Sir, I have just returned from the Cannes film festival, and seen the criticisms, reported in Hugh Linehan's article, of remarks I made there discussing Some Mother's Son. May I reply to them?
Your Minister for the Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Mr Higgins, considers it a virtue "not to read, or express an opinion" on any project submitted to the Irish Film Board. I'd regard that as a defect, and urge him to get closer to his job.
Mr Higgins, with his family's history in the earlier Troubles, shouldn't need reminding that virtually everything in Ireland has a political dimension. In the context of a film festival, attended by over 2,000 media people with radio, TV and newspaper outlets, an "artistic" film like Nothing Personal or Some Mother's Son and no doubt the forthcoming Michael collins, acquires a rich propaganda value.
At the festivals in Cannes and Venice (where Nothing Personal, a story of a night's murder, torture and assassination in Belfast performed by loyalist Protestant terrorists, was screened last year) the two films were made the occasion for statements from their makers which reinforced their anti British, pro republican bias. It appears that a "second front" is being opened and exploited with skill, to promote views that the Dublin government would not dare, in the present situation, to disseminate internationally in so emotionally charged a manner.
Lelia Doolan, chairwoman of the Irish Film Board, states that her board is there to "react" to film projects applying to it for financing. "We're looking for works of art, not works of politics," she says. This is an honourable, but naive aspiration. What seems "art" in the script becomes "politics" in the production by the casting, editing and creative decisions to exclude this viewpoint, or emphasise that one.
At Cannes, an Irish Film Board representative was present during the audience discussion at which I made my comments. Whether he "brought" the film there, or "accompanied" it, is a distinction without a difference.
The use of British money to finance a film like Nothing Personal is, of course, a matter for us in London. Channel Four films is entitled to fund whatever films it wishes from its own corporate resources however British Screen Finance Co., a government funded body, is accountable to the British taxpayer and is therefore more sensitively placed. Its chief executive declares he will "never" disclose how much taxpayers money went to fund a film made entirely in the Republic of Ireland and co-financed by Channel 4 and your Irish Film Board which presents Ulster Protestant paramilitaries in a worse light than IRA irregulars. "Never" is a dangerous word to use in politics. I hope Parliament, which provides British Screen with its money, will be treated with more respect and openness when accounting time comes round.
The fact that four films about the Troubles were produced last year does not, in my view, support Hugh Linehan's belief that they reflect a "moment of hope during the IRA ceasefire". Rather, that they reflect the continuation of nationalist propaganda by other means, in other places, to other audiences. Yours, etc., Evening Standard, Derry Street, London W8.