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Director
Brendan J. Byrne
Credits
Producer:Trevor Birney
Category
Documentary
This film was released 5th August 2016, and is no longer screening. In the spring of 1981 Bobby Sands, a Republican prisoner in Belfast’s H-Block, began a sixty-six day hunger strike which drew the attention of the world to his campaign for recognition as a political prisoner. This focus on the Northern Irish conflict would eventually trigger efforts to resolve it. While Brendan J. Byrne’s energetic new documentary chronicles Sands’ physical deterioration over the course of the sixty-six days, it is never prurient or mawkish and focuses instead on the body politic – on Sands’ beliefs as outlined in his prison diaries, on the divided community into which he was born and the Republican history which informed his politicisation as a young man. It is crafted with rigor and balance and draws on a striking array of archive material, animation, reconstruction and interviews from a range of political perspectives to understand rather than embellish the creation of a mythic martyr. Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn
105 minutes, Ireland, 2016, Colour
BALTIMORE 16.40
CLOSE YOUR EYES 13.00
IO CAPITANO 14.00
OPPONENT 15.40, 18.10
PERFECT DAYS 20:40
THE DAYS OF TREES 16.20, 20.30
THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE 13.30, 20.50
THE ZONE OF INTEREST 18:25 18.25
The IFI is supported by The Arts Council