Latest / MUBI Podcast / Ireland tells its own tales (w/ KNEECAP director Rich Peppiatt)

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Ireland tells its own tales (w/ KNEECAP director Rich Peppiatt) · MUBI Podcast

• 0:00
  Heads up, this episode includes adult language, explicit sexual content, references to drugs and political violence, and spoilers.
• 0:11
  So as we start a new kinda globetrotting season of this show, I want to take you back to fall 2007 and my first trip as an overseas reporter for American Public Radio.
• 0:23
  It spoiled me forever.
• 0:25
  That's 'cause it was a trip to Ireland.
• 0:27
  The easiest place on earth to be a reporter.
• 0:30
  See, most times it's hard to convince people to talk when you pull out a microphone.
• 0:34
  In Ireland, they see a microphone and come running.
• 0:37
  Like, here's my favourite example.
• 0:38
  I was in the town of Knock, just taping the sound in a shop that sold religious artefacts.
• 0:43
  Now €35 and five. Eventually the shop owner offered me a cigarette and as I took it, still recording.
• 0:50
  Suddenly this random, very friendly little woman with a huge smile and twinkling eyes materialises beside us, announces she's from County Galway and asked...
• 0:59
  Have you ever been to Woodford in County Galway?No.You should see what they smoke up there.They make their own cigarettes.
• 1:06
  They make it from ganders faeces.Yeah, that's what she said.
• 1:12
  Ganders faeces. I swear to God, none of this was scripted.
• 1:17
  - What is that?
• 1:17
  - You know, a male goose, a gander?Well, the gander goes along up the mountain and the gander drops his faeceshere and here and here and here.And the people collect up all the gander's faeces, and they roll them upand they make cigarettes out of them, and they smoke them.And not one of them ever had lung cancer.Every one of them has a beautiful, clear voice, and their lungsand their chests are perfect.So this could be a solution--I think everybody should quit the tobacco and smoke gander's faeces.This could be the health breakthrough of the century.- Oh, yes.
• 1:55
  - In Galway.- In County Galway, yeah. In Woodford.
• 1:58
  - Wow.I think you've got to market that.Yeah, I've got to start up my own business now.As soon as I get the grant. If you're wondering.
• 2:11
  No, that's not something they smoke in Woodford.
• 2:13
  And, yes, she was just having fun messing with me.
• 2:16
  Point is, this kind of thing happened to me all the time, all over Ireland.
• 2:21
  It's a country of storytellers just waiting for an excuse to drop a crazy, unexpected tale on you.
• 2:27
  So I was shocked to learn how long it took for them to really get to tell their own stories on screen.
• 2:33
  And for the rest of the world to finally listen up.
• 2:47
  I'm Rico Gagliano, welcome back to the MUBI Podcast.
• 2:51
  MUBI's the streaming service that champions great cinema.
• 2:53
  On this show we tell you the stories behind great cinema.
• 2:56
  Today, just in time for summer travel season, we kick off season eight.
• 2:58
  We are calling it 'Travelling Shots'.
• 3:02
  Every episode I'll take a tour through a different part of the planet to learn about its movie history, dive into its coolest cinema spaces, talk to a few of its best filmmakers, and remind us that wherever you go, film culture matters.
• 3:15
  Everywhere in the world, there needs places like this.
• 3:17
  They are the breeding grounds, the fertile soil of what is later called creative industry or culture.
• 3:24
  And also, I'll admit it, at a moment when a lot of borders and minds seem to be closing, I feel like it's never been more important to get out there, to listen and to learn about the whole wide world.
• 3:34
  So you'll be hearing people in places I taped over the last year in Mexico City, Amsterdam, Istanbul, the strange and exotic land of Los Angeles.
• 3:43
  And we're starting off today in Ireland, a place where for decades, filmmakers like superstar producer Ed Guiney battled against stereotypes.
• 3:51
  We used to say, I don't know if Americans will want to make our movies because they think we're like cute little fiddle playing creatures or whatever.
• 3:59
  But where today they're breaking all kinds of moulds.
• 4:01
  Some of the things that we say in the film are things that no one's ever said here.
• 4:05
  Like for instance?
• 4:06
  Well, I mean, "I want to blow you like a Brighton hotel" would probably be one.
• 4:11
  That's newly minted Irish citizen Rich Peppiatt, director of the stereotype smashing, boundary exploding movie Kneecap.
• 4:17
  And I talked to him, acting legend Fiona Shaw and many more about how this region of only like 7 million people has come to take global film culture by storm on its own terms.
• 4:28
  So prepare for takeoff.
• 4:30
  We're going to go check out Ireland's cinema scene, past and present.
• 4:38
  So you probably know the island of Ireland is divided, politically.
• 4:42
  There's the Republic of Ireland, which is part of the EU, and there's Northern Ireland, part of the UK.
• 4:48
  We're going to get to both in this episode, but I started with a tour of the Republic's movie history.
• 4:53
  It kicked off on a sunny, super festive March day in Dublin beside a statue of the unlikely godfather of Irish cinema.
• 5:02
  A guy better known as a local literary giant.
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  Author James Joyce.
• 5:06
  So the James Joyce statue is located here on North Earl Street, almost city centre. Literally.
• 5:15
  That's Josh Newman. He is a curator at Dublin's James Joyce Institute.
• 5:19
  And as we gaze at the human sized statue version of Joyce, First thing I notice is...
• 5:24
  he doesn't look particularly happy.
• 5:26
  Yes, I've been trying to find a photo in which he smiles.
• 5:29
  I cannot find one.
• 5:30
  You know the most, maybe there's like a little smirk.
• 5:33
  Kind of like that.
• 5:33
  But yeah, he didn't like to smile.
• 5:35
  I should say. His teeth were terrible.
• 5:37
  He just had really awful teeth.
• 5:38
  So maybe he had a reason not to smile.
• 5:40
  Yeah.
• 5:43
  But just a few blocks away, past a street busker down a busy shopping avenue, Josh leads me to a spot where once stood maybe another reason for Joyce's perma-frown: the ill fated birthplace of Irish moviegoing.
• 5:57
  So we are standing in front of Penneys, a department store.
• 6:01
  What this used to be is the Volta Cinema or the Cinemagraph Volta that was established here December 20th, 1909 by James Joyce.
• 6:11
  This was Ireland's first movie theatre.
