QR Film Interview: I Dolours - A discussion with director Maurice Sweeney & Journalist Ed Moloney

Sean Sat down with journalist Ed Moloney & director Maurice Sweeney recently to discuss their fascinating new film about the life of Dolours Price. Check out the transcript of the interview below or listen here. 

The film uses a masterful blend of archive footage, reenactments, and interviews with Dolours to tell the story through her words. A story which, while harrowing, is incredibly personal. It does, however, simultaneously key into the larger narrative of radicalisation and the Troubles as a whole.

Ed and Maurice provide an intriguing insight into the background of the film, it's production, how they approached such a sensitive subject matter, and what they believe this film means to the narrative of the conflict and the future of truth as part of the peace process.

S - Briefly, I suppose you both have a kind of documentary, political and history background. What is it that drew you specifically to this story, and for it to be told through film?

M - When I was first approached by Ed and Nuala Cunningham, they said that they had this interview Ed has carried out with Dolours Price around 2010, and I got to read some of the transcripts and saw some of the interview and I was blown away by the content. I was also quite taken by the charisma she had on screen, and just as a film maker, as a story, as a narrative, I felt it was a really strong structure of a film. We immediately kind of wanted to make the conventional investigative journalistic piece on it as I thought it was a much more important and that it was about radicalisation, about republican values, it was about loyalty, it was about revenge, it was about anger, and they are all great ingredients for a good film.

So that’s the way we approached it and we didn’t want to do conventional interviews, we’ll keep it in Dolours Price’s words, by herself and we were very truthful to that. Not one word does not come from her mouth, (Lorna Larkin – who played Dolours) does not come from her writings or interviews.

S - That was something from my perspective on viewing it that I thought was really interesting, in that it was very much her story in her own words. In that sense, do you think it provided a different angle on the conflict here, on the Troubles? 

E -This sort of links in to a point that we have been making in other interviews today which is the absence of any opportunity for people to tell their stories about this conflict. This is like a huge cataclysmic conflict that tore this society from one end to the other for the best part of thirty years and at it's height was equivalent to the American civil war in terms of the death toll. Here we are at the end, we are supposed to be in a peace process, we are supposed to be living in amity and friendship, and yet there is no opportunity for people to tell their story , and their will not be the opportunity.

As far as I can see for people to tell their stories in any organised way because the parties involved British, Provos, Loyalist the DUP etc. are refusing to agree on ways to do this. They are continuing their conflict in these other ways, and that means that ordinary people and people who are activists who have stories to tell have no opportunity to do so in any safe way.

I think that this shows it is possible to do that in a very small way. I’m not saying this is the alternative to a type of formalised structure: it’s better than nothing, and I hope it stimulates an interest  in people saying ‘I’ve got a story to tell, and maybe we will see that happening in the loyalist side as well because their stories are equally valid and equally interesting. It has to happen, it’s therapeutic. It has to happen in a society in a society coming out of conflict, and if you don’t get the chance to explain and talk about what happened, and say what happened to you and how it affected your family, how it affected you community, what you did that you are ashamed of, what you did that you were proud of etc you are not going to get relief from this conflict.

It will internalise and you know I’m struck. I don’t live here anymore, I live in NY but even from the distance of NY I’m struck by the reality which is still that this is a place not at peace, and it is reinforced when you come here and you realise that that is the reality. There is no conflict, there is no violence, people are not being shot dead in the way that they were but there is no peace.

S - In relation to the idea of the opportunity to tell the story. A question I think I know the answer to. Is there anything from the full interview that you didn’t use or wished you had have used?

M - We knew from the start that this was our script, that this was our kind of short-handed, long version script that we had to narrow it down. Before cutting a frame of film we listened and listened and listened, and tried to construct a paper edit almost of what were the essential things. The stuff about Gerry Adams, we didn’t go there because we felt that it then would have been just become a Gerry Adams Doc…

E - …And it had been done before. We obviously made a mention of it but we did not dwell on it. I think that would have added, if we had done that, a propaganda element. I think that issue anyway has been more or less settled.

M - So that was kind of very much the core of what our story was about. We didn’t go into areas of her life that she did not talk about. We tried to get the essentials of her story and what she felt was important to talk about in her own life. I think she found it … I don’t know, Eddie you did the interview with her but there was an element of catharsis for her about it and she comes across really strong. It’s a remarkable interview.

S – Very much so. In the distributer notes, you discuss how there was this agreement that this interview would be done [in a way] that would protect herself and her family and that nothing would be released until after her death. In that sense, was the interview difficult, was it an emotional experience?

E- I had several sessions with Dolours. The very first one was way back in 2009. We talked about all of this stuff and this was before, for example Voices From the Grave came out, and what I am trying to say is that it adds credibility to what she was saying at that time, is point number one.

