When the British Foreign office warned its embassies that The Patriot Game, a new documentary about the Northern Irish Troubles, was “damaging and highly critical of Her Majesty’s Government,” director Arthur MacCaig welcomed it as “the best review I ever had.” MacCaig, a leftist Irish-American, had been inspired by the stark disparity he perceived between the tribal, religious conflict he saw depicted in the media, and what he experienced on the ground as a struggle between “the colonizer and the colonized.” Produced as his graduate film from the French film school IDHEC, with assistance from Chris Marker’s radical film collective Iskra, The Patriot Game is a searingly intense history of the conflict rooted in an unapologetically socialist point of view and distinguished by MacCaig’s rare insider access to the Provisional IRA.
Joint discounted ticket available with Irish Ways
With thanks to Donal Foreman
Presented by Wavelength
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dir. Arthur MacCaig
year: 1979
country: Ireland/France
run-time: 93 minutes
Doors 545pm
Film 615pm
£6.00/4.50 concessions
Joint ticket with Irish Ways
£10/9 concessions
“Thorough and thoughtful... Mr. MacCaig’s film, by dissecting the situation so coolly, helps emphasize the anguish, the bitterness and the confusion. Regardless of how one may feel about its politics, it is a worthy and well made documentary”
“The best overview of the Northern Irish conflict that we’ve seen... a lucid and knowledgeable introduction put together with skill and sensitivity”
““This extraordinary and moving documentary reviews ten years of armed warfare by the IRA and places today’s headlines in their proper political and economic context. Through vivid footage of street battles and interviews with participants, THE PATRIOT GAME forcefully debunks the twin myths that the IRA is a ‘terrorist organization’ fighting ‘a religious war.’”
“Informative, vivid, and partisan. The footage of urban guerillas is extraordinary. I’ve seen a number of films on Northern Ireland, none have depicted the situation this graphically.”