| Movie
Bloody Sunday Film Background
Written and directed by Paul Greengrass, 'Bloody Sunday' was made
by Portman Film in association with Granada, The Film Council and
Bord Scannán na hÉireann/The Irish Film Board. It is
a Granada Film/Hell's Kitchen Production. Executive Producers included
Pippa Cross, Arthur Lappin, Jim Sheridan, Rod Stoneman, Paul Trijbits and
Tristan Whalley. Co-producers were Don Mullan and Paul Myler. The
film was produced by Mark Redhead.
'Bloody Sunday' stars starring James Nesbitt, Tim Pigott-Smith, Nicholas
Farrell, Gerard McSorley and Kathy Kiera Clarke. The book on
which the movied was based, Eyewitness Bloody Sunday by Don Mullan,
is published by Wolfhound Press. The title song, 'Sunday, Bloody
Sunday,' is written and performed by U2
The Film
On Jan. 30 1972, British soldiers shot dead 13 unarmed civilians taking
part in an anti-internment civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Another died later. This event, Bloody Sunday, was a major turning point
in the history of the modern Irish troubles, catapulting the conflict into
a civil war, driving many young men into the ranks of the IRA and fuelling
a 25-year cycle of violence.
This film tells the story of Bloody Sunday in just one day from dawn
till dusk, from the arrival of thousands of troops on the streets of the
besieged city to the violent collision between soldiers from the crack
Paratroop Regiment and the crowds of civilian demonstrators. The film follows
the British soldiers and the police, as well as civilians from both sides
of the religious sectarian divide.
It focuses in particular on the stories of four men: Ivan Cooper, an
idealistic Civil Rights leader, a Protestant in the Catholic camp who shares
Martin Luther King's dream of peaceful change; Gerry Donaghy, a 17 year
old Catholic rebel, who yearns to settle down and marry his Protestant
girlfriend, but who is drawn into violent confrontation with the soldiers;
Brigadier Patrick MacLellan, the commander of the British Army in
Londonderry who is under pressure to take firm action to stop the march;
and a young private, a radio operator in the Paras, who is ordered, with
his unit of hardened veterans, into the Bogside.
'Bloody Sunday' is a war film about the struggle for peace.
Shot in a vivid, ultra-realistic style, on the streets and amongst the
crowds, in the command posts and in the alleyways, with the stone-throwers
and the activists, the generals and the private soldiers.
In its extremely focused time-frame but epic scale, the film is an emotional
roller-coaster, an intense, unblinking Battle of Algiers for
Northern Ireland: a portrait of the collision between the unstoppable force
and the immovable object that is the 700-year-conflict between Britain
and Ireland. It is also, in the confrontation between a powerful
army and a besieged and rebellious city, a timeless and universal story
with echoes across the globe and throughout history from the siege
of Troy to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Bloody Sunday:
The Background
In January, 1972 ,the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, working
together with local groups called a protest march for Sunday, Jan 30.
The march was to start at Bishop's Field in the Creggan, the Catholic suburb
on a bleak hill high above the City, and march through Free Derry to the
Guildhall, the seat of local (Protestant) political power in the heart
of the City for a meeting.
The purpose of the march was to protest against internment without trial.
This had been introduced by the British government the previous summer
under pressure from the Unionist Government in Stormont who warned of a
Protestant backlash against a rising tide of Catholic unrest.
Derry had been the birthplace of the Civil Rights movement in 1968.
The most westerly city in the United Kingdom it sits just six miles from
the border with Donegal yet separated from Belfast by the Sprerrin Mountains.
Sitting on the banks of the river Foyle just before it opens out into a
wide estuary, Derry is a town steeped in conflict.
In the 17th century, Protestants loyal to William of Orange held out
against a long siege by the Catholic armies of James II and in 1969 the
Catholic people of the Bogside held out against attack from militant Protestants,
including police officers, who were attempting to burn them out of their
homes. There is no agreement even on what it is called: to Protestants
it is Londonderry (in commemoration of past financial support from the
City of London), but Catholics refer to it by its old Gaelic name of Derry,
meaning "Oak grove".
In January, 1972, the Unionist Government in Belfast, the British Army
and the British Government were all determined the Civil Rights march should
be stopped and be seen to be stopped. The Commander Land Forces Northern
Ireland General Robert Ford, had met with Protestant traders from the city
centre who complained about the constant attacks by youths from the nationalist
areas.
General Ford ordered Brigadier MacLellan, the Commander of 8th Brigade,
which covered the Londonderry area to come up with a plan, which Ford insisted
should involve the use of members of the first Battalion on the Parachute
Regiment as the arrest force. The Paras were based in Belfast, where
they had developed a fearsome reputation. They had never been on
the streets of Derry before. A target of 500 arrests was set.
Producer's Note
By Paul Redhead
No single thing propelled Paul Greengrass and me towards making a film
about Bloody Sunday. The Troubles in Northern Ireland had cast a
dark shadow across the lives of everyone in these islands since our teenage
years. Bloody Sunday had come to symbolise to us both the worst in the
long, often unhappy and violent relationship between Britain and Ireland.
It was a terrible turning point, the moment when the civil rights movement
was destroyed, when the mass of civilians were driven from the political
stage, and the struggle in Northern Ireland became one between men with
guns.
With the advent of the peace process and of a ceasefire and the possibility
of a better future, it seemed to us both that rather than slamming the
door shut on the memories of years of suffering, the most constructive
thing one could do, not least as Brits, was to explore the dynamics of
the relationship and try and make some sense of our painful shared history.
For Paul, Bloody Sunday had a particular significance. In 1982,
as a young World in Action producer, he was the first journalist
to get into the Maze prison to film and interview the IRA hunger strikers.
Paul's film of one of the hunger strikers, Raymond MacCartney, with his
hollowed out eyes and gaunt face framed by a beard and long hair was to
become one of the iconic images of the Troubles. Paul had long been haunted
by the discovery that McCartney, himself from Derry, had joined the Provos
and taken up arms as a direct response to the shooting of 27 people, 14
of them fatally, by members of the Parachute Regiment in Derry on Bloody
Sunday, Jan, 30 1972.
