Filmmaker Bríona Nic Dhiarmada: “The 1916 Irish Rising is not only an event with historical and current ramifications, it is also a story of real men and women who participated in or witnessed epoch-making events.”
“We aimed to present this pivotal historical event to a broad audience in an accessible manner that is both serious and informative, but also highly visual and evocative,” says Nic Dhiarmada, who will be joined on the panel by other experts.
“The 1916 Irish Rising is not only an event with historical and current ramifications, it is also a story of real men and women who participated in or witnessed epoch-making events. This is a specific story, but one with universal echoes. It is a story of heroism and of cowardice, of mercy and of cruelty, of victory and of defeat.”
In a centenary year marked by hundreds of Easter Rising commemorations, conferences, publications and other initiatives in Ireland and throughout the worldwide Irish Diaspora, the feature-length film stands out for its rare footage of the uprising, and the large cast of researchers and archivists who were interviewed.
An ambitious effort to present the Rising in an accessible and compelling way, the documentary also critically reconsiders the event’s historical significance for Ireland and beyond.
One of Ireland’s most famous sons, Liam Neeson, narrates the film. In an interview with The Irish Independent, he praised the project’s success at finding "footage that's quite phenomenal, and information that's quite phenomenal. There are images there that really took my breath away because I had never seen them."
Screening the widely acclaimed big-budget production represents a coup for Concordia. The university is the only Canadian stop in the film’s current international tour, which includes screenings not only in the U.S., UK. and Ireland, but also in France, Hungary, Estonia, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, India and Argentina.
“It’s fitting that Concordia and Notre Dame, the premier centres of Irish Studies in Canada and in the U.S. respectively, are working together to remember and reconsider the Easter Rising,” Foster observes.
“The goal of Reframing 1916 is to capture the imagination of the wider Concordia community and Montrealers of all backgrounds, while promoting rigorous debate and discussion of this pivotal event’s complex history and legacies.”
The symposium, ‘Reframing 1916’: History and Legacies of the Easter Rising, runs from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, September 21, in Room H-1001.01 of the Henry F. Hall Building (1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.) on Concordia’s Sir George Williams Campus.
The film screening of 1916: The Irish Rebellion and panel discussion runs later that evening from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. in the D.B. Clarke Theatre, located in the Henry F. Hall Building.
Both the symposium and the film screening are free and open to the public.