Point number two, was that first interview that I…it was actually a conversation really. No recording, no notes taken. It was basically me, her and another guy from the film company. That ended up in tears. It was a hugely emotionally experience for her and also for me. The second time round was obviously very different because this was an area I had been through once before, but yes it was very emotional for her and I think really in her mind it was ‘I did all these things, I went through all these horrors myself. The jailing, the hunger strikes, the force feeding, the anorexia, all that sort of stuff, I took people to their deaths, I did this, that and the other, smuggled explosives.’ Which were inevitably used in atrocities and we feature one and we are not saying that necessary it was done with explosives that she personally had smuggled into Belfast, but it was of a sort that she did and could easily have been. People had horrible deaths as a result of what she doing and at the end of it all she is saying ‘Why?’ really I think, Why? Was it worth it?

S - Toward the end when she starts talking about how she feels in a way betrayed the way the movement has left her behind , do you think looking back that she had been taken advantage of, radicalised and used, or do you think she still seen it as this glorious movement?

E - I think she felt that she had been betrayed in many ways. That what she had joined up for was not the thing we ended up with. That’s why we end with Joe Lynsky because of all the three disappearances that she was personally involved in I think that was the one that affected her the most.

He was a guy that believed in all that IRA stuff. He believed in the rules, the ethos, in the politics, in the ideology. So much so that he went willingly to his death. He could have broken away easily in that car, it was just him and her in the car. He could have easily punched her in the jaw got out and run away, but he went down there knowing that he was going to get killed. It’s extraordinary, put yourself in that position. The contrast between that and the sort of what she would have regarded as the opportunism and lack of principle involved in the various dealings that was involved in the peace process, I think pushed her over the edge. And that is true with a remarkably large amount of Republicans.

That is a biding and recurring feature in Irish Republicanism, its part of the history, it happens with every cycle, that at the end, there is left an embittered romp who say ‘What the fuck did we do that for?’

M – I came to it a bit more surprised. Well, we are dealing with a character here who doesn’t agree with the status quo, at least north and south, that Good Friday was a good thing….What Dolours was sort of saying was, ‘How can I reconcile myself with this one?’ I don’t agree with her but I can understand where she was coming from.

So I think that is what the film is trying to do. It’s not trying to take a side, it’s just trying to understand motivations and why people go through certain doors without judgement. So for me, I found myself, looking at the interview, with her family background, with being related with republicanism from a very young age, I could understand reasons for doing things I think that is important and I think this is part of a series of films which are starting to be made. 

As Ed says there is no obvious place for people to go about reconciliation so we have to do it ourselves, people have to do it themselves. Film is one part of doing that. It’s a very powerful way of doing that.

E- Incidentally, they can’t do it properly as long as there is the threat of prosecution hanging over their heads. They can’t do that. So the state is still saying you can’t tell the truth or you only tell the truth according to our laws.Which is really inhibiting on people which is why of course this could not be used during her lifetime.

S - In terms of the film itself, the use of the re-enactments, along with the use of her own interview footage, it really created the idea that this was her story and I think that touches on something that you said, were the film doesn’t really take a side and I know that you have worked on more historical documentaries, was it any more difficult working on something that has such a direct connection to today?

M - I definitely felt a stronger responsibility, not that I don’t with the other historical stuff that I have done, whether it be drama or documentary. I still saw it as a historical documentary though, and I think it is worth realising that. I just wanted a way to find, to mess with the formula a bit that didn’t go down with a narrative, the usual narrative of applying to investigate, kind of like the spotlight programme for the BBC or Question Time, it needed to have a voice, a strong voice, and her voice, with a strong visual voice to tell that story.

So that’s a very direct way, the way that we did it, to go down that road. Because there wasn’t that much other footage, I couldn’t look at archive footage and Dolours’ interviews for eighty minutes. We had to find a way for the film to breathe in a lot of ways and allow that film language within it that allows her story to be very evocative but also just to get away from the Dolours in the room because she is so powerful but I think it kind of helps not being with her.

She is actually in the film for only seven minutes, though you feel she is there all the time and that was important, we were amazed at that….

S - I did find that her narrating some… especially the hunger strike scenes it really made it….you were seeing it and hearing it in her words, obviously seeing it re-enacted by the actress but it was that much more powerful

M- I think we broke the fourth wall there to a certain extent, I think it kind of worked. I’d probably like to do a bit more of that but I think…it’s funny cause some people can’t stand that, you are always getting mixed reactions but I think it’s great to have an argument about form and how you treat things.

Essentially we are making a film first of all, that whole ‘a strong story that has a strong message’, that’s ultimately what we have done. We talked to audiences, Ed has talked to audiences afterwards and they keep saying that they are still trying to process it, trying to understand it, they feel conflicted.

