Rocky Road to Dublin

Peter Lennon was the Paris correspondent for the Guardian in the 1960s, and while there he managed to persuade legendary New Wave cinematographer Raoul Cou- tard (Breathless, Jules et Jim, etc) to take a brief sojourn in Ireland.

The result was Rocky Road to Dublin, a very personal documentary which melds Coutard’s won- derful images of hurling, pub sessions and dancing with Lennon’s scathing attack on his country’s hidebound conservatism, its pervasive ‘priestocracy’. It was the last film to be shown at Cannes in 1968 before Truffaut and Godard shut it down, and the whole thing throbs with insurrection.

This screening has been made possible with the support of IFI International, Arts Council Ireland, and Culture Ireland as part of GB18: Promoting Irish Arts in Britain