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Connolly The Film
Extraordinary events are created by ordinary people.
The epic nature of James Connolly’s life and sacrifice makes the telling of his story on screen problematic. In finding a way to make this story accessible in Ireland and the wider world, Tom Stokes and Frank Allen decided to focus on a basic fact of Connolly’s life – that when he went about his work as an agitator, union organiser, newspaperman and later revolutionary leader, he was a husband and father, he left a home and came back to it.
In ‘Connolly’ his life is seen through the eyes of his daughter Nora, his most trusted lieutenant, and the story is rooted in his relationship with his great love, Lillie, and his children. ‘Connolly’ spans almost twenty years. During that time, he and his family suffer privation and great tragedy, but remained undaunted.
Connolly takes his cause from Ireland of the early 1900s to the United States and his work with the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World. After seven years there he returns to Ireland to help James Larkin establish the Irish Transport & General Workers Union.
The brutal way in which the working class of Dublin is treated by capitalist employers during the 1913 Lockout reinforces Connolly’s commitment to break the link with Britain and establish an Irish Workers’ Republic. By forming the Irish Citizens’ Army he creates the means to move towards the Revolution of Easter 1916.
The failure of that first phase of the Revolution leads to his capture, and though gravely wounded he is shot by a British Army firing squad while tied to a chair. But the torch passes to Nora and a new generation.
Connolly is the story of an ordinary man who creates a revolution, of his family’s sacrifices to help him achieve his goal, of a unique father-daughter relationship forged in the heat of socialist agitation, and of a young girl’s transition to independent woman committed to revolutionary struggle.
Connolly is written for a universal mainstream audience, but in the knowledge that this story will have particular appeal for an Irish audience and for the Irish Diaspora. The relationship between Connolly and his daughter as comrades in revolution instils an unusual and intriguing dynamic into an exciting and action-filled story. The presence in the story of strong and interesting female characters, and Connolly’s instinctive feminism, creates its own appeal to a contemporary cinema audience.
Connolly is the first feature film for cinematic release to explain the context and the story of the Revolution of Easter 1916 which ultimately led to Irish independence.
The production of Connolly the Film is scheduled for Autumn 2006 with a general release planned
for Spring 2007. |
