13 November 2008 Edition

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Film-maker Art McCaig dies


BY PEADAR WHELAN

NEWS that Paris-based film-maker Art McCaig died suddenly in Belfast last Thursday, 6 November, was received with disbelief by his many friends throughout Ireland and indeed further afield.
McCaig, famous for films such as The Patriot Game (1978) and Irish Ways, which challenged the British portrayal of the Irish struggle, was visiting Belfast when he died.
His films, particularly The Patriot Game, enraged the British Government as it undermined the premise of the British media’s treatment of the struggle in the Six Counties as an insoluble religious conflict.
McCaig’s films set the historical and political context of the republican struggle as a struggle for a united, socialist Ireland and exposed the brutality of the British military occupation of Ireland.
His films gave a coherent voice to republicans and served to highlight the conditions that nationalists faced living under a unionist regime which imposed its will through military might.

INSPIRATIONAL FILMS
Not only did Art’s films analyse the roots of Britain’s economic and military oppression and offer a rationale for Republican resistance, from the Civil Rights movement to the IRA military campaign but they presented what the Time Out Film Guide described (speaking about The Patriot Game) as “a ‘hidden’ and in many ways inspirational, portrait of life under occupation, of a besieged but organised working class, and of pervasive grassroots resistance”.
Through his film-making, Art courageously presented Ireland’s struggle for freedom from a republican perspective of the Republican Movement.  
Art was also the beloved husband of the late Gonne Carmichael.
His remains will be in a room of rest at O’Kane’s Funeral Directors, 116-118 Donegall Street, Belfast (0289024312), from Friday, 14 November,  to Sunday, 16 November,  from 9am to 10pm.  Requiem Mass will take place on Monday, 17 November, in St Patrick’s Chapel at 11am, followed by burial in the City Cemetery.

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