The Making of 'Rocky Road to Dublin'
Icarus Films
•
26m
Directed by Paul Duane • Documentary • With Peter Lennon, Raoul Coutard • 2005 • 27 minutes
This documentary reunites director Peter Lennon and cinematographer Raoul Coutard, who recount the making of their then controversial but now classic documentary on Ireland in the Sixties. Rocky Road to Dublin was screened for only a few weeks at a single Dublin theater and was critically condemned and accused of being Communist-funded. But as Lennon explains, while the Irish saw Rocky Road to Dublin as an insult, the French saw it as a film.
Rocky Road to Dublin was selected for the prestigious Critics' Week at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, where it was the last film publicly screened before the festival was stopped in solidarity with the then-erupting May '68 events in Paris. During that tumultuous period, Rocky Road to Dublin was screened numerous times throughout Paris by student groups, with whom the film's theme of "What do you do with your revolution once you've got it" obviously struck a responsive chord.
In addition to scenes of the May '68 protests in Paris, THE MAKING OF ROCKY ROAD TO DUBLIN features rare Cannes footage of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut demanding that the festival be shut down and the argumentative responses from Peter Lennon and others in the audience. The documentary also reprises key scenes from the original film, contrasted with a return to some of its locations nearly forty years later.
The now-80-year-old Coutard relates his memorable experiences of making the film and his impressions of Ireland at the time, while Peter Lennon details the film's largely negative critical reception in Ireland and the neglect into which it had fallen before it was finally restored by the Irish Film Institute in 2004.
"Highly Recommended!" —Educational Media Reviews Online
Up Next in Icarus Films
-
The Mesmerist
Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2003 • 16 minutes
The film is a re-edit of a deteriorated nitrate print of "The Bells" (1926), starring Lionel Barrymore and Boris Karloff.
Bill Frisell, guitar; Tony Scherr, bass; Kenny Wollesen, drums.
-
The Miners' Hymns
Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2011 • 52 minutes
The ill-fated coal mining communities in North East England are the subject of this inspired documentary by multi-media artist Bill Morrison. Their story is told entirely without words, yet the film is far from silent: it features a rem...
-
The Nine Muses
Directed by John Akomfrah • Documentary • 2010 • 94 minutes
Structured as an allegorical fable set between 1949 and 1970, THE NINE MUSES is comprised of nine overlapping musical chapters that mix archival material with original scenes. Together, they form a stylized, idiosyncratic retelling of t...