Heaven’s Gate continues to have an afterlife. Readers will be aware that, released to raspberries in 1980, Michael Cimino’s western is still regarded as one of the greatest cinematic flops of all time.

The director’s follow-up to The Deer Hunter generated such negative publicity that Transamerica Corporation, United Artists’ corporate owner, withdrew entirely from film production. Stephen Bach’s book on the catastrophe, Final Cut, remains one of the most revealing analyses of the Hollywood machine.

As the dust was settling, however, wiser heads began to reassess the film, a study of the 1892 Johnson County War, as a visionary quasi- Marxist epic in the grand style.

Now, Brian Duggan, the distinguished Irish artist, has used the film as a basis for an ambitious piece at VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art in Carlow. Journeying out under the title Everything Can Be Done, In Principle, the installation will transport visitors into a “timber and canvas barn at America’s 19th century mid- western frontier”.

The event opens on June 8th with a performance by David Mansfield, the composer of the film’s music, and will continue with further screenings and conversations.

There's more. Duggan will be inviting attendees to recreate a famous scene from the film by roller- skating about the gallery. Sounds fun. Sounds dangerous. Sounds postmodern. For more details of this fascinating enterprise, go to everythingcanbedone.com.

Read more at irishtimes. com/blogs/screenwriter