Rethink Rebuild Society is pleased to invite you to a screening of the film:
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Directed by Ken Loach
Where: RR Multi-facility room, Unit 7, Longsight Business Park, Hamilton Road, Manchester, M13 0PD
When: Sunday 7 February, 6:30 pm.
NB. Please arrive on time as the film will start at 6:45 pm exactly.
Certificate: 15. (For Parents Guide, see link http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460989/parentalguide?ref_=tt_stry_pg#certif...
Runtime: 127 min. In English with Arabic subtitle.
The screening will be followed by a short discussion in Arabic
Tea, coffee and biscuits are also provided. Donations encouraged to cover our expenses (£1 per person and 50p if unwaged).
Come along to what promises to be a powerful and thought-provoking film and discussion.
The film:
It is a fim about Ireland, but its resonance with the Syrian cause is more than obvious.
“You don't have to know about the history of "the troubles" in Northern Ireland to be swept up in the human drama of Ken Loach's ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley’, which won the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.” (Roger Ebert)
In 1920, rural Ireland is the vicious battlefield of republican rebels against the British security forces and Irish Unionist population who oppose them, a recipe for mutual cruelty. Medical graduate Damien O'Donovan always gave priority to his socialist ideals and simply helping people in need. Just when he's leaving Ireland to work in a highly reputed London hospital, witnessing gross abuse of commoners changes his mind. He returns and joins the local IRA brigade, commanded by his brother Teddy, and adopts the merciless logic of civil war, while Teddy mellows by experiencing first-hand endless suffering. When IRA leaders negotiate an autonomous Free State under the British crown, Teddy defends the pragmatic best possible deal at this stage. Damien however joins the large seceding faction which holds nothing less than a socialist republic will do. The result is another civil war, bloodily opposing former Irish comrades in arms, even the brothers.
“It is as alive and as troubling as anything on the evening news, though far more thoughtful and beautiful”. (New York Times)
“T’was hard the woeful words to frame to break the ties that bound us / But harder still to bear the shame of foreign chains around us.” (The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Robert Dwyer Joyce (1830-1883)).