Almost our first action on commencing the development of the film was
to contact Don Mullan. Now a Dublin-based writer, Don had been raised in
Derry. He had played a vital role in bringing the events of
Bloody Sunday back into public view. An inquiry into Bloody Sunday,
chaired by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Widgery, was mounted in the months
after the tragedy, and quickly concluded that the army had been fired upon
and that several of the dead had been carrying weapons. Thereafter, for
20 years, Bloody Sunday had been forgotten. Don was 15 when he attended
the march on Bloody Sunday, and indeed was standing just two feet away
from 17-year-old Michael Kelly when he was shot dead.
 A
chance remark on a return visit to Derry had alerted him to the existence
of piles of old plastic bags full of hundreds of civilian statements taken
by civil rights activists in the week following the shootings. Copies of
these statements had been submitted to Lord Widgery, but were ignored.
Don painstakingly read the statements, and they became the basis of his
book: Eyewitness Bloody Sunday. This book helped to re-awaken
public interest in Bloody Sunday, and gave new impetus to the campaign
by the families of the dead and wounded for a re-investigation of the events.
It set in motion a chain of events, which led ultimately to the present
Inquiry chaired by Lord Saville.
We asked Don to join us on the production as a consultant and co-producer.
He was quickly to become a close friend. Through his work, Don had developed
close relations with the families of the dead and wounded, and he brought
us together with them and helped win their support for the film.
We hoped that we would be able to include as many Derry people as possible
in the filming to bring the authentic voice of Derry into the film.
We felt from the start that it was important in the light of the history
of conflict to make the project as inclusive as possible. Pippa Cross,
Head of Film at Granada, and the celebrated Irish director Jim Sheridan,
had a long-standing relationship since working together on My
Left Foot and The Field, and it seemed right to make the film
an British-Irish co-production between Granada and Jim's production company
Hell's Kitchen. Jim and his long-standing professional partner Arthur Lappin
joined the team as executive producers. Pippa found commercial support
for our ambitious plans also at the Film Council's New Cinema Fund, the
Irish Film Board, Portman Films and ITV.
From the start, the plan had been to make a film which covered just
24 hours, telling simply the story of what happened on Jan. 30,
1972. Because if we were to explain the background, where should
we begin? A few weeks earlier when the march was conceived? With the introduction
of internment in the summer of 1971? With the start of the Civil Rights
movement in 1968 or with partition or James II's siege of Derry?
And on one level the specific circumstances did not really matter. For
Bloody Sunday represented the terrible dance of death that had been going
on between Britain and Ireland since Cromwell and before. If
the film had any model it was The Battle of Algiers, Gillo
Pontecorvo's 1960s masterpiece, which Paul and I both particularly admired.
But while that was the story of the victory of idealism, ours was the story
of its defeat.
From the start, we made a decision not to research the subject by conducting
interviews. Instead we chose to use the vast amount of material already
available in the public domain. The Saville Inquiry was adding to this
a further resource of literally thousands of contemporaneous documents
and statements.
We felt that this was the best objective resource which we could mine.
And while the picture which emerges from the material is not perfect, patterns
emerge, especially from 1972 material, which cannot be disguised.
Crucial among the resources were the so-called 'Porter Tapes' of the Army
radio traffic, recorded by a local TV and radio in his shop in William
Street in the heart of Derry, even as the events unfolded outside his door.
Having narrowed the film to the almost classical time-frame of a single
day, we had to decide which stories to tell. There were 10,000 civilian
marchers and 3,000 British troops in Derry on the day, but we decided
to focus on four main strands: two from each side of the conflict, all
focusing on individuals under particular pressure.
Gerry Donaghy, a 17-year-old boy from the Bogside, had just been
released from prison after serving six months for stone throwing.
Gerry was a member of what the British Army called the "Derry Young Hooligans"
or "DYH", but though he had been active in the defence of Free Derry
and in the resistance to British rule, he was in love with a Protestant
girl and was looking to stay out of trouble and settle down with her.
To play Gerry, we chose a 16-year-old Derry schoolboy, Declan Duddy, whose
uncle, Jackie Duddy was the first person to die on Bloody Sunday, aged
17.
On the other side of the conflict there was a young Para, who witnessed
the events of the day as a member of the anti-tank platoon, the unit which
fired perhaps as many as half the shots on the day. Para 027 gave
an account of his section's actions that most closely matches the evidence.
Mike Edwards, a young ex-infantry soldier, sports instructor and actor,
took this part.
The third character was Brigadier Patrick MacLellan (played by Nicholas
Farrell), the commander of 8 Brigade and the man placed in charge of the
operation conceived by his superior, the Commander Land Forces Northern
Ireland General Robert Ford, played by Tim Piggott Smith. MacLellan
had expressed certain reservations about the plan, but he was in charge
and it was he who gave the fateful order for the Paras to go in. Our fourth
and perhaps central character was Ivan Cooper.
Cooper was a leading Civil Rights activist and MP, but rather than being
a working class-Catholic activist or University educated radical, he was
the Protestant manager of a shirt factory. His own father had been in the
loyalist paramilitary UVF. Ivan Cooper is one of the forgotten figures
of the Civil Rights movement - he was never to march again after Bloody
Sunday. His is the story of an idealistic politician who tries his best,
whether he is leading or just standing at the front. To play this part,
we were very fortunate to get James Nesbitt. Jimmy comes from a Protestant
background near Coleraine in County Londonderry. For him, making
the film became a very personal exploration of his own background and the
conflict.
It was important to us as Brits to tell not only the story of the civilian
population and its victims, but also of the British soldiers because Bloody
Sunday is at least half a British story. The British self-image,
is of a reasonable people, temperate, not given to excess. Yet how was
it that British soldiers could shoot 27 unarmed civilians? We also
believed that story might have wider resonance, for throughout history
there are stories of the collision between armies and civilian populations
with parallels in Chechnya and Israel and beyond.
We felt the best people to represent the attitudes and conduct of soldiers
were soldiers themselves. And with a handful of exceptions the soldiers
in the film are ex-military. Many of these men had served in Northern Ireland.
And the acting was not a problem, because acting is not such an alien activity
for soldiers, who are used to playing imaginary scenarios on endless army
exercises.
