 8.30pm (81mins duration)





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