• 6:17
  Now, Joyce first fell in love with movies in Trieste, Italy, where he'd actually moved to escape Ireland.
• 6:23
  Hard to blame him.
• 6:23
  At the turn of the century, his homeland wasn't a great spot for artistic visionaries.
• 6:28
  Poor, kind of provincial, still ruled by Britain and dominated by the conservative Catholic Church.
• 6:33
  But Joyce hadn't published anything yet, and living in Trieste wasn't cheap, so...
• 6:39
  He thought to himself like, Dublin is a larger city than Trieste, and yet it doesn't have a movie theatre.
• 6:44
  So he decided to represent these investors who had some, a few movie theatres.
• 6:48
  And in Austro-Hungary, Bucharest, what have you.
• 6:52
  He took 10% of the profits by making the arrangements to set up a theatre here.
• 6:57
  Only problem, the Volta Cinema didn't make any profits.
• 7:00
  Apparently, the movies didn't do very well because that theatre showed mostly Italian films.
• 7:07
  Why did they only show Italian films?
• 7:10
  Because they were Italian investors.
• 7:12
  They owned the theatre, and I guess they didn't really think about that.
• 7:16
  Neither had Joyce.
• 7:16
  He liked Italian movies.
• 7:18
  For him, this was just further evidence of his homeland's isolation and closed mindedness.
• 7:23
  Two months after opening the Volta, he quit and headed back to Trieste.
• 7:27
  So I think, you know, Ireland does owe Joyce some gratitude in bringing cinema to Ireland, even if he kind of mishandled it.
• 7:35
  Still not a great start for Irish film culture.
• 7:39
  And even by the late 1940s, when the Irish Republic had got its independence and local movie palaces were wisely showing English language movies...
• 7:48
  things weren't great.
• 7:50
  In the early years of the state, there was no film production here.
• 7:53
  The country couldn't afford it.
• 7:54
  And also as a very conventionally Catholic country, the church was against Hollywood and it was against film.
• 8:01
  That's Ruth Barton, she is a professor of film studies at Dublin's Trinity College.
• 8:05
  And they thought Hollywood films were just filth.
• 8:08
  We had a very highly censored film exhibition sector, and they particularly hated kind of, you know, high kicking chorus girls.
• 8:14
  They even blamed the high level of female emigration on too much watching Hollywood movies.
• 8:20
  That women were leaving Ireland because they saw Hollywood movies, and they were like"Hey, I could be a showgirl.
• 8:23
  That would be fun." Yeah. That's right.
• 8:26
  "Oh, wow. Look at the lives other people have. I'm out of here!" So, like, how much were movies censored?
• 8:29
  How bad was it?
• 8:32
  One of the very famous examples is Gone With the Wind where they cut the birth sequence.
• 8:38
  You couldn't show babies being born, right?
• 8:39
  That's dirty.
• 8:39
  So they cut the birth sequence.
• 8:42
  They cut any suggestion that there's an unhappy marriage at the centre of the film and they cut the film so rigorously that it fundamentally made no sense at all when you watched it.
• 8:53
  And so there was a kind of game of going to the movies and actually trying to work out what the plot of the story was.
• 9:00
  The society wasn't exactly encouraging film going, and therefore certainly not filmmaking.
• 9:05
  So, ironically...
• 9:06
  In the place of indigenous Irish filmmaking, you get Hollywood coming in and making things like The Quiet Man, for instance.
• 9:17
  Which came out in 1952 and really defined a vision of Irishness that ever since people have been responding to one way or another, whether they love it and want to reproduce it, or whether they hate it and want to do anything but The Quiet Man.
• 9:31
  Yeah, this would be a rom com directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne as an American who comes back to the little Irish village of his birth at first to buy his childhood cottage, and then to woo a fiery Irish gal who he first lays eyes on while she is literally herding sheep across a rolling field of emerald green.
• 9:51
  Hey, is that real?- She couldn't be.
• 9:54
  - Ah, nonsense, man.It's only a mirage brought on by your terrible thirst. It's Barry Fitzgerald playing the kind of Irish leprechaun.
• 10:04
  You've got these jolly, sort of singing, drinking, happy-go-lucky Irish villages where nobody works, everybody has a good time. Nobody needs to earn money.
• 10:13
  It is a pleasant evening and we will have a drink.There was a wild colonial boyJack Duggan was his nameHe was born and bred in Ireland And at the same time you get this celebration of Irish scenery.
• 10:36
  And The Quiet Man was shot in Technicolour, so it does look pretty stunning.
• 10:40
  The movie was an international hit, even with a lot of Irish audiences, who mostly took it as an enjoyable goof.
• 10:45
  Oh, I think that's probably, probably the best way to approach it.
• 10:47
  Not as a documentary.
• 10:50
  And if you go back to the reviews in the Irish papers, they're mostly saying, "Okay"John Ford was having a good time and this is a pretty funny film" but nobody's taking it seriously.
• 10:59
  Except for two groups: Ireland's tourism industry, which earned serious bank off a tourism boom after the movie, and the first wave of home-grown Irish filmmakers for whom The Quiet Man provided a set of stereotypes to be demolished.
• 11:17
  Except for two groups: When you start to get an Irish film industry really in the 1970s, which started as a very kind of low budget avant garde, they were just appalled by this film.
• 11:27
  Except for two groups: And I'm thinking of a film like, say, Poitín by Bob Quinn, which comes out in the 1970s.
• 11:37
  Except for two groups: Yeah, Poitín is like the anti-Quiet Man.
• 11:37
  Except for two groups: The story of a guy and his daughter making moonshine in the Irish boonies who get relentlessly harassed by a couple of thugs.
• 11:55
  Except for two groups: It was tailor made not to be embraced by a Hollywood movie audience.
• 11:59
  Except for two groups: From its dark story to its gritty colours and camerawork, even the dialogue was in Irish, a language a lot of Irish themselves didn't speak.
• 12:08
  Except for two groups: John Ford's welcoming Emerald Isle this ain't.
• 12:10
  Except for two groups: It's, you know, first ambition is to deconstruct those images and to present the West of Ireland as a lawless place filled with kind of nasty layabouts and drunks.
• 12:20
  Except for two groups: This is a lot of what was getting made in the 70s and even into the 80s.
• 12:24
  Except for two groups: Funded by tiny grants from the government's Arts Council, mainly getting screened at tiny private film societies.
