Experience the enchantment of craftsmanship and music with From a Forest to a Fiddle. This mesmerising ilm captures Jim McKillop as he breathes life into wood, creating a fiddle in his rural workshop for the last time. The process was filmed by Filmmaker Patrick Conway over six months, revealing the alchemy behind each violin.

The film features a soundtrack of Zoë Conway’s own score, performed by Zoë on fiddle and John McIntyre on guitar and was inspired by the ancient ogham Irish alphabet, where each letter represents a native Irish tree, as well as a new Irish translation of a poem by renowned Dubliners fiddler, John Sheahan.

Now Press Play is supported with funding from Film Hub NI

“If you’re ever going to be haunted, surrounded by several million dead people is the place. I’ve never felt so welcome in my life.” Joshua Homme

The remarkable Queens of the Stone Age: Alive in the Catacombs captures QOTSA as you’ve never seen or heard them before.

The Catacombs of Paris is a sprawling 320km (200 miles) ossuary beneath the surface of Paris. Skeletal remains are largely exposed, with much of the walls built of skulls and bones. Homme has dreamt of staging a QOTSA performance in the Catacombs since his first visit nearly 20 years ago

Every aesthetic decision, every choice of song, every configuration of instruments…  absolutely everything was planned and played with deference to the historic Catacombs, from the acoustics and ambient sounds – dripping water – echoes and natural resonance to the darkly atmospheric lighting tones that enhance the music.

Before the main feature: Behind the Scenes – Alive in Paris and Before is an intimate behind the scenes documentary film, revealing the emotional and physical trials Queens of the Stone Age overcame to create Alive in the Catacombs.

 

Now Press Play is supported with funding from Film Hub NI.

Dir: Justin Kurzel. Australia 2024. 105 min

This artful, devastatingly human documentary is an intimate portrait of iconic Australian musician and composer Warren Ellis.

Director Jason Kurzel paints a vivid portrait of Ellis – a member of rock groups The Dirty Three and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, a doting son to his father and co-founder of a wildlife sanctuary in the forests of Sumatra.

Featuring music by the man himself  (reflecting the film’s richly emotional tone) and imbued with a natural candor, Ellis Park is a truly inspiring film.

“Ellis Park moves to a strange and interesting melody… swelling and shrinking, expanding and contracting, right in front of us.” – The Guardian

“It’s a profoundly moving film of an artist looking at another and uncovering the person behind the act. It left me an emotional wreck by the end.” – Toisto

 

 

*Contains flashing images, distressing scenes and animal cruelty.

 

Now Press Play is supported with funding from Film Hub NI.

One of the greatest films ever made about the music industry (not to mention one of our favourites), Robert Altman’s masterpiece Nashville is 50 years old.

Weaving together the stories and interactions of twenty-four major characters with astonishing fluidity, this audacious, epic vision of America through the lens of the Nashville music scene has lost none of its freshness or excitement. The fact that the songs (often written by the actors performing them) are brilliant is an added delight.

Taking place over five days, the film follows our characters struggling for fulfilment, both personal and professional, amongst a backdrop of country and gospel musicians, outsider political campaigning, and the peripheries of life in between, building from one encounter at a time to create a wide-ranging tapestry of rich drama and human comedy.

The 5.1 surround sound mix at SARC elevates Altman’s famous signature use of overlapping, scattered dialogue recorded live during production and adds staggering depth, range, and a “vérité aura” to the sound, making the dialogue clear and the tunes really “pop”.

Please Note- the venue has a grid floor and high heels are not permitted.

Food and drink are not permitted in the Lab.

 

Sly Lives! is a stunningly vibrant and empathetic tribute to the late, very great Sly Stone. The film chronicles his meteoric rise—forming one of the first racially and gender‑integrated bands during the heady civil‑rights era—and his unparalleled influence on funk, soul, psychedelic rock, and subsequent genres.

Featuring vivid archival performances and intimate interviews with surviving collaborators, family, and artists like André 3000, D’Angelo, Chaka Khan, Jimmy Jam, Q‑Tip, and George Clinton, the documentary probes the title’s central thesis: the unique “burden of Black genius”

Director Questlove skilfully interweaves musical breakdowns with civil‑rights history, revealing how systemic pressures shaped Stone’s struggles with addiction and reinvention. The result is an emotionally charged, intellectually rich portrait of a man who changed music—and the cost he paid for it.

“Pop has rarely been able to look away from Sly Stone … his meteoric rise eventually led to a long, slow comedown…” – The Guardian 

Now Press Play is supported with funding from Film Hub NI.

 

The mad, true story of the mad, brilliant rapper who was the heart and soul of the legendary Wu-Tang Clan, who left the world too soon after being swallowed up by the music industry.

The names Russell Jones or even Ason Unique most likely mean nothing to folk, but it’s a safe bet that ODB – or Ol’ Dirty Bastard – probably does.

These are all aliases of the American rapper from the most important rap group of the 1990s.

Ol’ Dirty Bastard was a wild spirit and totally unpredictable bundle of energy. But he was also father and husband Russell Jones. And he was the religious Black man Ason Unique, born during the race riots of the 1960s when the country’s Black population had to fight and die for even the smallest rights.

Using unique private and archival footage, A Tale of Two Dirtys tells the story of his upbringing, through his Wu-Tang Clan heyday, to his untimely death on a dark night in 2004.

Now Press Play is supported with funding from Film Hub NI.