To play the part of Colonel Wilford the CO of the First Battalion of
the Parachute Regiment, the unit that went into the Bogside on the day,
we were fortunate in finding something close to the genuine article.
Simon Mann is a member of the brewing family Mann, and both his father
and grandfather captained England at cricket. Simon attended Eton
before joining the Scots Guards, the family regiment. He served on
several tours of Northern Ireland, including spells in "Londonderry" and
with the SAS, even after leaving the army he rejoined to work on the staff
of Sir Peter de la Billiere during the Gulf War. He lives mainly
in South Africa, where he runs a security operation. Simon Mann had
never acted, but he was enough of a maverick to agree to play Colonel Wilford,
and to bring a low key, but utterly business-like quality to the part.
We applied similar techniques to the Civil Rights side of the story,
and while we were filming in Dublin we sought out as many Derry exiles
in the City as we could find. We regularly brought down bus-loads of people
from Derry to take part in our scenes.
We were able to introduce non-professional or inexperienced actors to
play the parts thanks to the approach to film-making that we had used on
The Murder of Stephen Lawrence. As white film-makers we felt
it important to hand over some level of authorship to the black performers
playing the leading roles, so we dispensed with lighting and tracks and
dollies and the other paraphernalia of conventional film making, and encouraged
our actors to find the truth of the situation by improvising without the
constraints of marks to hit and lights to avoid.
This time round, with the "Paras" we just drove them into a yard, similar
to the one where the Paras waited before going in on the day and subjected
them to a blizzard of radio messages and crowd noise, and shot the results.
Hanging about in the cold is a way of life in the army, and the ex-soldiers
playing the Paras quickly slipped into the old military routines, brewing
up and moaning about the officers and getting wound up as the moment to
go in approached.
The result of this was that we had a remarkable mix of people on set,
together creating a shared narrative: Derry people, including members
of the families of the dead and wounded; ex-soldiers including Paras, serving
members of the Irish army, republicans, nationalists, British patriots
not forgetting the watchful members of the Irish special branch, who were
on hand to guarantee our safety.
After one particularly fraught and emotional day involving hundreds
of soldiers and thousands of civilians we took as many people as we could
manage to the pub for a drink. Ex soldiers and Derry people found
themselves talking to each other and if they didn't necessarily see eye
to eye, they were at least talking together, something many could never
have imagined doing.
One of the basic challenges of the film was where to actually make it.
Derry is a distinctive city, set on both sides of the Foyle Estuary and
surrounded by hills. But there were two problems. First of all was
how we could reasonably re-stage the arrival of hundreds of troops and
the firing of dozens of rounds of ammunition in the middle of the City
at a sensitive time during the peace process.
Secondly, the shootings took place at the foot of the Rossville flats,
a 10-story tower block built by the Protestant controlled Housing Authority
to pen the Catholic Community into the Bogside, and long since demolished.
We could start the filming and the march in Derry on the Bishops Field
in the Creggan, high above the city centre, but would have to finish it
somewhere else.
It was not easy to find a setting which would match the blocks in Derry:
a researcher literally drove around Britain in search of suitable blocks
of flats. In the end, we found the flats we needed in Ballymun, the infamous
wind-swept high-rise housing estate in north Dublin. Ballymun has
something of '70s Bogside about it. It is neglected and beset with
problems, but also friendly, fiercely proud and with more than a hint of
republicanism.
Our Irish co-production partners gulped when we told them where we wanted
to go. Not only that but also to build the Victorian houses and shops
that neighboured the Rossville flats. And to re-stage a mass demonstration
involving thousands of people and the invasion by hundreds of British troops
in armoured "Pigs" (APCs), Land Rovers and lorries.
Paying extras to populate the vast crowd scenes of the film was clearly
beyond the budget of a modestly-funded film. Our Derry friends assured
us that if we asked them the people of Derry would restage the march for
us. So we hired a lawyer and went to the Parade's Commission with
an application to hold a march. We advertised in the Derry papers and students
from Media Studies department of the College of Further Education got a
bit of hands-on experience, handing out leaflets and touring the streets
with loudspeakers to ask for people to come out and recreate the march
- dressed in 1972 gear if possible. At 2 p.m. on our first day of filming,
Paul Greengrass and I found ourselves standing in the middle of the Creggan
in a bitter wind, but apart from the crew and few quizzical looking actors,
we were alone. We needn't have worried.
Derry turned out for us. People started to come in dribs and drabs and
then in a flood, and within minutes we had more people lining up behind
our old Bedford lorry with its Civil Rights banner than we could almost
cope with. In spite of the terrible weather, we had a cast of thousands.
I lost count of the number of people who told me the weather had been beautiful
on Bloody Sunday. And while it poured with rain, the day of our Derry march
was beautiful to me.
But we had to do it all again in Ballymun, with the main action of the
day when the Paras went in. On Jan. 30, 1972, the numbers of people
coming down from the Creggan were swollen by the crowds joining as the
march wove its way through the districts of nationalist "Free Derry," so
that when it reached William Street and the army lines, it had doubled
or trebled in size.
We needed to see those crowds in numbers. Calling for volunteers
in Derry was one thing but repeating the trick in Dublin in the middle
of the foot and mouth outbreak which had thrown agricultural Ireland into
a near panic, was another. In effect we bet the whole film on that
one day. We brought two coach-loads of people down from Derry and again
we made a public appeal.
Fortunately, this time the weather was mild and it seemed like the whole
of Ballymun came out. It was an extraordinary day, not just a day
of standing around like the crowds on most film sets, but of marching,
shouting, singing, protesting, stoning and finally being charged and shot
at by the British army. The crowd needed little instruction in what
to do. This was a script that everyone knew.
After the shootings on Bloody Sunday, the wounded and the bodies of
the dead were taken to Altnagelvin Hospital, where there were terrible
scenes of grief and chaos as the overstretched staff tried to save the
injured and cope with the dead. British soldiers, including Paras, and
distraught relatives crowded into the casualty department, while the Civil
Rights leaders desperately tried to obtain a list of the dead and wounded.
The people who took part in this scene were lmost exclusively from Derry
and they included several relatives of the dead and wounded.