• 12:30
  Except for two groups: All of which was just fine with the filmmakers who flew right under the censors radar.
• 12:35
  Except for two groups: And what they're showing, I think you've got to realise, wasn't being seen by the mainstream of people.
• 12:40
  Except for two groups: So the Catholic Church wouldn't have cared if the intelligentsia went off and watched, you know, avant garde films.
• 12:45
  Except for two groups: But meanwhile, a new kind of Irish movie was coming that was going to pull the film scene out of the underground.
• 12:55
  Except for two groups: My name is Fiona Shaw, and I have been an actor for about 35 years.
• 13:01
  Except for two groups: If you don't know the name, you definitely know the face of Fiona Shaw.
• 13:05
  Except for two groups: Among her bajillions of roles, she was in the Harry Potter franchise playing Harry's Muggle aunt.
• 13:10
  Except for two groups: Today, her homeland celebrates her as one of the greatest Irish actors ever.
• 13:14
  Except for two groups: But back in '82, she started her career by leaving the country.
• 13:18
  Except for two groups: Like millions had been doing since the famines of the 19th century.
• 13:22
  Except for two groups: I mean, everybody, street sweepers, you know, everybody left Ireland.
• 13:25
  Except for two groups: The population of Ireland in 1962 was 2.5 million people.
• 13:30
  Except for two groups: You know, it was terrifying, having been, you know, 8 million or something before the famine.
• 13:34
  Except for two groups: People left Ireland and left Ireland and left Ireland.
• 13:36
  Except for two groups: And when it became the Republic, its economic policies were just disastrous.
• 13:41
  Except for two groups: So people left, young people just left.
• 13:43
  Except for two groups: But I left because I knew I couldn't be trained in Ireland.
• 13:45
  Except for two groups: There was no film industry.
• 13:47
  Except for two groups: I think in my mind I thought I'd go back to Ireland, but in the event I got taken up in London.
• 13:52
  Except for two groups: She made a name for herself there as a stage star at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare, until she got a script for a movie being made back home.
• 14:01
  Except for two groups: Directed by Jim Sheridan and based on a memoir by Irish writer and artist Christy Brown who grew up in working class 1950s era Dublin with cerebral palsy.
• 14:11
  Except for two groups: It was called My Left Foot.
• 14:13
  Except for two groups: You know, you have a retrospective view of the film.
• 14:15
  Except for two groups: At the time, it was just a film and it was being made and I was being asked to be in it.
• 14:21
  Except for two groups: And, you know, we all knew Christy Brown as a kind of folk hero.
• 14:27
  Except for two groups: So it was a good subject.
• 14:28
  Except for two groups: But I don't know what expectations anybody had of it, really.
• 14:32
  Except for two groups: To be honest. Not many.
• 14:34
  Except for two groups: Shaw says My Left Foot's producer initially financed this period drama on his own credit card, and then by throwing fundraising dinners with Fiona and the films up and coming young star in attendance.
• 14:45
  Except for two groups: Daniel Day-Lewis and I, you know, sat with Granada Television and had supper with them, and a whole lot of people talked and suddenly money appeared.
• 14:52
  Except for two groups: I mean, it all took-- It was a hair's breath from not being made that film.
• 14:58
  Except for two groups: And the Oscar goes to Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot.
• 15:04
  Except for two groups: My Left Foot did get made.
• 15:06
  Except for two groups: Released in 1989, it was an international hit, won two Oscars.
• 15:10
  Except for two groups: You've just provided me with the makings of one hell of a weekend in Dublin. And in Ireland...
• 15:20
  Except for two groups: It changed film people's lives.
• 15:22
  Except for two groups: You know, I remember vividly the Oscar nominations and wins thatMy Left Foot garnered, the excitement that that created here in Dublin.
• 15:30
  Except for two groups: Today Ed Guiney is a three time Best Picture nominee himself, most recently for producing Yorgos Lanthimos Poor Things.
• 15:37
  Except for two groups: But back then it was just an aspiring 20-something filmmaker.
• 15:40
  Except for two groups: Remember staying up all night to watch it with a bunch of friends.
• 15:42
  Except for two groups: And actually, it was very inspiring.
• 15:44
  Except for two groups: The idea that an Irish made film could kind of reach those heights.
• 15:48
  Except for two groups: Two years later came another home-grown smash, Neil Jordan's noirThe Crying Game, set against a backdrop of Northern Ireland's sectarian Troubles.
• 15:56
  Except for two groups: Like films in the 70s, these were authentic, even kind of gritty Irish stories.
• 16:01
  Except for two groups: But this time told with a big Hollywood sweep, which Guiney says you can maybe chalk up to the same diaspora that had swept Fiona Shaw out of the country.
• 16:10
  Except for two groups: Neil and Jim came out of a theatre tradition.
• 16:13
  Except for two groups: They also, crucially, both of them lived abroad.
• 16:15
  Except for two groups: They were emigrants.
• 16:15
  Except for two groups: Jim to America, Neil to the UK.
• 16:18
  Except for two groups: And when you live abroad and you're thinking about making films about Ireland, you're thinking about that in the context of being outside of Ireland and maybe how to communicate to people outside of Ireland.
• 16:29
  Except for two groups: Like they both of them had a kind of an impulse to tell stories on a big stage.
• 16:34
  Except for two groups: And thanks to them, other locals got a shot at making movies on that ambitious scale, because in 1993, Sheridan and Jordan's success convinced the government to beef up and relaunch a film fund that had been dormant for years.
• 16:46
  Except for two groups: Screen Ireland.
• 16:47
  Except for two groups: Which meant that there was actually state investment in the film industry, and that has been a factor for the last 30 years.
• 16:54
  Except for two groups: Now here, you know, if you're a young filmmaker from anywhere in the country, there are so many ways in.
• 17:00
  Except for two groups: There's so much support and so many programs.
• 17:03
  Except for two groups: So many of the things that are taken for granted nowadays in Ireland were absolutely unimaginable 40 years ago.
• 17:11
  Except for two groups: Including filmmakers just having fun.
• 17:18
  Except for two groups: My name is John Crowley, and I'm a film director.
• 17:21
  Except for two groups: You sure are.
• 17:23
  Except for two groups: John Crowley is one of my favourite directors, actually, ever since his gorgeous Oscar nominated immigrant movieBrooklyn with Saoirse Ronan.
