Irish Civil War

Does anyone know of any good, easy to find documentaries detailing the rise of the IRA and the Irish Civil War? My wife is looking for a video she can show on the topic for a class she's teaching.

Bryant wrote:Does anyone know of any good, easy to find documentaries detailing the rise of the IRA and the Irish Civil War? My wife is looking for a video she can show on the topic for a class she's teaching.

Well, if you're looking for something of a more fictional nature, there was a good RTE/BBC collaboration in the early '90s called "The Treaty", should be easy enough to get hold of maybe (might even be free on youtube).

Have never really seen all that many other good documentaries about it, it's actually a topic that isn't really talked about over here much, and is generally glossed over a lot in school. It was a very vicious civil war even by the normal standards of such things, it was full of atrocities on both sides and it often literally split families, with fathers on one side fighting sons on the other, and brother fighting brother. Even today, our two main political parties are pretty much made up of the opposing parties in the civil war.

Miles1 wrote:

Bryant wrote:Does anyone know of any good, easy to find documentaries detailing the rise of the IRA and the Irish Civil War? My wife is looking for a video she can show on the topic for a class she's teaching.

Well, if you're looking for something of a more fictional nature, there was a good RTE/BBC collaboration in the early '90s called "The Treaty", should be easy enough to get hold of maybe (might even be free on youtube).

Have never really seen all that many other good documentaries about it, it's actually a topic that isn't really talked about over here much, and is generally glossed over a lot in school. It was a very vicious civil war even by the normal standards of such things, it was full of atrocities on both sides and it often literally split families, with fathers on one side fighting sons on the other, and brother fighting brother. Even today, our two main political parties are pretty much made up of the opposing parties in the civil war.

Thanks. I found it in 22 pieces on Youtube, but the video quality is rather lacking. Strange thing, I cant find any reference to the film on RTE or BBC's websites.

I looked the film up on WorldCat.org (catalog of most public and university library inventories), and the nearest copy is a VHS tape kept in the Stanford University Library 137 miles away. I'm guessing this film wasn't nearly as widely distributed as Michael Collins?

Bryant wrote:
I looked the film up on WorldCat.org (catalog of most public and university library inventories), and the nearest copy is a VHS tape kept in the Stanford University Library 137 miles away. I'm guessing this film wasn't nearly as widely distributed as Michael Collins?

You can't get it? Strange, is on TV here around once a year, would have thought it was more widely available.

"Michael Collins" was a big Hollywood effort with big-name actors, this one was a made-for-tv job with one semi-well-known (in ireland anyway) actor. Bit of a difference in distribution budget :-)

If your wife is looking at showing some movie, then skip "Michael Collins" and look up "The Wind That Shakes The Barley". Isn't a "big picture" movie as it doesn't go in for the big overall sweep of the civil war (the treaty negotiations etc), but it shows the effect on a small community with a few main characters.