Trisha Ziff told David Hennessy about her new documentary about Gerry Adams ahead of a special screening at The Irish Cultural Centre this weekend.
Gerry Adams: A Ballymurphy Man is being screened this weekend at The Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith.
Trisha Ziff’s documentary recently premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh where it won Best International Documentary.
In Gerry Adams: A Ballymurphy Man the veteran politician reflects upon his life, his political career and his 60 years of activism in Northern Ireland.
The film shines a light on the private world of Adams and reveals a history of Northern Ireland through one man’s life.
The film also allows viewers the rare opportunity to see Adams talk at length about his values and motivations and about his hopes for the future.
Adams was President of Sinn Féin from 1983 right up to 1983, a time period that included much conflict and bloodshed but also ceasefires and the Good Friday Agreement.
Adams was a critical voice in the decision taken by the IRA to lay down their arms after their 25-year war against the British.
Imprisoned and shot, he was demonised and censored by dominant media as a subversive and terrorist, yet the British and their allies were forced to recognise his legitimacy and negotiate with him and Sinn Féin.
A private man, this is the first time Adams sits down to tell his story, from a teenage activist to party leader.
In the films you will hear Adams’ uncensored perspectives on the conflict, a life spanning war and transition to peace, and an ongoing campaign towards Irish unity.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director Trisha Ziff, who now lives in Mexico, and well known cinematographer Seamus McGarvey.
Ziff and Seamus will be interviewed the award-winning author Timothy O’Grady.
Are you looking forward to coming over to London for the screening at the Irish Cultural Centre?
“Yes, of course I am.
“I’m pleased to be showing the film.
“I’m really happy that Seamus is going to be with me and also Tim O’Grady.
“I think it’ll be a special afternoon for sure.”
Where did the idea for this film come from?
“People knew that I knew Gerry Adams.
“I mean, it was hardly a secret.
“I was working with a Dublin film company and they said to me, ‘Why don’t you make a doc about Gerry Adams?’
“And I’m like, ‘Oh, there’s no way he’d do that. I wouldn’t even ask’.
“And I think that probably put the idea in my head.
“And then in 2017, I flew over to Dublin and I went to see him.
“He was a TD at that point, still in the Dáil and I said to him, ‘What do you think about this as an idea?’
“And I was surprised that he wasn’t against it.
“So he made it very clear to me what his boundaries were in terms of his participation which was basically that it would be a film about him and not include his family.
“That was kind of off limits.
“My clarity was that it was my film and that I would make the decisions on it and take responsibility for the outcome and that I’d show him the film before it was finished in case there were inaccuracies but that I would have what we call final cut.
“And he agreed to that so Seamus and I began in a very informal way.
“We went to Dublin first because we filmed him in the Dáil and then we filmed him in the north.
“Seamus stayed with the film for half the film, then he got some big jobs and couldn’t carry on so then Jeronimo Goded, who’s a very well known Mexican cinematographer, took over.
“He’s a friend of mine and he finished the film with me.
“Everyone else other than Seamus was Mexican.
“This is a Mexican film.
“We had a little bit of development money from Screen Ireland but that was it.
“So now that it’s in the film festivals as a Mexican film on an Irish subject.”
How have you liked the reactions so far? Do you think it’s showing people a different side to Gerry Adams?
“I don’t think it’s another side to Gerry, I think it’s a different way of talking to him.
“I don’t think Gerry Adams changes.
“I think what makes this film different is the style of interviewing, the relaxedness, the intimacy of how we did it.
“It’s not a film that’s designed to undermine him or attack him, it’s a film that gives access to his voice.
“It’s very simple.
“It’s a portrait.
“It’s my job to see people as they are and to tell the narrative through their sense of themselves so I hope that’s what I did.”
You say access to his voice there and that is exactly what people were not allowed for a film. You show it in the film where the actor Lalor Roddy records Gerry’s words as censorship laws would not allow for Gerry’s words to be broadcast in his own voice..
“It’s section 31 and it was the rulings that Thatcher brought in and actually by using an actor’s voice, it allowed at least what he was saying to be heard.
“That was the way around it in the north, in the south section 31 banned anyone who was a member of Sinn Féin speaking.
“It was actually removing the rights of the Irish people to hear a different point of view.”
Were there surprises for you along the way of bringing Gerry’s story out of him?
“Well, I think what comes across in the film is his humour.
“I don’t think there were surprises in that way for me because he’s somebody that I have known.
“I think the surprise is that he was very open with us.
“He was very relaxed on camera and he allowed for a dialogue to take place which revealed his voice.
“In terms of political surprises, I think he said things that he’s always been very clear about.
“I think the surprise for an audience is that they actually get to see who he is for the first time in a way, relaxed and open on camera.
“I think that’s a surprise when people have always heard him responding to- for the most part, not always but for the most part- hostile interviewing.
“But if you live in Belfast, if you work in the local supermarket and Gerry is there at the till buying his weekly shopping or talking to people in the street that he bumps into, that’s the Gerry Adams in my film.
“I don’t think it’s a surprise to people in his own community.
“I think it’s revealing for people in a wider world.
“I think he’s very embedded in that community, very committed to it.
“It’s called A Ballymurphy Man, the title alone acknowledges his own community and if anything, I would say he’s slightly embarrassed at the attention that the film brings to him.
“He sees all those events in his life as being moments that have happened as a result of community, not of individualism so for him, he’s always playing down his own role.”
It is surprising now but as a young man, he says he had no notion of going into politics..
“I think circumstance took Gerry down a road that maybe he wouldn’t have gone down otherwise.
“He left school to support his family.
“He became an activist while he was a very young man.
“If there was no war, I mean it’s impossible to speculate but, perhaps he would have finished his school education, perhaps he would have studied into higher education.
“Who knows? That didn’t happen.
“He had a different form of education.”
Some may be surprised that as a young man he worked in a pub in a Loyalist area and enjoyed it..
“Well, I think his problem is with sectarianism, it’s not with people per se.
“He makes it clear in the film.
“The difference between tuppence and tuppence ha’penny is how he puts it: People who have very little but have just a tiny bit more than others so it gives them a sense of being better somehow, of being more privileged.
“The system which creates that, he has an issue with, not with individual human beings.
“He’s a humanist for sure.
“And yes, I think working in a pub in a Unionist neighbourhood, even as a young kid, clearly wasn’t an issue for him.
“But the system that kept Nationalists, kept Catholic people down without giving them opportunities is, was absolutely an issue for him.”
Some things were difficult for him to speak about..
“It comes across very clearly when he’s talking about the hunger strike, how hard it is for people of his generation.
“I get it.
“Even as an outsider, I get that.
“And when he talks about that whole period for him and his comrades allowing- not allowing because they made the choices themselves but supporting the fact that these men went on to lose their lives on the hunger strike, I think it haunts not just him but those of his generation.
“Not in the sense they shouldn’t have done it, absolutely not but in the sense of what they chose to do was a very hard decision obviously for them, for their families but for the political activists and their community who were put in a position of having to support something so extreme.
“I think you do see Gerry’s pain in the film, it was a moment where he was talking about it and then he had to stop.
“He says, ‘Sin é’, and he pauses and you felt that in the room.
“You felt the conflict, emotional conflict of it.
“He lived through the Ballymurphy massacre.
“He was with Colette hunkered down in a house during the Ballymurphy massacre.
“I think the peace process was a long, hard won struggle and to get the IRA to lay down their arms was obviously a very collective decision made by a lot of people.
“It wasn’t an order or anything like that.”
Doe he allow himself to feel proud of that hard won peace?
“Kids that are now adults that have never known British occupation is an massive achievement, but it’s a step.
“It’s only a step on a road to something bigger which is the reunification of Ireland and I would like to think he would see it in his own lifetime but maybe he won’t.
“It’s a process of gaining back independence and that was always the goal.
“The peace process and getting the horrors of British occupation and soldiers off the streets is a step obviously in the right direction and a huge step but it’s not a moment to sit down and put your feet up.
“They’re not at the end of that journey.”
Gerry Adams featured in an earlier documentary of yours about the iconic image of Che Guevara taken by Alberto Korda in 1960..
“I did an exhibition about the image that went to London, to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
“I invited Gerry at that time.
“He was an MP in England and even though he didn’t sit in the parliament, he travelled over to London for meetings often.
“So I wrote to him and said, ‘I have an exhibition about the image of Che opening at the V & A in London’.
“I was a curator and I said, ‘It would be nice if you came’.
“So I put him on the invitation list that I sent into the museum and I got an email back from the museum saying they were inviting everybody on my list to the opening with the exception of Gerry Adams who was deemed unsuitable to be included in an invitation to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
“So here you had a democratically elected member of parliament for West Belfast being denied access to a tax funded British institution.
“I called him up and I said, ‘I’ve just had this email. I want to take it to the press because it’s outrageous’.
“And he said, ‘Well, if you do that, Trisha, you’ll probably never get a job curating in London again’.
“And I was like, ‘Well, you know what? I want to take it to the press. I think it’s appalling but if I do and they come to you for a comment, will you be prepared to give a comment? Otherwise there’s no point’.
“And he said, ‘Fine’.
“So I sent it to the Guardian and it went viral. It was massive and if you look up ‘Gerry Adams, Trisha Ziff, Che Guevara’, the whole thing comes up online even to this day.
“People were more interested in telling that story than they were reviewing the show.
“And when I went to the V & A to hang the show, I was treated horribly.
“It was a horrible experience for me.”
Is the aim of the film to show Gerry Adams the man you know as opposed to the figure he has often been represented as or mistaken to be?
“Yes and no.
“I want people to see Gerry Adams as a regular, ordinary man who’s lived through extraordinary times and responded to those extraordinary times as many, many, many other ordinary men and women have.
“It’s that contradiction.
“It’s that tension between a person in their own persona addressing a world out there that has been imposed on them and how they react to it.
“I think it’s about standing up and being counted.
“We all have to do that in different ways at different moments in our lives.
“I think Gerry is an excellent example of someone’s taking a stand and that’s happening now in relation to Palestine at a cost to a lot of people.
“I think he is an excellent example of somebody who comes from a very modest background, we learn about that in the film, whose family have remained intact despite everything that’s gone on in his life which inevitably take their toll on a family life: Being imprisoned, being shot, putting your family at risk, being on the run, all those challenges.
“We see a man who has navigated his way through all of that but remains very much a part of that world as much as the political world that he is engaged with.”
Gerry Adams: A Ballymurphy Man screens at The Irish Cultural Centre 2pm this Saturday 13 September.
For more information, click here.
