KEEPERS OF THE FLAME

film screening

Monday, May 6 at NYU, Washington, DC 1307 L St NW

Doors open at 6:15
Film screening at 6:30
Panel Discussion Q&A at 8:00

Tickets are free but require a reservation

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS

ABOUT THE FILM

NYU Washington, D.C., Solas Nua, and the Embassy of Ireland will co-host a screening of Keepers of the Flame followed by a discussion on the Irish Civil War with Timothy J. Meagher, Associate Professor of History, Archivist, Curator, American Catholic History Collections, Catholic University (retired), and Cóilín Parsons, Associate Professor, English, Co-Director, Global Irish Studies, Georgetown University, as part of Solas Nua's Irish Popcorn! Film Series and the 7th annual European Month of Culture.

Keepers of the Flame, by acclaimed documentarian Nuala O'Connor, delves into the archives of the Irish Military Service Pensions and what emerges is a truly personal retelling of a brutal and divisive period in the birth of a nation and the devastating legacy it left in its wake, for the individuals who took part and their families who suffered long after the fighting ended. More than 85,000 applied for the Irish Military Service Pension. Just over 18,000 received any payment. Conceived by historian Diarmaid Ferriter, the film brings to light the diverse experiences of some of the 85,000 ordinary Irish men and women who made pension or dependents allowance claims for having actively served during the violent revolutionary period from Easter 1916 to the end of the Civil War in 1923. Their stories lie in the Irish Military Pension Archives, stack upon stack of applications detailing involvement and actions, thousands of different interpretations of the same events lying side by side.

Mary Black, Aiden Gillen, Joseph O'Connor and Olivia O'Leary are among those reading the contemporaneous transcripts. Colm Hogan's cinematography makes the landscape another character.