Film Presentation at Loughshinny Boathouse for Culture Night

Film Presentation at Loughshinny Boathouse for Culture Night

As part of Fingal County Council’s Commemorations programme 2018-2023 Fingal County Council’s Arts Office in association with The Irish Writers Centre recently presented – A Burning Tide – A New Commissioned Writing & Film Commission as part of Culture Night 2021, held on 17th of September 2021 at Loughshinny Boathouse. The Film is based on the writers interpretation of this historical fact. At the stroke of midnight on 18th June 1921, six Coast Guard stations on the North Dublin coast were silently approached by groups of IRA Men ready to undertake a simultaneous attack. The reason for these attacks was to secure a landing place for a shipment of arms which were being smuggled from the U.S. aboard the freighter East Side. It had been meticulously planned – the raiding parties lay in wait having cut the telephone wires to ensure no one could raise the alarm. When zero hour arrived, they rushed into stations up and down the coast, taking the Coast Guards by surprise. The Guards and their families, who lived onsite, were told to leave immediately and the stations were set alight. As dawn broke the following morning, flames were still licking what was left of the stations at Skerries, Loughshinny, Rush, Rogerstown, Portrane and Robswall. The film weaves the narratives from each new piece of writing into a series of vignettes where we see the stories unfold to create visible characters who bring us back to the events leading to the night and its aftermath in Ireland. Rory O’Byrne County Arts Officer, said “There is something about the visible qualities of the largely unchanged Fingal Coastline, where the events of the night of the 18th of June 1921, took place. The eyewitness reports prompt the imagination to fill in the gaps of the story, a small boat containing guns rowing into Loughshinny, the visual of two men saving a piano from the fire and the agreements made to start it so that nobody was harmed could only be satisfied by a writer’s mind.”.

/ Fingal News, Latest News