Irish Film Institute -The Ghosts of Duffy’s Cut

The Ghosts of Duffy’s Cut

Director: Stephen Rooke and Ruan Magan

2006| 52 mins Ireland


In April 1832, fifty-seven young Irishmen left the port of Derry in search of a better life in America. Landing in Philadelphia they found work building one of the new world’s earliest stretches of railroad. A mere six weeks later, all 57 men were dead, buried in an unmarked mass grave in a valley known today as Duffy’s Cut. For 170 years, the circumstances surrounding their deaths lay shrouded in a haze of mystery, folklore and ghostly tales. The truth might have forever remained hidden had not Bill Watson, a Pennsylvania historian, and his brother Frank, a Lutheran minister, discovered an old file titled ‘Duffy’s Cut’ buried among their grandfather’s papers. It revealed the true story of the men who are said to haunt this stretch of the American railroad – an extraordinary story of exploitation, bigotry, neglect and the dark side of the American dream…
The director will attend the screening.
This film will be screened on High Definition.

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