• 17:30
  Except for two groups: But when he was a kid, having a film career was a pipe dream.
• 17:34
  Except for two groups: To be involved in that world, it really did feel as likely to me growing up in Cork as it would be, you know, joining NASA.
• 17:41
  Except for two groups: It just felt like a whole other world that you were never going to sort of get to touch the hem of, let alone get involved in.
• 17:49
  Except for two groups: And I think that shifted in everybody's head with Neil and Jim.
• 17:53
  Except for two groups: That'd be Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan, of course.
• 17:56
  Except for two groups: But by 2003, when Crowley made his movie directing debut, he sensed it was time to make way different kind of films.
• 18:02
  Except for two groups: Much as I revered Neil and Jim, I wasn't trying to do anything like what they did.
• 18:07
  Except for two groups: And in a way, quite consciously trying to not make an Irish film which was trying to be an American film, you know, if anything, it ran in the opposite direction to carve out its own space.
• 18:17
  Except for two groups: What kind of fuckhead are you?
• 18:17
  Except for two groups: That pisses me all the way off, man. Written by playwright Mark O'Rowe it was called Intermission, a comedy about a bunch of modern day young Dubliners falling in and out of relationships, jobs and trouble with the law.
• 18:31
  Except for two groups: Like there's the guy who hasn't had sex in so long he can't even masturbate anymore.
• 18:35
  Except for two groups: Half an hour, 45 minutes.
• 18:35
  Except for two groups: Nothing fucking happens.Can't get my fantasies clear in my head. And there's a two bit thief who's so to bit his own ex-girlfriend complains his biggest score was stealing a giant crate of savoury brown sauce from a grocery store, which he now eats in everything.
• 18:53
  Except for two groups: I'd be over at his placehe's making sauce sandwiches.
• 18:55
  Except for two groups: Putting it in his cornflakes,trying to use it all up. in his tea! It wasn't a great historical subject matter.
• 19:05
  Except for two groups: It was far more immediate.
• 19:07
  Except for two groups: And it was about people being late to work and working in supermarkets and, you know, foul mouthed kids.
• 19:12
  Except for two groups: And the characters were completely absorbed in their own dilemmas, not in their own Irishness.
• 19:19
  Except for two groups: In fact, the one character who sort of is into his Irishness we're meant to laugh at.
• 19:22
  Except for two groups: A self-loathing rogue cop who's way too into 70s Irish folk rock.
• 19:28
  Except for two groups: Artistes like Fainne Lasta, Raithneach, Clannad.You like them artistes?
• 19:33
  Except for two groups: Their music?And of course you do. Finally, Irish movies didn't have to be about the country's history or identity.
• 19:42
  Except for two groups: They didn't have to be a reaction to Hollywood or an embrace of it.
• 19:46
  Except for two groups: They could just be a cool ride through modern life in a modern place.
• 19:49
  Except for two groups: Intermission was the biggest home-grown indie hit in Irish history.
• 19:56
  Except for two groups: My nephew started quoting lines from the film and he said,"Yeah, all the kids in my class talk about it." And that at that point felt it, okay...
• 20:04
  Except for two groups: And the brown sauce thing took off.
• 20:07
  Except for two groups: The whole idea of putting brown sauce in your tea.
• 20:10
  Except for two groups: And I think that captured the imagination of the country at the time, that everybody felt like they knew somebody who would do something as ridiculous as that, really.
• 20:17
  Except for two groups: But from the 70s through the 90s, as the Republic of Ireland moved towards that relaxed state of mind...
• 20:24
  Except for two groups: just a couple hours drive and a border away in Northern Ireland, things were way different.
• 20:31
  Except for two groups: Right, you want to introduce yourself, and what you do.
• 20:33
  Except for two groups: My name is Pat and I'm a full time tour guide.
• 20:37
  Except for two groups: In the Northern Irish capital of Belfast.
• 20:39
  Except for two groups: You can hire cabbies like Pat McMullan to take you on a driving tour of what I would call a living monument to PTSD.
• 20:46
  Except for two groups: Neighbourhoods where for decades residents have divided themselves by religion and politics.
• 20:50
  Except for two groups: Protestant Loyalists on one side who want Northern Ireland to stay part of the UK, and Catholic Republicans on the other who want it to unite with the Irish Republic.
• 21:00
  Except for two groups: For years, starting in the 60s, the two tribes waged war.
• 21:04
  Except for two groups: It was called the Troubles, and even today, so-called peace walls between them still run through sections of Belfast.
• 21:11
  Except for two groups: You're going to be driving through walls and large gates, which divides the communities, and those gates will be closing tonight at 9 p.m.
• 21:20
  Except for two groups: Still today, there are 43 walls in the city what keeps the two communities apart.
• 21:27
  Except for two groups: No need for them today, but if you have a comfort blanket for over 50 years, you don't want to give it up.
• 21:33
  Except for two groups: - It's purely about feeling secure.
• 21:33
  Except for two groups: - Yeah, feeling secure.
• 21:37
  Except for two groups: And the biggest wall you have is inside your head.
• 21:41
  Except for two groups: That is the biggest wall you have.
• 21:43
  Except for two groups: How did a film culture grow in a place like this?
• 21:46
  Except for two groups: It's happened in some unexpected ways.
• 21:49
  Except for two groups: That's coming up in just a minute.
• 21:49
  Except for two groups: Stay with us.
• 21:56
  Except for two groups: Okay, everybody MUBI is the global film company that champions great cinema, bringing it to you wherever you are and in as many ways as we possibly can.
• 22:04
  Except for two groups: We stream movies, we produce them, we release them in theatres.
• 22:08
  Except for two groups: Movies from any country, from legendary auteurs or brilliant first timers.
• 22:11
  Except for two groups: We have always got something new for you to discover.
• 22:14
  Except for two groups: And hey, coming up in the next act, we are going to be talking about how Irish language movies have become all the rage.
• 22:20
  Except for two groups: So let me urge you to discover the latest example thereof: it is a movie called Bring Them Down.
• 22:25
  Except for two groups: From award winning director Christopher Andrews.
• 22:28
  Except for two groups: It stars Oscar nominee Barry Keoghan you'll remember him from Saltburn and also Christopher Abbott from Poor Things.
• 22:34
  Except for two groups: He plays a shepherd living with his ailing dad out in the Irish countryside, who gets caught up in a conflict with a rival farmer and his, let's say, unhinged son.
