NEW York’s Irish Arts Center has announced a new Irish film series to be launched on September 13 with the Irish historic film Mise Éire, as well as Martin McDonagh’s Oscar winning short, Six Shooter.

Mise Éire (I am Ireland) is famous in Ireland as the first Irish language film. The documentary, made in 1959, follows the 1916 Easter Rising, including rare original footage from the rising.

It also broke new ground for Irish filmmaking.

Two weeks later, on September 27, the center will screen a double-bill celebrating contemporary Ireland, as seen by two of Ireland’s most talented playwrights.

Oscar winning Six Shooter, written and directed by McDonagh, currently winning ac-claim on Broadway with The Lieutenant of Inishmore, will be shown, as will the hilarious crime movie I Went Down, written by Conor McPherson (Shining City).

This mix of old and modern continues later in the fall with John Ford’s The Informer, billed with John Boorman’s The General, both of which take on the Irish gangster scene.

There is also a double-bill of Brian Friel with Dancing at Lughnasa screened with a documentary on Friel’s life. Perry Ogdan’s beautifully honest look at Irish traveler life, Pavee Lackeen, and Jim Sheridan’s Oscar nominated In America, look at the marginalized — one a story about an Irish traveler girl acted by an Irish traveler family, the other professional actors in a semi-autobiographical take on Sheridan’s first years in America.

Sheridan was later to become artistic director of the Irish Arts Center in the 1970s.

The film series will be screened at the Irish Arts Center, 553 West 51st Street, with two screenings at Fordham University in Lincoln Center.

More information is available from the website www.irishartscenter.com.