Rocky Road To Dublin

Peter Lennon
Ireland | 1968 | 68mins | Beta | Black & White

Rocky Road To Dublin might be considered a guide to what shouldn’t happen after a revolution. It was one of the few independent documentaries made in Ireland in the 1960s. Peter Lennon persuaded Raoul Coutard, the renowned cinematographer of the French New Wave, to come to Ireland and help him take a raw look at the state of the nation. Lennon described the film as "an attempt to reconstruct, in images, the plight of a community which survived nearly 700 years of English occupation and then nearly sank under the weight of its own heroes and clergy"

Through a series of interviews with Conor Cruise O'Brien, Fr Michael Cleary, Sean O’Faolain, the patriotic secretary of the GAA, censors and "brain-washed" children, the film paints an uncompromising picture of a society straining under the pressure of social and religious traditions, while at the same time attempting to deal with a growing youth culture and debates about contraception, emigration and censorship. It reveals the truth about the then repressed, suppressed and massively censored republic.

One of the three or four most beautiful documentaries that cinema has given us – Cahiers Du Cinema

A documentary like no other. This one is tender and sarcastic. In one hour, ten minutes we learn a thousand things about his country. Astonishing – Paris Match

The Making Of Rocky Road

Paul Duane
Ireland | 2004 | 27mins | Beta | Colour

A new documentary in which Peter Lennon and Raoul Coutard tell the hidden story of Rocky Road To Dublin. After its very limited run in Dublin’s International Cinema in 1968, the film stirred up considerable controversy, (Lennon was accused of being "anti-everything" by The Evening Herald). At this point, Lennon returned to Paris and the story took a somewhat bizarre turn. He submitted the film to Cannes, and it became one of only eight films selected. Immediately after the film was screened, Godard and Truffaud entered the cinema and announced that in sympathy with the student revolution, they were closing down the festival.

The film has rare footage of a mammoth debate which lasted a continuous three days and two nights between students and the filmmakers about the art and culture of cinema which took place in the Sorbonne, Paris. The film also contains BBC documentary footage of Lennon and Coutard at work in Dublin in 1967. Coutard, now 80, goes on camera and explains his feelings about working in Ireland at that time.

In Ireland, the film was suffocated for more than three decades; never given a full theatrical release and never shown on Irish television. Rocky Road To Dublin was restored this year by the Irish Film Archive.