Directed by journalist Peter Lennon, who is now senior features writer for the Guardian, Rocky Road to Dublin was the most important independent documentary made in Ireland in the 1960s. As stated in Lennon’s commentary, the film is ‘an attempt to reconstruct, in images, the plight of a community which survived nearly 700 years of English occupation and then nearly sank under the weight of its own heroes and clergy’.

Through a series of interviews with Conor Cruise O’Brien, Father Michael Cleary, Sean ‘ Faolain and others, the film paints an uncompromising picture of a society straining under the weight of social and religious traditions while at the same time attempting to deal with a growing youth culture and debates about contraception, emigration and censorship.

Ireland, 1968.
Black and white.
70 mins.