John Ford, Ireland, and the Easter Rising

John Ford, Ireland, and the Easter Rising

Melbourne
27 January 2016

The Embassy of Ireland is delighted to support this lecture and screening from leading film scholar Charles Barr which will discuss Ford’s film adaptation of Sean O’Casey’s 1916-set play The Plough and the Stars.

One of the most celebrated directors in film history, John Ford made more than one hundred films including The Searchers, The Quiet Man, and The Grapes of Wrath. A first generation Irish-American, Ford made many films about Ireland.

Using new research from the Abbey Theatre, Irish Film Archive, and British Film Institute, Professor Barr will chart how Ford brought Abbey theatre actors such as Arthur Shields (who fought in the Rising) to Hollywood in 1937 to realise O’Casey’s play, but the Studio System dampened the political rhetoric.

The presentation will also include a talk from Dr Liam Burke regarding Ford’s more successful War of Independence-set drama The Informer (1935). These lectures will conclude with a film screening, and are supported by Melbourne’s Swinburne University and The Celtic Club.This lecture and screening at the Celtic Club, Melbourne, from leading film scholar Charles Barr on John Ford’s film adaptation of Sean O’Casey’s 1916-set play The Plough and the Stars. The presentation will also include a talk from Dr Liam Burke regarding Ford’s more successful War of Independence-set drama The Informer (1935).