S- Which speaks to the job you have both done with the film in that you don’t walk out thinking, ‘She was right, she was wrong’, rather that I don’t know where I stand really...

E- Conflicted?

S - Yes, conflicted. In terms of the Joe Lynsky stuff, there are a few key scenes in the film. The Jean Mcconville stuff, Joe Lynsky, the time in prison, is there any of those that stuck particularly with either of yourselves as you say I felt the Joe Lynsky stuff was very affective in that the sense that this was a man that was willing to go to his death.

E - There was so much there it was hard to isolate a particular section of the interview with her, and of course I was familiar with this story so it wasn’t coming to me first time which was big assistance in asking her the questions and knowing where the interview could go.

The aunt Bridie stuff I felt was strong, that was a really formative influence on her. Bridie crops up in some of the historical accounts of the IRA back in the 1940s and the 1950s and 60s, as a figure who was almost revered within the IRA because of what had happened to her and that must have been the case with the family. She talks about aunt Bridie, it was a wake without a body. The girls weren’t allowed to go out dancing, I think that had a huge impact on her. It embedded or implanted into her a responsibility to carry on what this woman had wanted to do.

Although she did, as did a lot of people in those early days, disagree with republicanism in the sense that in the early days of the civil rights movement, there was this sort of feeling that you could reach out to protestant working class people, who didn’t have the vote, who didn’t have an inside bathroom or toilet, who didn’t have particularly good jobs and could make common cause on a class basis, she had this disagreement with her father. So she wasn’t always a republican but then, you know as with most people, circumstances change – Burntollet - and she doesn’t join the IRA until after interment, which is important. Interment was the big recruiting drive point for the IRA.

So she was like the majority of people who joined the IRA in the early 1970s post internment. Post 69 they had a big influx, big influx in 1970 after the Falls curfew. Big influx after internment, and bigger influx after Bloody Sunday. All as a consequence and result to events that where happening in their community. She was part of that, she was not atypical in that sense. When you attempt to say it was in her marrow, in her bones or in her DNA to be a Republican it took a while for that to happen – but once it happened, it happened and boy, did it happen.

S - In the sense that it is a very personal story, it is also a very good example of how a lot of people developed and changed through the conflict.

E- Exactly, you know, some people use the words fanatical, I would take issue with that, most people in every society are motivated to do things because of things that happened to them and their community and it’s the same here. Loyalists joined the UDA and UVF because the IRA blew up a bar or a shop and a baby was killed and I can remember a particular incident on the Shankill Road where a baby was killed and I know, for example, Tommy Little who became a UDA Commander and supreme commander of the UDA on top of that, joined the UDA as a result of that and Dolours Price joined the IRA as a result of internment and the violence that happened in her own community and stuff like that should be told more often.

M - You said about surprise...one thing that stuck with me was that while she was in prison, this was a woman that was being force fed, she has suffered from severe anorexia, is on her death bed, while in another prison these guys are starving themselves, the Bobby Sands issue that is looming in the background. I think a lot of the women have been written out of history in the north. I saw a documentary once and there wasn’t one woman interviewed on it, and I found that just bizarre.

E - And one of the things that we would really have liked to have done if we would had had the room and the way to do it, was to develop this story, this feud between Thatcher and Dolours, very personal feud, and it’s all there in the documents.

Fascinating story where Thatcher is openly sceptical about her physical condition, she’s having anxiety attacks and stuff like that and she gets out of jail, and she’s not allowed out of NI and she defies that and goes down to Dublin, flaunts it in front of her. There is an exchange of correspondence between Thatcher and civil servants and Thatcher berating them for believing this woman, and letting her away with this and away with that, and people like Jim Prior saying ‘For God’s sake just leave her alone’, because if you put her back in jail as Thatcher wanted to do, you would just make things worse. Thatcher was really personally involved in this case. It was fascinating but there just wasn’t the room or the opportunity to do that, maybe another time.

S - So you’ve talked about it being this harrowing story, this important story in the larger tale of the conflict, but also a very personal story, if you had to explain to someone what type of story this is, what is it? Is it a story of tragedy, is it a story of betrayal, what is Dolours' story?

M - For me it’s a film about a conflicted woman, conflicted politics, conflicted psychology, it’s a very strong analogy for the troubles in a lot of ways. The sacrifices that people make. It doesn’t take a monster to carry out a monstrous act, they are done by human beings. That for me is really what the film is about. Not to judge but to explain.

E - I would put it in the terms of a question, ‘What was it all for?’ – That is the question that comes out at the end of it, that and ‘Was it worth it?’

S - That is very much a question I walked away asking myself.

By Sean Hughes