• 22:45
  Except for two groups: And then things escalate.
• 22:45
  Except for two groups: This thing is a gripping revenge thriller.
• 22:49
  Except for two groups: It kind of rips apart the trope of the strong, silent type.
• 22:52
  Except for two groups: Powerful stuff, and it's exclusively on MUBI in the US, UK, Ireland, of course, and many other countries.
• 22:59
  Except for two groups: Head to mubi.com to subscribe and start watching.
• 23:02
  Except for two groups: As always, you can find all the links and info you need in the show notes of this episode.
• 23:06
  Except for two groups: Meanwhile, let's get back to it.
• 23:14
  Except for two groups: So, as Pat McMullan drives us around one of the Catholic Republican neighbourhoods in Belfast, the day goes from sunny to cold and grey.
• 23:22
  Except for two groups: Feels appropriate as he hands me a ring binder full of black and white photos of the area from back in the height of the Troubles.
• 23:31
  Except for two groups: It was a war zone. checkpoints, metal skeletons of bombed out cars.
• 23:36
  Except for two groups: He says out in the countryside where he lived, there was way less conflict. But still...
• 23:40
  Except for two groups: At the end of the day, nowhere and Northern Ireland was 100% safe.
• 23:44
  Except for two groups: Nowhere was.
• 23:46
  Except for two groups: Let me ask you this, so was there cinema going?
• 23:49
  Except for two groups: - Were people going to the movies?
• 23:49
  Except for two groups: - Yes, cinema.
• 23:51
  Except for two groups: This is hard to believe.
• 23:53
  Except for two groups: I lived in the countryside, I always had a nice new car.
• 23:57
  Except for two groups: But when I was going to the cinema, I took an old builder's van with me.
• 24:00
  Except for two groups: So they didn't break into or steal me car.
• 24:03
  Except for two groups: They wouldn't steal your car.
• 24:05
  Except for two groups: You just took some hunk of junk with you.
• 24:07
  Except for two groups: When you basically came into town'cause it was dangerous.
• 24:10
  Except for two groups: That was it, yeah.
• 24:13
  Except for two groups: Bombs went off outside cinemas.
• 24:15
  Except for two groups: People got caught in shootouts as they filed out after a movie.
• 24:18
  Except for two groups: The Queen's Film Theatre in the south of Belfast, away from the fighting, became a kind of neutral ground.
• 24:23
  Except for two groups: And it survives today.
• 24:23
  Except for two groups: But a lot more closed.
• 24:26
  Except for two groups: At one point in 1974, a local paper reported you could leave Belfast and drive through town after town for 70 miles without finding a movie theatre.
• 24:36
  Except for two groups: And Trinity College's Ruth Barton says professional movie making was hobbled for decades.
• 24:41
  Except for two groups: Not least because the Troubles, you know, don't end until the end of the 1990s.
• 24:45
  Except for two groups: And nobody would have got insurance to film in the North, or particularly if they went to film in Belfast, wasn't possible.
• 24:51
  Except for two groups: And any film that was set in Belfast was was actually filmed in Dublin or elsewhere.
• 24:56
  Except for two groups: But then two big events started turning things around.
• 25:04
  Except for two groups: Here's the first.
• 25:05
  Except for two groups: Good evening. Within the last few minutes,the parties involved in the Northern Ireland peace talkshave reached an agreement. In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement ended most of the violence.
• 25:14
  Except for two groups: Is there a palpable sense of excitement?There is, of course. I mean, this is new territory for all of us.There are journalists here,there are cameramen here are terribly emotional about what they've seen here.Men and women who have spent their careers covering the Troubles.They're seeing something good come out of this. And then, of course, the huge thing that happened to Northern Ireland was Game of Thrones.
• 25:38
  Except for two groups: Yeah, in 2004, in what feels like a symbolic farewell to bad times, an old Belfast hangar where the actual Titanic got its first paint job was repurposed as a film studio.
• 25:49
  Except for two groups: And in 2010, yeah, the creators of HBO's epic fantasy series Game of Thrones made it their main location.
• 25:55
  Except for two groups: They also shot at picturesque spots all over Northern Ireland for ten years.
• 26:00
  Except for two groups: And that suddenly produced a whole infrastructure that had to develop in order to be able to make Game of Thrones.
• 26:06
  Except for two groups: And so, you know, you get studios being developed, you get soundstages being built you get people being trained, you get actors getting opportunities that they would not have had before.
• 26:15
  Except for two groups: And it was Game of Thrones that really transformed things.
• 26:18
  Except for two groups: And that's when local filmmakers started reckoning with a new challenge.
• 26:23
  Except for two groups: What would it look like now for them to put Northern Ireland stories on screen?
• 26:28
  Except for two groups: So one of the things that you have to sort of ask yourself is at the end of the Troubles, how do you tell the story of the Troubles?
• 26:34
  Except for two groups: How do you make films that seem authentic, that are set in Northern Ireland, and how do you negotiate the legacy of the Troubles when you do that?
• 26:40
  Except for two groups: Yeah, because on the one hand, it's kind of like, oh, all anybody thinks of us as the Troubles and we're more than that.
• 26:46
  Except for two groups: But on the other hand, it does seep into everything.
• 26:49
  Except for two groups: - So how can you escape it?
• 26:49
  Except for two groups: - That's right.
• 26:50
  Except for two groups: And people are still defined by their religion in the North, so, you know, you can't get away from it.
• 26:55
  Except for two groups: But then you get a few things happening, like the success of Derry Girls, right?
• 26:59
  Except for two groups: The TV series Derry Girls, which was just a massive hit.
• 27:02
  Except for two groups: A new school can seem like a very scary place. Set in the 90s, the Derry Girls is a 2018 sitcom about a set of aggressively oddball Northern Irish Catholic school teens who are dealing with typical petty, horny teen girl stuff.
• 27:18
  Except for two groups: But in a world where, like their school bus gets stopped and search for bombs by British soldiers.
• 27:23
  Except for two groups: - Everyone remain seated.- One of whom they find kinda hot.
• 27:27
  Except for two groups: - What's going on?
• 27:27
  Except for two groups: - I don't know.But do you think if I told him I had an incendiary devicedown my knickers, he'd have a look? And it was made by local people.
• 27:33
  Except for two groups: It starred local actors.
