Theocracy, the new documentary about the life of London- Irish artist Bernard Canavan, will have its world premiere at Cork International Film Festival this month.
Film director Sé Merry Doyle has delved into the life of the artist to make the documentary. We featured the documentary as it was coming together in this interview.
Sé Merry Doyle told The Irish World: “I am very much looking forward to it, more so than most films because it was such a long journey, so hard to make because we had no funding except for the good people of London.
“The emigrants paid for the film.
“Yeah, I am looking forward to it. I think it’s turned out well.”
Bernard was taken from his biological mother and father immediately after he was born and dumped into Saint Patrick’s Guild, an Orphanage in Dublin, run by the Sisters of Charity.
It didn’t matter that his pregnant mother and her boyfriend had decided to marry. He was still a child born out of wedlock.
Neglected there for three and a half years, Bernard was rescued when a 47- year- old woman then chose to raise him as her only son.
In fact it was more of a purchase as adoption did not exist at the time.
With that nurturing, Bernard would learn to read, develop a talent for artistry and eventually win scholarships and build a reputation as an artist.
But it could have all been very different.
He says Mrs Canavan saved his life as he was not going to survive in that orphanage.
Bernard has since discovered the truth about his birth family.
These issues feature in Bernard’s first ever series of paintings to be exhibited in Dublin, Theocracy.
Theocracy deals with the vice- like grip the Catholic Church held Irish society in for so long.
They reflect his own story but also seek to speak for all of the thousands of voiceless victims who suffered abuse at the hands of Ireland’s Catholic Church.
“I think people have been inundated with all the horrors, children treated so shabbily throughout all that time, like a commodity.
“But because Bernard became so educated himself, he really knows how to tell that story.”
Bernard Canavan is internationally lauded for his paintings of the Irish emigrants who were forced to leave a poverty-stricken Ireland, to come to England in their droves to find work, from the end of WW2, right up until the late 1970s.
These were inspired by his own personal experience of working as a Navvy in the 1950s, before he established himself as a major graphic artist for many of the UK’s radical magazines including ‘’Peace News’.
Canavan would earn the moniker, The Emigrant’s Artist.
His diaspora paintings have been exhibited all over Ireland and the UK, including in The Houses of Parliament, and in 2018 the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins bestowed upon Bernard the prestigious Presidential Award for his contribution to Irish culture in the UK.
Se, Rosalind Scanlon, John O’Hora and Bernard are all travelling to Cork for the screening.
“We’re all going to be in Cork and ironically Michael D Higgins, who has a little cameo in the film and is a great admirer of Bernard’s work. He gave him the Presidential Award, as you know, the screening is happening on his last day in office.
“It really is (apt).
“I strongly feel that the emigrant’s story has been ignored, not totally but just that they (Ireland) haven’t seen it or they’ve always seen it in certain documentaries.
“But the immensity of the immigrants that left and how they in a lot of ways admirably, did very well, altogether from every county in Ireland, all bunched together, but they rose over time.
“Most people that leave now they’re kids or in good jobs or whatever but from leaving with practically nothing, living in doss houses as parents.
“He really articulates their story.
“Whatever about somebody saying it sometimes in a book or whatever, he’s saying it with incredibly strong imagery so I think it will resonate with an audience and I think that part of the story is one of the things that will be highlighted.”
It was his work on a darker subject that inspired Sé Merry Doyle to make the film.
As Bernard approached the age of 80, encouraged by his art curator John O’Hora, he dared to look back, in a virulent and powerful way, to confront, through his painting, what the Catholic Church in Ireland did to him and to all those who found themselves in orphanages and mother and baby homes in 20th century Ireland.
Bringing Theocracy, The Emigrants Artist to the screen has been a two year journey for Merry Doyle. He says that it’s been a deeply emotional journey for all involved. A key scene in the film is when Merry Doyle takes Bernard back to the place of his terrible incarceration, “St Patrick’s Guild” in Dublin, The House of Shame.
The film has been largely self-funded, but two fundraising preview screenings, held at the ICC Hammersmith, helped to raise a budget of £9000.
“I was trying to name the film.
“I said The Emigrant Artist.
“(Someone said) ‘No, no, no, The Emigrant’s Artist.
“He’s ours.
“He shone the light on us.
“It’s a London Irish story in that sense.”
Theocracy: The Emigrant’s Artist screens 5pm Monday 10 November at The Triskel Cinema as part of Cork International Film Festival. For more information and to book, click here.
The film will be screened in London and the UK in 2026.
