The Irish Film & Television Academy hosted a special screening of the documentary directed by Brendan J. Byrne, which tells the story of Bobby Sands.
Bobby Sands 66 Days received a unanimously positive response from IFTA Academy Members.
This year represents the 35th Anniversary of Sands’ death, who died at the young age of 27.
The film's producer Trevor Birney, lead the IFTA audience through through the process of bringing this important project to life, discussing his own experience of the political climate and what the audience response is like so far. The interview was facilitated by One Million Dubliners’ director Aoife Kelliher.
Bobby Sands from Rathcoole in Northern Ireland, became the most infamous figure as leader of the Northern Ireland hunger strikes when he died from self-inflicted starvation on May 5th, 1981, in protest for better rights from the British Government for IRA prisoners within the H Bloc prison in Belfast. The 27-year-old Sands and his comrades opposed the presence of British rule in Northern Ireland and further disputed their non-classification as political prisoners, through the 'dirty' protest and eventually the hunger strikes.
The story traces the youth’s early days in Rathcoole to the H block cells of Long Kesh, to becoming MP for Fermanagh Tyrone South and eventually dying of starvation. A rich milieu of archival and animated content including news footage and Sands’ own diaries punctuate the crucial events which lead to his death and the political repercussions which followed.
Following the screening at the Lighthouse Cinema in Smithfield, Birney first offers his earlier memories of Sands. His and Byrne’s first experiences of Bobby Sands were strikingly different, with Birney living in Fermanagh South Tyrone at the time of Sands’ election and Byrne living in the midst of Belfast violence.
He recalls: “I was playing soccer with some friends and I remember an uncle of mine coming up to me and saying, ‘Well this is the day that we now know there are 30,000 provos living in Fermanagh South Tyrone.‘ I always remember that being a startling statistic, which to me meant that everyone that I saw in Enniskillen or the people around me, were all members of the IRA as far as my uncle was concerned."
Questions put to Birney by Kelliher include the difficulty of getting the BBC involved in a film which would inevitably evoke a negative response with a portion of the home audience, to the absence of the Sands family and the involvement of Gerry Adams.
Birney tells us key funders are the Irish Film Board the BBC in both Northern Ireland and London. Editor of BBC’s Storyville approached the team following their pitch at IDFA, the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam.
He stated: “That was a revelation and a very important moment for us. We thought it may have been a nettle which he wouldn’t want to grasp but he immediately saw the story and immediately wanted to be involved.”
Birney also reminds us that even with this year being the 35th anniversary of Sands’ death, understanding what motivated these men firstly to violence and secondly to hunger strike is still relevant to this generation. He begins by restating that Sands died at the young age of 27 and continues:
“I think that’s something that we have always got to be very conscious of, particularly when we see the events in France and Germany that somebody who is prepared to take their own life for something that they absolutely, totally believe in.”