We were very anxious that the experience would simply be too distressing
for them, but they were determined to take part and to allow public expression
of their terrible, long-buried grief. Among the relatives taking
part were two middle-aged women, sisters of Jackie Duddy, the first boy
to die on the day. As well as taking part in the scene, they also witnessed
two young Derry girls play them as they were 30 years ago. It was
a haunting and harrowing day.
Background:
The Civil Rights Marches
By Ivan Cooper
From 1964, Ivan Cooper was involved in a number of housing protests
organised by the Derry Labour Party. He played a prominent role in
the Civil Rights marches and was first elected as MP for Mid-Derry in February
1969. A middle-class Protestant, he was a founder member of the SDLP
(the biggest Catholic party in Northern Ireland) and went on to become
Minister of Community Relations in the 1974 Power-Sharing Executive.
Cooper now works from his Derry office as an Insolvency Consultant.
He explains the birth of the movement in 1968:
"The Civil Rights movement in Derry occurred as a direct result of a
protest about the death of a child at Springtime Camp - an old American
Army base just outside Derry. These people had lived for years in
these disgusting unsanitary surroundings. There was a very high mortality
rate in relation to children. We had a protest at the Guildhall and
were escorted away by the police.
"The first civil rights march in Derry was scheduled for Oct. 5. On
the morning Charlie Morrison, who was a Labour Party activist, Eamonn McCann
and myself were arrested by the police. That was the first occasion I met
the Assistant Chief Constable of the RUC, who had come down from headquarters
to oversee police operations in Derry. We were held there until about
quarter past two and the march was due to start at three o'clock.
I honestly believe that he thought we were going to call off the march.
When we walked out of the station I asked the police if they would lend
me their loud hailer. They loaned me it and I used it to outline
why the march was going to be held irrespective of the ban imposed by the
Minister of Home Affairs at the time, who was William Craig. An RTE
cameraman captured the pictures and broadcast them all around the world.
There was one particular scene of a leading police officer who was caught
on film using his black stick on a reporter. In addition to that there
were three Labour MPs there that day. The next day, the press from
the UK were arrived. That's how it started.
"Civil rights marches in the city, which were very large marches, dramatically
so, captured the spirit of the day. It wasn't about marching for
Catholic rights although principally the Catholic population were most
affected by the gerrymandering which had gone on in the city. This
city, where two thirds of the population were Catholic, elected 12 Protestant
councillors and only 8 Catholics - a clear case of the people being denied
a vote that would change the balance of power. On Oct 19, a
sit-down demonstration was held on the Guild Hall Square and approximately
8,000 people came.
"Various meetings were held in the city with a whole theme of non-violence.
We held a march over the original route that had been banned on 5 October.
Then on the 10 or 11 of November we held the largest march ever in Ireland,
with over 20,000 people singing 'We Shall Overcome' - a magic movement
which captured the imagination of the world press.
"Martin Luther King is who we modeled our demonstrations on. The
marches demanded rights for Catholics and for Protestants - the same rights
as the people of Nottingham, or Birmingham or Glasgow. Unfortunately
the Unionists at Stormont decided to smear us, as they smeared all opposition
to that government, which was to say we were a bunch of Republicans.
"They made a vain attempt to isolate us from the main block of Catholic
opinion by saying we were Communists. I can tell you now, no-one in our
group gave backing to armed conflict, this was a non-violent movement that
captured the imagination, initially, of the people of Derry, but it permeated
right throughout Ireland. It captured the spirit of brotherhood and quite
a few Protestants got involved with the marches here in the city.
The smears of Unionism then scared those people off, and of course those
Protestant people who had initially supported civil rights marches and
civil rights demands, were very quickly identified as 'traitors'.
Protestant people found it difficult to stand up against it because they
thought the whole movement was designed to gain rights for Catholic people.
But it was to gain rights for Catholics, Protestants everyone.
"A lot of the civil rights demands which related to housing and employment
were simply conceded. There was one major civil rights demand which
had special relevance to Northern Ireland and which had not been conceded
- that was the whole issue of internment without trial. Internment
without trial was undertaken on the back of the Special Powers Act. We
were determined to get rid of the Act as it allowed the police to go to
a person's home, arrest them and intern them without any trial. To
those of us involved in civil rights this was an obnoxious legislation.
"This one issue which embraced all the civil rights community was still
outstanding so there was still a major need to bring people onto the streets.
It was against that background that the march on Bloody Sunday was organised.
The previous week we had a march demanding an end to internment, and were
diverted onto the beach by the Paratroopers. This was the first time
we had come across this regiment. This was a different breed of soldier.
They dealt with us very heavy-handedly, in a very brutal way. I had
the impression that this was determined to scare us off. But it wasn't
to be, we had decided the march was to continue.
"Initially, it was decided that we would have feeder parades all culminating
in the main march, but were persuaded that these presented a potential
danger. The other aspect that had to be taken into account was that
the IRA was operating in the city. So we were anxious to ensure that
the IRA would not be present in the main march on Bloody Sunday.
That was top priority for all of us who were involved in the organisation.
We decided to have one main march.
"It had been made clear that if the IRA were to compromise the march
it would be called off, because this was a non-violent march, and it was
not part of anything to do with attacking the army or police. We
were there to demonstrate as we had done on many occasions previously,
in a non-violent way about the use, in an unjust way, of the Special Powers
Act. I met the IRA and made it absolutely clear to them that if I
did not have an assurance from them that they would not have any military
hardware or guns, the march would not go on.
"I was vehemently prepared to use that influence. Those assurances
were given two days after representations were made and the march went
on. A decision had been taken prior to the march that, because the
Paratroopers were located at what has now become known as Barrier 14, we
could not march through to the Guildhall. Because of that we did
a detour to a point where we would have a public meeting. This was
a tactic that had been used a number of times previously in our civil rights
movement to try and take the potential for confrontation away.
"The intention of detouring towards Free Derry Corner was to get people
to the platform and away from confrontation. That wasn't to be, unfortunately.
What happened was the stewarding was not strong enough to ensure that all
the people went across to the meeting point at Free Derry Corner.
