Stranger Than Fiction 2006

[excerpt from a post originally appearing on the blog "Tales from the Freakpit"]

As you know, I'm rather fond of documentaries. As you may or may not know, I'm also rather fond of Dublin. When I discovered then that the Irish Film Institute was running a documentary film festival (entitled Stranger Than Fiction) it seemed like a decent idea for a wee holiday - so that's where I was at the weekend.

The festival, although only a few days long, struck a healthy balance between short films and feature length contributions, brand new films and those that you may have missed, and a nice blend of international films and Irish works. Despite allowing myself plenty of time to do tourist-type things, I managed to squeeze in a dozen of the films on offer.

CELTIC - THE IRISH CONNECTION is a documentary examining the Irish roots of the famous Glasgow football team. I should say up front that I am not a fan, but thought the subject would be interesting. Unfortunately the most interesting part of the story (Irish immigrants fleeing the great famine were greeted with hostility by Scots, leading to the formation of a charitable football club to aid them) is covered only briefly in the opening part of the film and from then on the film concentrates more on telling us how wonderful Celtic is.

Don't get me wrong, I expected something along those lines - the film is, after all, clearly not aimed at an audience of people like me so much as it is at Celtic fans - but the vision it presents is a little too unbalanced for my liking. Watching this film, you'd think that Celtic have been the innocent victims of anti-Catholic or anti-Irish bigotry ever since they were founded over a hundred years ago, and that they are being unfairly picked on by the rest of the country right up until today, including the media and the Scottish Football Association. While I admit there is still trouble with bigotry in Scotland, it seems wrong to paint it as universal or as being so one-sided, and this gives the film a faintly paranoid tone in places.

Again, I'd have expected this anyway since it is obviously aimed at Celtic fans, but regardless of who the intended audience is, there is no excuse for one of the comments that follows.

When discussing the persecution faced by Celtic's Neil Lennon when he joined the club (over his decision to play for Northern Ireland), it is correctly pointed out that the treatment he received (including death threats) was shocking. I freely admit that the treatment Lennon received was nothing short of disgraceful. However, one of the contributors to the film then states that when the other teams in Scotland play Celtic and their supporters boo Lennon, they are all booing him for the same reason.

This is a ridiculous accusation and no evidence is given to show that this is the case at all. By leaving such a statement in the film, essentially allowing one of the contributors to brand the rest of Scottish football's supporters as bigots, the director has taken the film from beyond a slight Celtic bias and turns it into what must be, in my humble opinion, an extremely irresponsible example of documentary filmmaking.

I did enjoy many of the other Irish films on offer however.

THE GHOSTS OF DUFFY'S CUT tells the story of 57 Irish settlers who moved to America during the great famine to find work and, within six weeks of arriving, were all dead, buried in an unmarked mass grave. Part documentary, part reconstruction, part ghost story, this tale of bigotry and fear finally tells the story of what happened to the men, a fate that was a mystery until very recently. The film was shot and shown in HD too, so it looked very nice indeed.

Enjoyable but not quite as impressive was THE CONNEMARA MONSTER, a film that details the attempts to locate a monster that is reported to lurk in the depths of a lake in Ireland. The film allows the audience to make up its own mind, but ultimately that's the biggest flaw - you come away from the film without really thinking any differently.

The most impressive of all the Irish films that I saw had to be BLOODY SUNDAY: A DERRY DIARY. This film chronicles (or attempts to chronicle) what happened on that day in 1972 when British paratroopers killed 13 unarmed civilians on a civil rights march in Derry, and charts the aftermath of events as well. The film analyses the original event, the controversial investigation that followed and the eyewitness accounts, building up to the new tribunal that was set up, whose results are expected early next year.

Sure to be controversial, the film is more balanced than I expected it to be. While the finger is still firmly pointed at the British soldiers, there still seems to be an element of doubt over one or two of the civilian eye witness stories too. The film ends by saying that more recordings will be made following the results of the tribunal, but the film is powerful enough as it stands.