• 27:37
  Except for two groups: And it was a very local story that was sort of about the Troubles, but more about growing up and the Troubles and the Troubles were sort of slightly outside of its range, but just always there.
• 27:46
  Except for two groups: Yeah, it colours the comedy rather than being about it.
• 27:49
  Except for two groups: Yeah, it's not about it, but it comes in and out, right.
• 27:52
  Except for two groups: And so I think Derry Girls was really important.
• 27:54
  Except for two groups: In the 2010s there were movies like this too blackly comic or sometimes even joyous stories set in the Troubles, but about people living their lives despite them.
• 28:04
  Except for two groups: And then just last year came a comedy set in the modern day, about a trio of young Belfast guys who were barely alive for the Troubles but rail about living in the aftermath using their own special language. Literally.
• 28:19
  Except for two groups: My name is Rich Peppiatt and I'm the writer and director of Kneecap.
• 28:22
  Except for two groups: I visited Rich at his Belfast home in a neighbourhood not far from the peace walls.
• 28:26
  Except for two groups: He moved here seven years back after marrying an Irish woman, and right away stumbled on his story.
• 28:32
  Except for two groups: I think within two weeks of moving into this very house that we are sitting in now.
• 28:37
  Except for two groups: I went to a gig that was happening, you know, half a mile down the road from here at a bar called Limelight, where a local hip hop act called Kneecap were playing.
• 28:46
  Except for two groups: And I'm a big fan of hip hop.
• 28:47
  Except for two groups: And I thought, well, you know, local hip hop act let's do that.
• 28:51
  Except for two groups: And I was just blown away.
• 28:51
  Except for two groups: Their stage presence, their energy.
• 28:56
  Except for two groups: And more than that, there was 500 or so young people in the crowd who were rapping back to them in Irish, every word of their songs.
• 29:04
  Except for two groups: And to me, that was, as a man just come over from London, was quite the revelation that there was this young, vibrant Irish language community.
• 29:12
  Except for two groups: That's because at the time the Irish language had become a political football.
• 29:16
  Except for two groups: Northern Irish Republicans were pushing to get it recognised as an official language of the state.
• 29:21
  Except for two groups: For instance, putting it on signage right alongside the Queen's English.
• 29:25
  Except for two groups: While pro-British Loyalist politicians were like almost no one here even speaks Irish.
• 29:30
  Except for two groups: You're just trying to make this place less British.
• 29:32
  Except for two groups: The problem isn't the Irish language, it is the politicisation of that language.
• 29:37
  Except for two groups: But at the Limelight, as Rich watched Kneecap spit anti-British rhymes in Irish.
• 29:42
  Except for two groups: It didn't feel like some dead relic of a language, it felt like a political rally crossed with an off the chain party.
• 29:49
  Except for two groups: Here was these three guys really at the forefront of it all, but in a really intriguing way, because they were throwing bags of white powder into the crowd and, you know, getting their arse out with "Brits Out" written across it and generally just being absolute madmen.
• 30:03
  Except for two groups: An unexpected movement led by very unexpected guys, which convinced Kneecap to star in a fictionalised biopic of their own lives that ended up making a big, real world impact.
• 30:16
  Except for two groups: It's the story of two Catholic friends, Liam Óg and Naoise, who are bonded by a love of petty crime, all night raves and outrage at the sectarian politics that still rule their Northern Irish lives.
• 30:28
  Except for two groups: Like on one hand, Naoise resents his Republican ex-paramilitary dad, played by Michael Fassbender, the guy who's been in hiding since the Troubles.
• 30:37
  Except for two groups: You bring a stolen car here, here. And disses his kids choices whenever they meet.
• 30:43
  Except for two groups: You're putting the whole operation at risk.- Cén operation?
• 30:46
  Except for two groups: - Every day I am not capturedis a psychological victory against the occupiers.That's the operation. But the two friends reserve most of their anger for said British occupiers.
• 30:56
  Except for two groups: They join forces with a local Irish language teacher cum DJ to get loaded and pump out protest raps.
• 31:03
  Except for two groups: "C.E.A.R.T.A." the Irish word for rights.
• 31:16
  Except for two groups: Their tunes help fuel pro-Irish language, anti-Loyalist protests even as Liam falls for a Loyalist girl whose idea of dirty sex talk is to interrogate him like a political prisoner.
• 31:27
  Except for two groups: That's right. Confess.- Confess!- Never!Spill your secrets inside me, you Fenian cunt! In other words, like the band, the movie takes every expectation or taboo anyone ever had about Northern Ireland and blows it to pieces.
• 31:42
  Except for two groups: There's a lot of sacred cows here, and Kneecap have always been very good, one of the things I love about them is they've always kind of like rode roughshod over those sacred cows and made jokes about them.
• 31:52
  Except for two groups: Some of the things that we say in the film are things that no one's ever said here and would-- Like, for instance?
• 31:59
  Except for two groups: Well, I mean, I want to blow you like a Brighton hotel would probably be one.
• 32:03
  Except for two groups: Don't you dare cum!I want to blow you like a Brighton hotel. That'd be Liam's girlfriend again, referencing the time back in 1984 when Republicans tried to assassinate UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by, yeah, blowing up a hotel in Brighton.
• 32:19
  Except for two groups: There was not a single funder on this film that wanted that line in there.
• 32:22
  Except for two groups: I came under immense pressure to take that line out.
• 32:25
  Except for two groups: You can see where the band's boundary demolition could get him in the kind of trouble they landed in just a couple of months ago, when London's Metropolitan Police brought Liam up on terrorism charges for brandishing a Hezbollah flag on stage.
• 32:38
  Except for two groups: But amazingly, back when the movie hit cinemas, instead of triggering a backlash, it was a hit in Ireland and Britain.
• 32:44
  Except for two groups: Maybe 'cause it was helmed by a guy with feet in both.
• 32:47
  Except for two groups: I think if you're from here, you can't help but be seen, and there's probably a bit of truth in it, as well, as having some sort of slant.
• 32:54
  Except for two groups: You're either from one side or the other and it's very difficult-- No one's really neutral, right?
• 32:58
  Except for two groups: And I think maybe in a way it would have been hard for an Irish man or woman to have made the film because it would have been seen as there's an axe to grind.
• 33:06
  Except for two groups: There's an agenda.
• 33:07
  Except for two groups: And I was sort of seen more as a neutral party.