A number of young people had made their way to the barrier 14 area, where
the Paratroopers were with armoured cars and various means of stopping
the march. That was a point of confrontation.
"Young people got involved in a stone throwing confrontation and verbal
abuse. At that particular stage I was conscious I had a role to play
at Free Derry Corner as I had been listed as one of the speakers.
So my main priority initially was to get people away from Barrier 14 and
over to Free Derry Corner. I had very substantial success in doing
that so my second goal was to get across myself and play a part in the
meeting itself.
"The rest, as they say, is history. I'm afraid I haven't got answers
still today, but I can remember I looked up and saw soldiers up on the
walls. I was conscious of bullets flying from several different directions.
I thought I knew everything about Bloody Sunday. It's only as a result
of various programmes being made and research carried out by people and
statements which have emanated as a result of the Saville Inquiry that
I realise I only knew 5% of what was happening that day. There were
so many different aspects to it. You're caught up in your own little
time frame.
"I remember at one point we could hear the bulk of shots, which I thought
were the firing of rubber bullets. But I remember Bernadette [Devlin] saying
to me 'it's lead Coops, it's lead'. That was the first time I actually
saw the lead skipping. It reminded me of skipping stones on the river.
You don't realise that this lead is designed to kill people."
About The Cast
James Nesbitt (Ivan Cooper) was born in
Northern Ireland. This year has seen James in several feature film roles.
These include the lead in Lucky Break, directed by Peter Cattaneo
(The Full Monty) also starring Olivia Willaims and Timothy Spall;
Wild
About Harry, former Cold Feet director Declan Lowney's first feature;
and The Most Fertile Man In Ireland. He also appeared in the hit
film Waking Ned Devine, and Michael Winterbottom's Welcome to Sarajevo.
He is well-known for his role as Adam in the popular British comedy
series, Cold Feet, for which he won an ITV British Comedy Award
for Best Comedy Actor. In television, this year also saw James play the
title character in Colin Bateman's (Empire State, Divorcing Jack)
drama comedy pilot Murphy's Law for the BBC. Other television credits
include two series of the BBC drama Playing The Field opposite John
Thomson, Touching Evil and lead parts in Common As Muck, Ballykissangel,
Soldier Soldier, Between The Lines and Lovejoy. In 1994
he played opposite Robert Carlyle and Juliet Aubrey in Jimmy McGovern'
s award-winning BBC drama Go Now.
Nesbitt was 6-years-old on Bloody Sunday, but was largely unaware of
the tragedy:
"I think there's a collective guilt and silence among the Protestant
population that a great wrong was done. So I think it was put away.
My mother and father never really talked about it. I thought 'Christ, I've
wasted so much of my life not knowing about the back door that I live on.'
The school I went to taught a very different history from the Catholic
grammar schools, for example. So my memories of it were non-existent
in a sense.
"You pick up snippets about it as you're growing up but I never really
knew fully what went on, and never really knew the impact it had on the
next thirty years until I did the film. The problem with the Protestants
and the British is that no one ever wanted to own Bloody Sunday, and it's
as much a British tragedy as an Irish tragedy. We're trying to make
sense of it.
"I think people in Northern Ireland have had 30 years of trying to make
some sense of terrorism in general. Thinking how could this be happening,
losing people from their community all the time who were good God-fearing
people. I think certainly that there's a tacit agreement in the Protestant
community that a great wrong was done that day, and I don't think they've
ever been able to cope with that - so you walk away from it in a sense.
I think in the peace process going on at the minute, a big section of
the Unionist community realise we can't walk away and we've got to sit
down and acknowledge things and share things. So I hope Bloody Sunday
helps make people aware of this big wrong.
"It wasn't necessarily a lesson to me in the script, because by that
stage I had a pretty good idea of what was going on, but I was so blown
away by the writing and the obvious relevance of it. Paul Greengrass
gave me a couple of books, one of which was Don Mullan's Eyewitness
Bloody Sunday. I read those and, before we started shooting,
I went over by myself to Derry.
I met up with Ivan Cooper and spent what I thought would be a half an
hour getting to know him, but five hours later we were still chatting.
There were a lot of similarities in our backgrounds and I was just amazed
by him. I spent a bit of time in Derry at the Bloody Sunday
Centre, meeting all the relatives, because I was nervous about what their
reaction would be to me coming in and doing it. You can't help but
be in Derry, because Derry bears witness to it every day, it has done for
30 years, and that's the best research you can do, just being there.
"Ivan Cooper was taking a calculated risk, because it was the last throw
of the dice for the civil rights movement. In many ways, he was destroyed
by it. Ivan never marched again because he felt that what happened
that day was hijacked by terrorist organizations."
"I think this is the first time I've played a real person, and Ivan
was great. What I got from him was something which, I think, is outdated
and doesn't really exist anymore. I mean there was a man whose vocation
was politics, his vocation was to help with the struggle for civil rights,
who from the age of 12 was listening to recordings of Gandhi speeches,
who was obsessed with Martin Luther King. So the challenge in a sense is,
from my interpretation of that character, to be instilled with a sense
of what Ivan had, not to copy him. I mean I'm very different from
Ivan but the main thing is to try and capture something about the man's
heart.
"In doing that, the thing which was most powerful and most potent was
that Ivan in the late 1960s was at the forefront of the civil rights movement
and his support was completely Catholic. The very fact that as a
Protestant he could get that amount of support from a Catholic electorate.
"That gave me confidence in a sense for Jimmy Nesbitt the Protestant
actor who was swanning into town to make a movie about the civil rights
movement, the personal tragedies of the Catholic people, that they were
not offended in any way. They gave me extraordinary support and the
welcome I received there was overwhelming. It was immensely moving
and incredibly important, giving me the confidence to feel that I could
do justice to the film.
"I was very nervous of what I was getting into, and trying to do justice
to it. This was about a real event with tragic consequences. I was
playing a real person and I was at the centre of a film about a place that
is still bearing witness to the awful scars. At the beginning of
the march there was an incredibly happy atmosphere - as it must have been
on the day. We had thousands of people there, all of them out just
for the day but with a united consent that we are doing something right
here. The feeling you've got right on your side does give you a spring
in your step. The turnout was extraordinary and it was very odd for me
but it felt so real because we weren't shooting it like a conventional
movie.
