Radical Witness | Margo Harkin’s Retrospective at the Irish Film Institute

Event Details

Margo Harkin is one of Ireland’s most versatile and respected filmmakers – having directed and produced fiction and documentary films for over forty years. Her work includes an invaluable chronicle of Northern Ireland’s recent political history.

After graduating in Fine Art from the Ulster College of Art and Design in 1974, Harkin worked as an art teacher and community worker in socially deprived areas of Derry. She joined Field Day Theatre Company in 1980 as an Assistant Stage Manager on Brian Friel’s Translations, before going on to work as a stage designer for the company.

In 1984, Harkin co-founded Derry Film & Video Workshop with Anne Crilly and Trisha Ziff delivering critical perspectives that ran counter to the censored narratives then broadcast by British and Irish television. The signal works of this period were Mother Ireland (1988), Anne Crilly’s controversial documentary about feminism and Irish republicanism, and Harkin’s own Hush-A-Bye Baby (1990), a feature drama about teenage pregnancy following the 1983 abortion referendum in Ireland.

Harkin established Besom Productions in 1992 making educational films for Channel 4 but her reputation as an astute, local documentarian of injustices was soon forged through a series of highly regarded television documentaries. Her cinema films, the surf documentary Waveriders (2003), by Joel Conroy (which she produced), and Stolen (2023), about the plight of unmarried mothers in Ireland in the 20th century, provided thoroughly researched, compelling accounts of their subjects.

Margo Harkin is a member of Aosdána. Her work has won countless awards and is widely taught to third-level film and media students.

Spanning over four decades, Harkin’s work has consistently challenged societal narratives, giving voice to the silenced and bearing witness to the social and political upheavals that have shaped the contemporary Irish landscape. This retrospective will span across the IFI’s cinema screens, as well as online via IFI@Home, IFI International and the IFI Archive Player.

IFI DIGITAL PLATFORMS

A selection of Margo Harkin’s films are available to rent for Irish audiences on IFI@Home and for international audiences on IFI International. These titles are now available for pre-order and will be available to watch from Wednesday Sept 3. Film bundles are available for purchase with pricing below.

Titles available on both IFI@Home and IFI International include: Hush-A-Bye Baby (1990), 12 Days in July (1997), Waveriders (2008), Bloody Sunday – A Derry Diary (2010), Far Side of Revenge (2012), and Stolen (2023).

A selection of Margo Harkin’s films are available free-to-watch worldwide on the IFI Archive Player.

IFI Archive Player exclusive titles will be available from Wednesday Sept 3, with The Hunger Strike (2006) and Eamonn McCann: A Long March (2018) available from Wednesday Oct 1, following their respective theatrical screening dates.

IFI Archive Player titles include: NYPD Nude (1995), Clear The Stage (1998), A Plague on Both Your Houses (1999), Looking for Lundy (2000), , You Looking at Me? (2003), The Hunger Strike (2006), Ocras (2006), The Return of Colmcille (2013), Eamonn McCann: A Long March (2018)

The IFI Archive Player is the virtual viewing room for the remarkable moving image collections held in the IFI Irish Film Archive, giving audiences across the globe instant access to this rich heritage.

BOOKING INFO

• Booking via ifi.ie/margo-harkin or by calling the IFI Box Office on 01 679 3477, or in person at the IFI, 6 Eustace Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
• The season is eligible for the IFI’s 25 & Under scheme, details of which can be found via ifi.ie/25under
  Tickets to the Margo Harkin: Career Interview will be €10.
• Season ticket bundles available: 3 for €30 and full season pass for €70.
• IFI Membership is required for all films without IFCO classification. If you are not an IFI Member then a membership fee of €1.50 will be added to each unclassified Margo Harkin: Radical Witness ticket price, and/or a Season Membership fee of €5.00 will be added to each Margo Harkin: Radical Witness ticket bundle.
• Films on IFI@Home and IFI International will be €5.99 each, with the exception of the newly restored, exclusive title Hush-A-Bye Baby which will be €7.99.
• A bundle of all streaming titles will be available for €34.

SUPPORT

The titles in this retrospective were digitised and preserved thanks to a grant from Coimisiún na Meán’s Archiving Funding Scheme, which aims to preserve content recorded for broadcast on radio or television. The restoration of Hush-A-Bye Baby (1990) from original 16mm elements has been created by the IFI Irish Film Archive for IFI’s Digital Restoration Project funded by Screen Ireland/Fís Éireann and supported by A Season of Classic Films an initiative of ACE – Association des Cinémathèques Européennes supported by the EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme.

The IFI Archive Player is developed with the support and partnership of Axonista.

The IFI acknowledges the support of the Arts Council.