Film Screening: Ireland Behind The Wire - Berwick Street Collective 1974

Film Screening: Ireland: Behind The Wire (1974) - Berwick Street Collective:

"Unlike their counterparts in mainstream TV news, the investigative Berwick Street Film Collective were given exclusive access to Belfast's Catholic community. The testimonies and footage of life 'behind the wire' that they captured amounts to a grim but arresting picture of Northern Ireland at the height of The Troubles. Ireland - Behind the Wire is a now regarded as a landmark of the 1970s oppositional cinema movement.

As well as using film to convey alternative viewpoints to those aired via established news channels, the Collective embraced formal experiment, perhaps influenced by the work of Jean Luc Godard and Chris Marker. The film signalled the beginning of what is often called the reflexive tradition in documentary film in the UK. It may seem surprising that the BFI Experimental Fund committed state funds to a film that so outspokenly opposed government policies and practices. One of the Collective's founding members, Marc Karlin, later revealed that the Special Branch seized some of their original footage and the Ministry of Defence pressurised ACTT, the film technicians' union, into erasing some of the frames."