Skip to main content

Birkbeck to host film screenings exploring Ireland and the UK’s relationship

Event is part of the Irish Film Festival's 1916 Commemorations series

On Saturday 26 November, the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI) will hold a special screening day at Birkbeck Cinema to explore Ireland and the UK’s changing relationship in the 1980s. The day will include screenings of Maeve (Pat Murphy, 1981), Daisy Chain (Polly Devlin, 1990), Over Here: Irish Dance and Music in England (Carlo Gebler, 1981), and selected works of Vivienne Dick, plus discussion with directors Pat Murphy and Vivienne Dick. Other highlights include In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan, 1993) and Born & Reared (Henrietta Norton, 2016), a moving new film which examines the effects that the troubles have had and continue to have on men in contemporary Northern Ireland.

The event is part of a longer film series, supported by BIMI, whose aim is to reflect on a cultural conversation between the UK and Ireland over the last century, as seen by filmmakers. The Irish Film Festival London 1916 Commemorations Film Series (3-24 November 2016) has been organised to mark the centenary of the 1916 Rising, an event that reverberated around the world during the period where the imperial powers were mired in the Great War. The Rising decisively changed the long-standing, intimate relations between Ireland and the United Kingdom and has continued to shape the contours of the two countries’ association well into the current century. 

The series invites viewers to consider how cinema has expressed the state of Anglo-Irish relations over the last century, as well as detailing historical events as they occurred.  It seeks to challenge British and Irish audiences of today to reflect together on how the people of the two countries have connected, conversed and changed, over the past century.

The series has been curated by Professor Lance Pettitt (Associate Tutor at Birkbeck), Kelly O’Connor (Irish Film Festival London), Sunniva O’Flynn (Irish Film Institute), and is part of the Culture Ireland /DFA 1916 international programme.

[Image credit: Vivienne Dick]

More news about: