Short Strand: The Movie

national | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday November 12, 2002 10:43 by Justin Moran - Sinn Fein maigh_nuad at yahoo dot com

An independent and community resourced film on the Short Strand will be premièred in the Irish Film Centre, Temple Bar on Friday 15th November at 7.30pm, screenings will be held throughout Dublin in the weeks following.

As you may be aware the past four years has seen a massive rise in the frequency and intensity of sectarian attacks throughout the six counties, most of these attacks are, and have been, directed against the nationalist community.

These sustained attacks have occurred in areas that the nationalist population is small, Portadown, Ballymena, Larne, or in areas where nationalists are ringed by loyalist areas such as North Belfast and the Short Strand community of East Belfast.

The residents of the Short Strand have been terrorised and under effective siege and curfew by loyalist paramilitaries for the past two years. Unfortunately, despite some excellent work done by a small number of journalists, the siege has been portrayed as some sort of ‘inevitable consequence’ of the ‘tribal conflict that is Northern Ireland’.

The result of this reporting has led to the necessary bodies shirking from their responsibilities as outlined in the historic Good Friday Agreement, which was endorsed by over 98% of the people of the island, and lead to inaccurate and irresponsible actions and provocative public statements from the leaders of unionism.

Rather than despair or respond in kind, the residents of Short Strand have kept their eyes open and the lens clean and have documented in living colour the story of their siege. Their film shows in stark clarity the abuse and physical danger the residents are subjected to, the complicity of the British Army and PSNI and the reality of their imprisonment in their own community.

This independent and community resourced film will be premièred in the Irish Film Centre, Temple Bar on Friday 15th November at 7.30pm, screenings will be held throughout Dublin in the weeks following.