Docs Ireland Podcast Docs Ireland

Eamonn McCann joins us for this screening and discussion.

We screen a group discussion from 1988 he took part in, after the  screening Eamonn will reflect on his experience of it looking back.

After Dark was a groundbreaking reinvention of the discussion programme  format: live and with no scheduled end time. Broadcast on both Channel 4  and the BBC from 1987 to 2003. Each episode featured up to eight  guests, all invited as they had personal experience of the subject being  debated. The aim was to present a full range of arguments by selecting  guests that had divergent opinions on the subject and crossed boundaries  of age, sex, religion, class, and nationality.

Eamonn is interviewed by Hugh Odling-Smee

It is within the realm of what  has become commonly known as ‘artist moving image’ that we continue to  encounter models for documentary film practice that are for the most  part utterly unlike those we have otherwise become accustomed to.

This programme curated for Docs Ireland by aemi (www.aemi.ie)  – an organisation dedicated to the support and exhibition of artist and  experimental moving image practices – takes its focus primarily on  Irish filmmakers and artists, each working outside or stretching the  limits of what we traditionally recognise as documentary film.

Material legacies

Grace Weir, Dust Defying Gravity, 2004, 4 minutes

Grace Weir, A Reflection in Light, 2015, 21 mins

Renèe Helèna Browne, Daddy’s Boy, 2020, 22 mins

Coleen Fitzgibbon, Trip to Carolee, 1974, 5 mins

Kelly Gallagher, Pearl Pistols, 2014, 3 minutes

Amanda Rice, Death in Geological Time, 2018, 4 minutes

Alice Rekab, Migration Sings, 2020, 2 minute

Chronicling the extraordinary rise of one of the most colorful and  controversial religious movements in American history, Hail Satan? is an  inspiring and entertaining new feature documentary from acclaimed  director Penny Lane (Nuts!, Our Nixon).

The discussion, chaired by BBC journalist William Crawley, was with renowned academic Dr. Andrew Sneddon and author Phil Harrison.

This panel is made up of renowned American documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Enron: the Smartest  Guys in the Room, No Stone Unturned), Barry McCaffrey (Journalist, No Stone Unturned), Sean Murray (Unquiet Graves), Kathryn  Johnstone (NUJ) and panel moderator Susan McKay (Writer & Journalist).

Having been through arrest, questioning, hearings, bail and seizure  of work related materials in recent days, documentary filmmakers Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey have been released from police bail.  This decision represents a  victory for the journalists and press freedom campaigners and a  humiliating climbdown for police.  The authorities will now face fresh  pressure to find the Loughinisland murderers, the subject of the  documentary at the heart of the issue in the film ‘No Stone Unturned’.

Documentarian Sean Murray, worked with relatives of victims, local campaign groups and journalist Ann Cadwallader, writer of ‘Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland’ to  produce the detailed and brilliant documentary ‘Unquiet Graves’.   Murray’s film gives an indepth account of the workings of the ‘Glenanne  Gang’ responsible for scores of murders during the Troubles, who also  feature in Gibney’s ‘No Stone Unturned’.

The importance of art in social  action and activism has long been demonstrated - as a tool to create  visibility, encourage conversation and stimulate change.

With a focus on the Marriage Equality and Abortion Rights  campaigns in ROI and NI, Activists and Filmmakers involved in these  campaigns discuss how recent referendum victories in the Republic (and  the films created for these campaigns) have affected Northern Ireland.  How best can our activist communities work together to use art and film  as an agent for change?

Speakers: Gillian Callan (Director, Equal), Treasa O’Brien (Director, Town of  Strangers), Anna Rodgers (Director, Strong At The Broken Places).  The Panel was chaired by Wuraola Majekodunmi (Broadcaster and Video-maker).

Irish civil rights leader Bernadette McAliskey, former PUP press officer Sophie Long, columnist & editor of ‘Repeal the 8th’ Una Mulally and writer, broadcaster Paul Gosling join moderator, journalist and writer Susan McKay, to consider the state of the place, in our State of the Nation panel.

Northern Ireland is in the eye of the political storm; this tiny  region and its irreconcilable border has both the UK and EU over a  barrel in the Brexit process.

What does the Irish border now mean, for the people of the north and  south?  What would a border along the Irish Sea mean for Unionists in  NI?  We look at the arguments from a historical, political, cultural and  economic point of view and look to the future of the island of Ireland.