The Flats – Film Review
by Frank L.

Director Alessandra Celesia
Writer Alessandra Celesia
Stars Jolene Burns, Joe McNally, Sean Parker

Alessandra Celesia brings the viewer into the New Lodge area of Belfast and, in particular, to a tower block built presumably sometime in the early sixties. It is a Roman Catholic Republican area surrounded by loyalist Protestant communities. It has throughout been an area of social deprivation, which deprivation was greatly exacerbated by the horrors of the years of violence euphemistically called “the Troubles”. But the community in this block of flats has managed to survive through its solidarity and its own inner strength. It nowadays faces the scourge of drug dealing facilitated by the connection of some of the former men of violence with the drug trade.

The community has its memories and traditions, its songs and its religion. The public saying of the rosary by a small group of elderly residents by the side of a statue of the Virgin Mary is a visible sign of the pride this hard-done-by community has in its religion and its history. It is a community with very few material advantages. The challenges it would have faced anyway were greatly intensified by the Troubles.

Celesia introduces various residents of the flats, most prominently Joe McNally, but also Jolene Burns, Sean Parker, Angie B. Campbell and Gerard B. Magee. Their conversations with Rita Overend, a social worker, enable more reflective thoughts to emerge in relation to the challenges they have faced and continue to face. The Troubles may be in the past, but the dominant Unionist creed is still all around, as exemplified by the annual building of gargantuan, triumphalist bonfires to celebrate the victory of the Protestant King William 3rd over the Roman Catholic King James 2nd at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Tectonic plates are moving, albeit slowly, as exemplified by the most recent census, which shows for the first time since partition that the Roman Catholics are in the majority.

Celesia has listened to the residents of the New Lodge flats and allowed them to speak. Their lives represent a challenge to how society is structured in Northern Ireland.  What Celesia allows is for those residents to express themselves publicly. Voices that have not been heard, as politicians and commentators of various hues have dominated the airwaves. This is therefore a timely documentary which is both thought-provoking and respectful. It is serious and valuable.