"I was walking around and everyone knew it was Jimmy Nesbitt, the local
actor. But they all knew I was playing Ivan, so they all came up
to me and were saying, 'Ivan, good luck to you,' and hugging me and reliving
that morning for themselves. That made it much easier for me to a
certain extent but I was also thinking, 'oh my God, this is so real it's
almost unreal. This isn't like a process I've known before.'
"So when we head off on the march. I'm on the lorry with everyone behind
me singing. And you can't help but think this is what it must have
been like - if we can sort out internment that'll be almost everything
we've asked for. What was different I suppose for us was that we knew what
was to come and were trying not to think of it.
"But in a way we got so caught up in it that the feeling of optimism
was extraordinary. There is always a danger of an actor sounding worthy
but just talking about it now is chilling because I felt what Ivan must
have felt. Then we got to the moment when the Paras come in and we hear
the bullets. When we heard the actual cracks of the rifles, we were
shitting it. Again a lot of the people there didn't have to be reminded
at all of what to do, it was just terrifying.
"I don't think I made a courageous decision (to be in the film).
think the people who were courageous about it were the people of Derry
who've given me such support because they've lived with it for such a long
time and are all desperate for it all to be right. So they are taking
a bit of a gamble accepting someone like me to come in and do this.
I was very worried about what my parents would think, but I talked to them
and said it was important for me to do this. They encouraged me and
supported me and I think that was courageous.
I've known Paul Greengrass for 10 years or so. We were having a drink
before the BAFTAs and he said he might be doing something about Ireland
and might give me a call. They sent me up Bloody Sunday, I read it,
and it's not an easy read, but it had an extraordinary effect on me.
Paul and Mark Redhead, the producer, then came up to meet me. They
talked to me a lot about my background - trying to find out about me, where
I came from, what my thoughts were, and that was that.
"My journey through Bloody Sunday has been extraordinary.
It has redefined a lot for me, it's been a watershed for me in terms of
acting, in terms of what you can find out about yourself. At the core of
everything for me is my relationship with Paul. He has got extraordinary
warmth and sincerity, and a filthy sense of humour - but he has got incredible
integrity. A lot of people will judge me in the film.
"But when I look at bits of the film I go, 'My God, the only way I could
have got to that place was through Paul.' His method of working is
to be in your ear the whole time with the one phrase that kept recurring,
'be in the moment, be in the moment, live in the moment.' He's a
man who's committed to civil rights, but he's also committed to film-making.
He made me see acting in a different way, made me go through the process
in a different way, he made it very real for me, which often didn't make
it easy. It's certainly changed my life in a way.
"It is ultimately a film. There will be a backlash I'm sure from a lot
of my community: 'Why did Jimmy Nesbitt go in there? He's a turncoat!'
But in the film we've tried to help bring some sort of closure, some sort
of reason or explanation to a terribly deep and open wound that has affected
not just the people of Derry, but the British Isles, for thirty years.
"I hope that people, when they see this film, reappraise Ivan Cooper
for a start. Because I think a big part of Ivan died on that day.
Ivan feels a certain amount of culpability. Who knows where Ivan
Cooper might have gone had Bloody Sunday not happened? I hope the
people of Derry watch it and see that they haven't been forgotten, that
we tried to tell a story honourably about this fantastic town, these fantastic
people and this terrible thing that happened to them. It's already
done so much for me - nothing has had the impact that Bloody Sunday
has had on me.
"In fact Bloody Sunday might turn out to be such a watershed
for me, in the same way that Bloody Sunday in itself was a watershed in
Irish politics. It was a defining moment, in that for years acting
was something I enjoyed but it didn't feed my soul. And then doing Bloody
Sunday - it brings me out in tears quite often - it was a difficult
process, but it was also an extraordinary process. It made me think
for the very first time why I loved the process. Why I love acting
... and why I love Ireland."
Tim Pigott-Smith (Major General Ford)
Tim's career has encompassed stage and screen. He has appeared in a number
of television dramas including The Innocents, The Vice, Kavanagh QC
and the classic Jewel in the Crown. His film credits include Merchant
Ivory's The Remains of the Day and he will soon be seen in Shekhar
Kapur's The Four Feathers. He is a regular performer of Shakespeare
with the RSC and at the National Theatre, and he appeared in The Iceman
Cometh in the West End and on Broadway, alongside Kevin Spacey.
Nicholas Farrell (BRIGADIER MACLELLAN) appeared
most recently in the blockbuster Pearl Harbor. His other film credits
include Plunkett & Macleane, Horatio in Kenneth Branagh's adaptation
of Hamlet, Chariots of Fire, and Twelfth Night. He
has appeared in many television productions including Lipstick
On Your Collar, Arthur's Dyke, Midsomer Murders and The Choir.
On stage, his work with the Royal Shakespeare includes Cymbeline, The
Revenger's Tragedy, The Three Sisters and Mark Antony in Julius
Caesar. He also appeared in Sam Mendes' productions of The Cherry
Orchard at the Aldwych and Kean at the Old Vic/Canada.
Gerard McSorley's (CHIEF SUPT. LAGAN) recent
screen credits include Ordinary Decent Criminal, Alan Parker's Angela's
Ashes, Angelica Huston's Agnes Brown, The Deep End of the
Ocean and Dancing at Lughnasa. He also appeared in Neil Jordan's
Michael
Collins and The Butcher Boy, and alongside Helen Mirren in Some
Mother's Son. On television he has appeared in Channel 4's Father
Ted and The Cut for RTE.
Kathy Kiera Clarke (Frances) was born in
Belfast. Her theatre credits are extensive and include, as a founder member
of the Marillac Theatre Company, Ma Hat Ma Coat (Irish tour) and
Ghandi Girls (on tour and at the Royal National Theatre).In London
she played Mary Gallagher in Once A Catholic and Rosemary in Factory
Girls, both at the Tricycle Theatre and Constance in Shuttle at
the Red Room. She was award nominated (RNT/Ian Charleson Awards Best
Actress) playing the title role in Glasgow Citizens Theatre production
of Medea.Her television work includes The Glass Arena, Chandler
& Co and Eskimo Day for the BBC and a series role in Head
Over Heels for Carlton. Last year she played Anna in the BBC series
Take
A Girl Like You. Her film work includes Wild About Harry, and
she co-stars in The Most Fertile Man In Ireland, also with James
Nesbitt.
Allan Gildea (Kevin McCorry) Film and television
credits include Elsewhere, directed by Brian Drysdale, 'H',
directed by Paul Tully, and Puddy Cat, directed by Brendan Byrne.
On stage he has played David in Dumped at the Tinderbox Theatre,
and Felix in Suite In Three Keys at the Riverside Theatre, Coleraine.
Gerard Crossan (Eamonn McCann) has appeared
in the BBC productions Rough Justice, Kavanagh QC, The Bill,
and Civvies. Other screen credits include The Precious Blood,
directed by John Woods, and Safe and Sound, directed by Baz Taylor.
On stage his credits include Lynne Parker's Down The Line at the
Peacock Theatre, and Conall Morrison's Freedom Of The City at the
Abbey Theatre.
Mary Moulds (Bernadette Devlin) After completing
a National Diploma in Performing Arts, Mary went on to become Saatchi &
Saatchi's 1998 'Face' of Oil of Olay. Mary recently won Best Actress award
at the Click-Flick Film Festival for her role as Sarah in George Kingsnorth's
film The Engagement. Mary has also been cast as one of the leads
in Scott Morgan's feature Baby Baby to shoot later in the year in
Belfast. Short films include Green Oranges for the Premiere Scheme
and UTV with Birdy Sweeney, and Home and The Pitch
for Lab. Her theatre credits dating over the last few years include work
at many leading Irish venues for companies such as the Lyric Theatre, Tinderbox
and Centre Stage.
Carmel McCallion (Bridget Bond) Carmel McCallion
was born and raised in the Bogside area of Derry. While running a hairdressing
business, she was a founder member of the amateur dramatic group: the '71
Players, and in the late 1980s Carmel decided to pursue a career in professional
acting. She became a well-known actress in her native city of Derry, starring
in many local plays, pantomimes and musicals. She also worked for BBC Radio
Foyle and Radio Ulster. Recently Carmel has played Shirley in the one-woman
show "Shirley Valentine" and has appeared in New York as Patricia
Donnelly in "The Guildhall Clock", a strong play about Derry women,
written by local man Eddie Kerr. Bloody Sunday is her second feature
film.
Carmel is a strong supporter of woman's issues and civil rights. She
attended the Bloody Sunday march in 1972.
Declan Duddy (Gerry Donaghy) is in his final
year at St. Peter's High School in Derry and is currently applying to university.
Bloody Sunday is his acting debut. His uncle, Jackie Duddy, died
on Bloody Sunday in 1972, aged 17.
About The Film-Makers
Paul Greengrass (Writer/Director)
wrote and directed the acclaimed factual drama The Murder of Stephen
Lawrence for ITV, which won the BAFTA TV award for Best Single Drama
in 1999. His other television credits include The Fix and The
One That Got Away while his feature films include Resurrected,
starring David Thewlis, and The Theory of Flight, starring Kenneth
Branagh and Helena Bonham Carter. He also spent 10 years as a producer
on the award-winning British investigative series World in Action,
and wrote the hugely controversial book, Spycatcher with Peter Wright.
He made his first film in Derry in 1981. He became the first journalist
to film inside the Maze Prison, while covering the hunger strikes.
Mark Redhead (Producer) After training as
a journalist, Mark Redhead joined London Weekend Television, where his
work as a producer included The Trial of Richard III and The
Trial Of Lee Harvey Oswald in 1986. He worked as a freelance documentary
producer/director, making ground-breaking series on subjects as diverse
as the climate and the British monarchy. He moved into drama with Granada
in 1993, producing, amongst other things, a series with Rik Mayall, and
The
Bare Necessities
In 1998 he helped establish a new Factual Drama department for Granada
and as producer, working in partnership with writer/director Paul Greengrass,
made the acclaimed The Murder of Stephen Lawrence for ITV in 1999,
which will get a US showing on PBS on Martin Luther King Day in January,
2002. He also conceived and executive produced the award winning, two part
mini series, This Is Personal: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper.
He recently joined Hat Trick Productions as Head of Drama.
Don Mullan (Co-Producer) is the author of
the acclaimed bestsellers, Eyewitness Bloody Sunday, which played
a crucial role in British Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to establish
a new Bloody Sunday Inquiry in 1998; and The Dublin & Monaghan
Bombings. Don Mullan is a native of Derry and was educated at St Joseph's
Secondary School, Creggan; the Development Studies Department, Holy Ghost
College, Kimmage, Dublin; and Iona College, New York. Aged fifteen, he
witnessed the Bloody Sunday massacre while attending his first Northern
Ireland Civil Rights march. His involvement with the Northern Ireland Civil
Rights movement led him to work on civil and human rights issues around
the world. In 1980, aged twenty-four, he became Director of AfrI (Action
From Ireland), a Dublin-based justice, peace and human rights organisation.
In 1983-4 he worked as a volunteer in Recife, Brazil.
In 1994, he attended the inauguration of President Nelson Mandela, as
the guest of Archbishop Tutu. He worked with Concern Worldwide for almost
two years, from July 1994, during which time he visited Rwanda and Zaïre.
He now works as a freelance journalist/writer/broadcaster and has just
written his third book - A Gift, of Roses: Memories of the Visit
to Ireland of St Thérèse - to critical acclaim.
Paul Myler (Co-Producer) is Head of Production
at Hell's Kitchen. He has worked recently on Anjelica Huston's Agnes
Browne, Peter Sheridan's Borstal Boy and John Carney's On
The Edge. He is a co-producer on Jim Sheridan's new project, East
of Harlem, which is currently in post-production.
Ivan Strasburg (Director of Photography)
has worked previously with Paul Greengrass on Resurrected, The Theory
Of Flight and The Murder of Stephen Lawrence. His film credits
include Leslie Woodhead's Endurance and Ross Cramer's God On
The Rocks. His many television credits include The Corner (for
HBO), The Blonde Bombshell, Moll Flanders, and the Cracker
series, for which he won a BAFTA TV award for Best Photography. His most
recent project is David Thacker's The Mayor Of Casterbridge, to
be screened on ITV.
