Join us for a screening and discussion of the controversial 1968 documentary The Rocky Road to Dublin.

A brilliant, energetic and daring piece of documentary filmmaking, featuring music from ‘The Dubliners’, ‘Rocky Road To Dublin’ challenged the political establishment of 1960’s Ireland and it shattered the country’s complacent view of itself as a liberated country.

Peter Lennon directs this 1968 film contrasting the aspirations of the founders of the state with the ideological malaise afflicting the Ireland that had emerged. As Lennon comments “this 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”.

Inspired by the French New Wave, the film critiques Irish society through interviews with public and private figures and through the cinematography of New Wave’s Raoul Coutard who captures the action in pubs and on pitches, in schoolyards and graveyards, hospital wards and tennis club dances on his discreet 16mm camera.

Film is 1 hour 10 mins. Followed by discussion.

Description supplied by the event organiser.