• 33:10
  Except for two groups: In that way, it's kind of the ultimate post-Troubles movie.
• 33:13
  Except for two groups: And it joined at least one other film that's made the Irish language and Irish cinema go viral.
• 33:18
  Except for two groups: You know, the Kneecap story is amazing of just these guys in the North that are a couple of headers, really.
• 33:24
  Except for two groups: Rebekah Guilar, aka Becks, is a Belfast native who helps host the storytelling event series Seanchoiche and its offshoot podcast In Their Shoes.
• 33:33
  Except for two groups: But they... but they love the Irish language, like even the sound of it, and make it something that everyone kind of wants to know now.
• 33:43
  Except for two groups: And that was not the way it was ten years ago.
• 33:45
  Except for two groups: It was an old thing that you felt like, why am I even learning this?
• 33:49
  Except for two groups: Because no one's using it.
• 33:50
  Except for two groups: But now, through the way that they bring it into their music, and the context has made people be like,"Oh, this is actually quite cool." This year, a survey of Irish students found 70% of them suddenly love and want to learn Irish.
• 34:03
  Except for two groups: There's a boom in new learners all the way over in Australia.
• 34:06
  Except for two groups: Teachers are calling it the Kneecap effect, but Rich Peppiatt gladly admits the band and the movie aren't solely responsible.
• 34:13
  Except for two groups: You know, An Cailín Ciúin,The Quiet Girl was a film that was a great inspiration to us.
• 34:18
  Except for two groups: You know, people talk about Kneecap like it was the first big Irish language film but no, we were standing on the shoulders of An Cailín Ciúin.
• 34:24
  Except for two groups: And it was funny 'cause when we were first developing the film, there's a scheme here called Cine4, which is the Irish language channel, their cinema scheme, they fund the film up to $1 million.
• 34:35
  Except for two groups: And we applied for that and we thought we were going to get it, arrogantly.
• 34:39
  Except for two groups: We were like, there's no way we're not going to get this'cause, you know, kneecap are basically the biggest Irish language thing since, I don't know, ever really.
• 34:44
  Except for two groups: And so it was like, right...
• 34:47
  Except for two groups: And then we got knocked back and there was a film calledAn Cailín Ciúin that got it instead.
• 34:51
  Except for two groups: And we were like,The Quiet Girl?
• 34:54
  Except for two groups: Who the fuck wants to watch a film about a quiet girl when you've got three loud rappers?
• 34:58
  Except for two groups: This is bullshit.
• 34:58
  Except for two groups: This is absolute-- And then we actually saw the film and we were like, yeah, it's all right, actually.
• 35:07
  Except for two groups: The Quiet Girl released in 2022, shares a language with Kneecap, but not much else.
• 35:12
  Except for two groups: It was made in the Irish Republic and tells the simple story of a poor, kind of neglected girl who spends a summer with a distant cousin and her husband, who come to truly love her.
• 35:22
  Except for two groups: Just thinking of it brings a tear to my eye, and apparently to a lot of peoples, it's the highest grossing Irish language film ever.
• 35:28
  Except for two groups: Hi, my name is Carrie Crowley.
• 35:30
  Except for two groups: I am an Irish actor, and a lot of my work happens to be in Irish, in the Irish language,as Gaeilge.
• 35:37
  Except for two groups: Carrie Crowley starred in the movie as the empathetic cousin.
• 35:40
  Except for two groups: Like much of her Irish language work,The Quiet Girl was partly funded by the Republic's Irish language TV channel, which has a rep for bold, beautiful stuff not always seen by huge audiences, though.
• 35:50
  Except for two groups: The Quiet Girl stood out from the jump.
• 35:52
  Except for two groups: I knew literally as soon as I read the script I wanted I so badly wanted to do it.
• 36:01
  Except for two groups: I loved it, and like I wept so many times during that, making it, reading it.
• 36:09
  Except for two groups: And then it started to get release.
• 36:11
  Except for two groups: And it was the longest running film, not Irish film, and certainly not Irish language film, it was the longest running film ever in the Irish Film Institute at a certain point in time.
• 36:24
  Except for two groups: And to me, that was extraordinary.
• 36:24
  Except for two groups: This was a film in the Irish language.
• 36:27
  Except for two groups: You know, when you first started getting into the business and first started making Irish language cinema, would you have expected this, that the two biggest films of recent years out of Ireland would be in the in the Irish language?
• 36:38
  Except for two groups: No, I would never have imagined it.
• 36:40
  Except for two groups: It's like one of those, you know,"If you could have one dream,"what would it be?" We would never, well I would never have thought that that was a possibility.
• 36:49
  Except for two groups: Not least of all because even in the Gaeltacht, the slivers of Ireland where a majority speak the language, it wasn't always embraced.
• 36:56
  Except for two groups: There was a time when, for those who lived in the Gaeltacht, they kind of wanted to sound like they spoke English more than Irish, so they would kind of throw the Irish to one side in case it made them look lesser.
• 37:09
  Except for two groups: Now, who brought that idea into the country or who put that idea into people's heads?
• 37:14
  Except for two groups: It should never have happened.
• 37:16
  Except for two groups: But now there's much more pride, and there's a much younger contingent who are happily speaking the language.
• 37:22
  Except for two groups: And I mean, when it comes to movies, at least, there's definitely lots for the Irish to be proud of right now.
• 37:30
  Except for two groups: In 2023, more than three decades after My left Foot won its Oscar Ireland had another big night.
• 37:36
  Except for two groups: The Quiet Girl became the first Irish language movie to get a nomination.
• 37:40
  Except for two groups: It was for Best International Film.
• 37:42
  Except for two groups: Same year, four of the ten nominees in the Male Actor categories were Irish, which Ruth Barton reminds me, is just a fraction of the Irish superstar's out there.
• 37:51
  Except for two groups: You could just start listing now and we could be here for the rest of the evening.
• 37:54
  Except for two groups: But you know, it starts with Pierce Brosnan Daniel Day-Lewis and so on.
• 37:57
  Except for two groups: And then you're going right up to, you know, people like Barry Keoghan, Brendan Gleeson, the Gleesons, in fact, Domhnall Gleeson, Brian Gleeson, there's a you know, there are many Gleeson's and of course, Paul Mescal, who became so big after Normal People.
• 38:14
  Except for two groups: Cillian Murphy.
