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30 July 1998 Edition

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Cinema

The people's festival



Video review



We Won't Be Kept Down Easy!
Féile an Phobail - 10 mbliana ag fás

Price £5
Available from Kolormaster, Kennedy Centre, West Belfast

If you want to know what Féile an Phobail (West Belfast Festival) is all about, the best alternative - next to actually being there - is to view this video.

Made by Laurence McKeown, it is a wonderfully evocative impression of last year's Féile, the tenth year of the biggest community festival in Ireland.

From the famous guider race (or bogies where I come from), to the colourful opening parade, music, debate, sport, exhibitions, the radio station, walking tours and all the rest, it's captured in all its energy and craic, right through to bleary-eyed revellers greeting the dawn after a Springhill concert, and joined by locals at their doors in dressing gowns. You'll hear from some of the many foreign visitors - Basques, native Americans, and an Indian journalist who tells us that the lively Irish are ``nothing like your Anglo-Saxon cousins across the water''. You'll even see the svelte Tom Hartley dancing like you've never seen before!

The video is sixty-four minutes long and ends with the anti-plastic bullets song ``We Won't Be Kept Down Easy'', written by the late Robin Dunwoody, over a superbly edited sequence of children enjoying the Féile.

One aspect of the video may make you jealous - throughout the week, the sun shone to split the trees. Any chance of the same again when this year's Féile gets underway this weekend?

By Brian Campbell

An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland