Gerry Adams: A Ballymurphy Man – Film Review
By Frank L.

Director – Trisha Ziff

Trisha Ziff was born in London in 1956. However, her association with Ireland goes back to the early eighties and the creation of the collective Camerawork Derry, in which she was a leading light. Her aim was to enable young Derry citizens to use a camera to portray what was happening at street level within the nationalist community. Her work, subsequently, as a photographer, has been shown in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the International Center for Photography, New York. As a filmmaker, she was responsible for Chevolution (2008), which is centred on Che Guevara. She is motivated by people whom she considers powerless or oppressed. She has many international awards for her work. She lives and works in Mexico. In short, she has an impressive record as a filmmaker.

Gerry Adams was born in Belfast in 1948. He came from a republican family, and it appears he believed from the cradle that Britain had no right or entitlement whatsoever to be involved in the government of Ireland. His career as a politician on both sides of the border is well known throughout Ireland, as President of Sinn Féin from 1983 to 2018. It appears that he and Ziff share a similar standpoint.

The film, at various times, has shots of Gerry Adams walking his dogs on beaches and in the mountains. He appears from that aspect to be an elderly man in his seventies, enjoying retirement. But Ziff’s main thrust is of him sitting in a comfortable armchair as he articulates the course of events from his point of view in Ballymurphy, the rest of Belfast and Derry from the late nineteen sixties onwards. There is considerable black and white footage of British army soldiers carrying rifles, the violence and counter-violence, the beating of dustbin lids, H Block, the dirty protests and the hunger strikers. There are several sequences of funerals.  Absent for the most part is a voice from the other side of the conflict, but there is a brief sequence of an approximately seven-year-old Protestant boy expressing his attitude toward Catholics. He is not complimentary.

There is also very little reference to other Sinn Féin figures, with the exception of Martin McGuinness, while the SDLP leader John Hume only gets a brief airing. The film, as the title proclaims, is all about Gerry Adams. He says towards the end that he remains an activist and to come back in 10 years’ time to continue the interviews.

This is a well-made film. It is hard to discern, given that Adams remains an activist, why this film is being produced at this juncture. It has to have a purpose given Adams’ longstanding beliefs. The film, while enlightening at one level, creates another enigma about Adams.