• 38:16
  Except for two groups: Oh yeah, speaking of him, the next year, 2024, this happened.
• 38:19
  Except for two groups: And the Oscar goes to Cillian Murphy. That also be the year the Ed Guiney produced Poor Things was up for Best Picture, and the year Kneecap became the first Irish language movie to premiere at Sundance, won the audience award there, and then racked up a slew of BAFTAs.
• 38:35
  Except for two groups: Right now...
• 38:36
  Except for two groups: I'm a very proud Irish man standing here tonight, so.
• 38:41
  Except for two groups: Ireland's screen storytellers have definitely seized the microphone.
• 38:52
  Except for two groups: I'm going to wrap things up, appropriately enough, in an Irish cinema.
• 38:55
  Except for two groups: These days, Ireland's got one of the highest movie attendance rates per capita in all of Europe.
• 39:00
  Except for two groups: And in the airy, modern lobby of the Lighthouse Cinema in Dublin, I get a glimpse of maybe why.
• 39:05
  Except for two groups: It seems like they get in the habit young.
• 39:08
  Except for two groups: Hordes of high schoolers stream around me, all of them here, to analyse movies as part of their public school curriculum.
• 39:14
  Except for two groups: The teachers bring them here to watch them.
• 39:16
  Except for two groups: It's the best experience they can get from them and they can have discussions afterwards.
• 39:19
  Except for two groups: David Kelly is a programmer at The Lighthouse.
• 39:21
  Except for two groups: Mostly it's curriculum based, English curriculum, so a lot of Hamlet and Macbeth and stuff like that, you know, three hour versions as well.
• 39:28
  Except for two groups: So the students are very much in it for the long haul, some mornings, yeah.
• 39:32
  Except for two groups: They're like, "Oh no, the Branagh Hamlet. Not that!" Dave and I escape the noise by ducking into an empty screening room, along with the lighthouse's head of cinema, Alice Black.
• 39:41
  Except for two groups: I want to know what movies bring in big audiences these days at this Irish arthouse.
• 39:46
  Except for two groups: Turns out, it's mostly what you'd expect.
• 39:48
  Except for two groups: David Lynch retrospectives, you know the drill.
• 39:50
  Except for two groups: Also, of course...
• 39:51
  Except for two groups: I mean, A Quiet Girl.
• 39:52
  Except for two groups: We're still kind of trying to dissect what happened with The Quiet Girl.
• 39:55
  Except for two groups: It was just incredible, you know?
• 39:56
  Except for two groups: I mean, it's a huge box office phenomenon in Ireland.
• 39:59
  Except for two groups: Huge. Absolutely huge.
• 40:01
  Except for two groups: We played it for almost a year.
• 40:02
  Except for two groups: But then Alice told me this.
• 40:05
  Except for two groups: So we have a huge Brazilian population here in Dublin and we're we're seeing, you know, a lot of interest in Brazilian titles.
• 40:12
  Except for two groups: With I'm Still Here we saw, I mean, the opening weekend of that was the biggest weekend we've ever had at lighthouse.
• 40:17
  Except for two groups: I'm Still Here is of course, the Best Picture nominee from last year, Brazil's first ever.
• 40:21
  Except for two groups: And yeah, thanks to a growing population of Brazilians who come to study and then stay in Dublin...
• 40:26
  Except for two groups: It was bigger than Barbie or Oppenheimer.
• 40:28
  Except for two groups: It was absolutely massive with the most people we had through the door ever.
• 40:32
  Except for two groups: We were overwhelmed by the amount of tickets that were being sold for that film.
• 40:35
  Except for two groups: We were absolutely flabbergasted.
• 40:37
  Except for two groups: Like it was, it was crazy.
• 40:41
  Except for two groups: A century ago, no one in town would go to a foreign film at the Volta.
• 40:45
  Except for two groups: Today, here in the middle of Dublin, the weekend box office champ is from Brazil.
• 40:51
  Except for two groups: It makes me wonder what language the next wave of Irish cinema might be in, and whether somewhere, James Joyce is finally smiling.
• 41:10
  Except for two groups: And that's the MUBI Podcast for this week.
• 41:12
  Except for two groups: Follow us this season as I touch down in cities all over the globe.
• 41:15
  Except for two groups: Next week, I learn why my favourite city is a great place to watch movies, but hasn't always been a great place to make them.
• 41:21
  Except for two groups: What is amazing about Dutch people is that they are so bluntly honest, but for art, that's not good for stories, that's boring.
• 41:29
  Except for two groups: It's the film scene of Amsterdam featuring the bluntly honest director of Baby Girl, Helena Reine.
• 41:34
  Except for two groups: Follow us wherever you listen so you don't miss it.
• 41:36
  Except for two groups: Meanwhile, let's roll credits.
• 41:37
  Except for two groups: This episode of the MUBI Podcast was written, hosted, and edited by me Rico Gagliano.
• 41:41
  Except for two groups: Ciara McEniff is our producer.
• 41:43
  Except for two groups: She booked this episode, along with Jackson Musker.
• 41:45
  Except for two groups: Kat Kowalczyk is our assistant producer.
• 41:45
  Except for two groups: Mastering by Steven Colon.
• 41:48
  Except for two groups: Our original music was composed by Martin Austwick with the additional track 'Blueprint' by Jahzzar, courtesy of Tribe of Noise.
• 41:55
  Except for two groups: Extra. Thanks this week to Simon Bird for recording Ed Guiney and Fiona Shaw.
• 41:59
  Except for two groups: Gaff of Seanchoíche, everyone at Lighthouse Cinema, Niall and Miriam McEniff, and Robert McInerney.
• 42:05
  Except for two groups: The show is executive produced by me along with Efe Çakarel Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca.
• 42:10
  Except for two groups: If you love the show, tell the world by leaving a five star review wherever you listen, won't you?
• 42:14
  Except for two groups: Let them know we're not your standard chat show.
• 42:17
  Except for two groups: Also, if you've got questions, comments, or you want to question our sanity for trying to squeeze a century of Irish history into 45 minutes or whatever, email us at podcast@mubi.com And of course, to stream the best in cinema, including some of the films we talk about on this very podcast, just head over to MUBI.com to start watching.
• 42:36
  Except for two groups: Thanks for listening, go watch some movies and travel tip always carry aspirin and chewing gum on you when you fly.