Learning Beyond the Classics: Screening the Irish Troubles
Directed by Steve McQueen
With Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Liam McMahon
Not Rated, 96 minutes, Blu-ray
Steve McQueen, who would later direct 12 Years a Slave, began his feature directorial career with this biopic of Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) and other Republican prisoners jailed in Northern Ireland who performed hunger strikes in 1981. The film chronicles the various strikes performed by the group prior to the hunger strikes that garnered worldwide attention while also teasing apart the moral questions inherent to incarceration and self-punishing activism.
Discussion following by Bríona Nic Dhiarmada, Thomas J. & Kathleen M. O'Donnell Professor of Irish Studies and Concurrent Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre