We’ve watched dozens of inspiring videos and monologues so far in 2016 as we reflect on the changes in Ireland over the last one hundred years, but none will leave you feeling that we are on the peak of brilliance as this short film does.
Filmed and edited by Myles O’Reilly and written and performed by Ruairí McKiernan, “A New Ireland Rising” leaves viewers believing we are all on the cusp of achieving whatever it is we’ve hoped and dreamed of and all we have to do is reach out and grab it.
Helped along by some of the most beautiful shots of Ireland we’ve ever seen and the incredible music of Colm Mac an Iomaire, O’Reilly and McKiernan address the dream of the Rising leaders and how, in truth, although we may have eventually won our freedom, it hasn’t been exactly smooth sailing since.
“With a vision of a country with happiness on its heart, they [the leaders] could not have contemplated a society in which hundreds of people take their lives each year,” McKiernan claims, “or that so many of us would suffer in silence through crippling financial debt, depression, self-harm, the ravages of alcohol, drug abuse, the rising levels of anxiety.”
Despite the years of abuse in mother and baby homes, the terror of the Church sex abuse scandals, the fallout of the assassinated Celtic Tiger and a current group of politicians who can’t put aside their differences to form a Government for their country, all is not lost, however.
These problems are “shadows that long for light” the film continues, that light being the great feats of the Irish people despite our woes.
“For this is also a story of Ireland’s creativity,” McKiernan argues, “Ireland’s courage, Ireland’s resilience, our refusal to give up hope that change is possible.”
“Battered and bruised as we may be, a new Ireland is emerging, a new Ireland is rising.”
As we commemorate the Easter Rising across the US today, this short film challenges us to think about what we want for Ireland in the next 100 years and how we can stand together against hatred and fear, “for this small Atlantic nation can be everything we dream it to be, a country of citizen power and real democracy.”
“Live your own revolution that is based on following your dreams, not someone else's.”
Enjoy!
Read more: Where Ireland’s 1916 Rising is being commemorated around the US
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