Clare Douglas (Editor) After a degree in
English and Drama at Bristol University, Clare Douglas took a postgraduate
film course at Hornsey College of Art. She was a trainee at the BBC, and
worked as an editor there on a wide range of documentaries and then predominantly
dramas. Her freelance career began when Dennis Potter asked her to leave
and edit for his company. Her credits include Le Carré's Tinker,
Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Dennis Potter's Lipstick On Your Collar and
Karaoke and, The Murder of Stephen Lawrence for Paul Greengrass.
John Paul Kelly (Production Designer) came
to London from Dublin to study for a BA in architecture at Kingston University.
He followed this with an MA in Design for Film & Television at The
Royal College of Art. Since leaving the RCA in 1993 he has designed a number
of feature film and television dramas. Feature film credits include
I Capture the Castle (Trademark Films), Secret Society (Focus
Films), The Last Yellow (Scala), Twenty four : Seven (Scala)
and Under the skin (BFI). Television credits include: Madame
Bovary (BBC), Shooting the Past (BBC) and Eight Hours From
Paris (BBC).
Dinah Collin (Costume Designer) has designed
for a number of television productions, including the BBC's Pride and
Prejudice, for which she won an Emmy and Cable Ace award for Costume;
and Stephen Whittaker's Portrait of a Marriage, for which she was
a BAFTA winner for Best Costume Design. Other television credits include
the BBC series The Sins, and In A Land Of Plenty. She has
worked with Paul Greengrass before on The Murder Of Stephen Lawrence
and The Fix. Her most recent project was Innocence, directed
by Kristian Levring and shot on location in Malaysia.
Pippa Cross (Executive Producer) worked
as a production executive for Granada Film on Jim Sheridan's first two
features, My Left Foot and The Field, before being appointed
Head of Film at Granada. She produced Tim Sullivan's Jack & Sarah,
starring Richard E. Grant, and Anthony Hopkins' directorial debut, August.
Executive producer credits include Girls Night, Rogue Trader, Longitude
(the BAFTA award-winning miniseries for C4 and A&E), Essex Boys,
and Terence Davies' The House Of Mirth starring Gillian Anderson.
Pippa recently produced Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World, starring Thora
Birch and Steve Buscemi; The Gathering with Christina Ricci; and
The
Good Thief, starring writer Kay Mellor.
Arthur Lappin (Executive Producer) has been
a leading theatre and stage producer in Ireland for fifteen years, following
a career as Drama and Dance director of the Irish Arts Council. He
has been a producer on over ten feature films, two TV drama series and
several documentaries in this time as well as over twenty stage productions.
His collaborations with Jim Sheridan include: line producer on My
Left Foot and The Field and co-producer of In The Name of
the Father. Arthur Lappin produced Some Mother's Son, The
Boxer, Agnes Browne, Borstal Boy and On The Edge.
He is currently producing East of Harlem which has just finished
filming in Dublin and New York.Arthur Lappin is managing director of Hell's
Kitchen, the production company he established in 1992 with Jim Sheridan.
He was founding Chairman of Ireland's National Training Committee for Film
and Television (now called Screen Training Ireland) and is Chairman of
The Ark, a unique cultural centre for children in Dublin. He is married
with five children.
Jim Sheridan (Executive Producer) Following
a distinguished career in the theatre between the 1960s and the 1980s,
Jim Sheridan wrote and directed his first critically acclaimed feature
My
Left Foot in 1989. He followed this in 1990 with The Field
which he also wrote and directed. In the same year he wrote the screenplay
Into The West which was directed in 1992 by Mike Newell. In
1993 he wrote, produced and directed In The Name of the Father and
in 1995 he wrote and produced Some Mother's Son, which was directed
by Terry George. In 1997, he wrote, produced and directed The
Boxer and in 1999 he produced Agnes Browne, directed by and
starring Anjelica Huston.
Sheridane is also executive producer of Borstal Boy and On
The Edge. He is currently producing and directing East
of Harlem which he has written. Jim Sheridan's films have achieved popular
and critical acclaim throughout the world. His films have garnered
thirteen Academy Award nominations and have won two Academy Awards as well
as numerous prestigious international awards. Jim Sheridan lives
in Dublin and is married with three children.
Rod Stoneman (Executive Producer for Bord
Scannán na hÉireann/The Irish Film Board) has been the Chief
Executive of the Irish Film Board since 1993. Prior to this he was a Deputy
Commissioning Editor in Independent Film and Video at Channel Four in London.
He has made a number of documentaries and written on film and television
for Film Ireland, Sight and Sound and Screen.
Paul Trijbits (Executive Producer) is the
Head of the Film Council's New Cinema Fund, which has £5 million
a year to invest in films that illustrate unique ideas and innovative approaches.
Trijbits has produced and executive produced a number of edgy and challenging
feature films with mostly first-time directors. Before joining the
Film Council, he executive produced Dom Rotheroe's My Brother Tom,
and Philippa Cousins' Happy Now. Trijbits's credits also include
Richard Stanley's Hardware and Dust Devils, Danny Cannon's The
Young Americans, John Duigan's Paranoid, Paul Weiland's Roseanna's
Grave and William Brookfield's black comedy Milk. He is
a founder member and former co-chair of the New Producers Alliance (NPA),
and acts as a mentor to graduates at the University of Westminster Film
School.
Twenty-seven people
were shot
on Bloody Sunday
Deceased:
Patrick Doherty
Jacky Duddy
Michael Kelly
Kevin MceIhinney
Gerald McKinney
William Nash
John Young
Gerald Donaghy
Hugh Gilmore
Michael McDaid
Barney McGuigan
William McKinney
James Wray
Wounded:
Michael Bradley
Alana Burke
Peggy Deery
Joseph Friel
John Johnson
Patrick McDaid
Alexander Nash
Michael Quinn
Michael Bridge
Patrick Campbell
Damien Donaghy
Daniel Gillespie
Joseph Mahon
Daniel McGowan
Patrick O'Donnell
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