FEW CAN SEE
by Frank Sweeney
2023, 42 min, Digital
Screens as part of the VERBATIM series:
7/31 at 9:00
8/11 at 3:45
FEW CAN SEE examines the legacy of broadcast censorship of the conflict in the north of Ireland and political movements during this era. The project attempts to recreate material absent from state archives due to censorship, based on contemporary oral history interviews with people censored during this time period. Within a late-80s current affairs television format, actors verbatim re-enact edited transcripts from 18 oral history interviews, later dubbing their own performances. This technique is inspired by the use of actors to dub the voices of censored people during the conflict. The story is inspired by several blackout strikes which took place at broadcasters across Ireland and Britain in response to censorship. Most of the film is shot on old live broadcast tube cameras, resurrected for the production.
With:
Arthur MacCaig
IRISH VOICES
1995, 13 min, 16mm-to-digital
After the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972, the British government curtailed radio and television access for the IRA and its supporters in an attempt to “deny terrorists the oxygen of publicity.” However, there were odd loopholes in this endeavor. News reports, for instance, were allowed to show the face of Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein’s president, but could not broadcast his voice. To get around this, actors were hired to lip sync Adams’s words. Featuring interviews with Adams, journalists, and one of Adams’s myriad “voices,” IRISH VOICES is a unique introduction into the media war that was part of the Irish struggle.
Excerpt from SPEAK NO EVIL – THE STORY OF THE BROADCAST BAN (Francis Welch, 2005)
Total running time: ca. 70 min.
New film coming out on June 11th as part of online zine and exhibition @no_matter_here
'People enjoy my company' explores the 1999 privatisation of Telecom Éireann from the viewpoint of shareholders communicating on early online forums. The film places this event within emerging ideologies of technological emancipation in the pre millennium period.
Features animation from @andrewloughnane + script editing/narration from @bratkong
The film is funded by the @artscouncilireland and the exhibition by @brightening_air
The development was supported by @scigallerydub & @aemi_ie
‘I Am Cuba’ (Soy Cuba) was both a landmark of radical political cinema and one of the most visually ravishing films ever made. A legendary hymn to revolution shimmers across the screen like a fever dream of rebellion.
The result of an extraordinarily ambitious collaboration between the Soviet and Cuban film industries, director Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba unfolds in four explosive vignettes that capture Cuban life on the brink of transformation, as crushing economic exploitation and inequality give way to a working-class uprising.
Backed by Carlos Fariñas’s stirring score, the dazzling camera work by Sergei Urusevsky—an inspiration for generations of filmmakers to follow—gives flight to the movie’s message of liberation
Tickets available now, link in bio 👆
https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/connolly-books-film-club-presents-i-am-cuba-by-mikhail-kalatozov-tickets-1987508240650
Connolly Books Film Club & Palestine Culture Days present 3 interconnected short films that repurpose existing footage of Palestinian liberation movements in the early 70s:
- Scenes of the Occupation from Gaza, Mustafa Abu Ali (1973)
- Here and Elsewhere, Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville (1976)
- They Do Not Exist, Mustafa Abu Ali (1974)
19th of March at 7pm, The New Theatre
Link in bio for tickets
👋🏼 25th Biennale Artist Profile 👀 Frank Sweeney
Frank Sweeney is an artist with a research based practice, using found material to approach questions of collective memory, experience and identity through film and sound. This involves exploring the history of communications technologies through larger ideas such as historical materialism, cultural hegemony and imagined communities. In doing this, Sweeney’s work attempts to suggest points of departure from the social, political, and economic status quo. His work gives prominence to unofficial voices like folklore, social media and oral history interviews, allowing space for different subjectivities and contradictory perspectives; rejecting the idea that cinema can be truthful, conclusive or comprehensive.
Learn more about the 25th Biennale of Sydney, Rememory, via the link in bio.
Image credits:
Photograph: Evanna Devine. Courtesy of the artist.
Frank Sweeney, Go Ye Afar at Temple Bar Gallery, 2025, single channel video, 24 minutes. Photograph: Evanna Devine/Ros Kavanagh. Courtesy of the artist.
Frank Sweeney, Few Can See at Eva International, Ireland's Biennial, 2023, single channel video, 42 minutes. Photograph: Gráinne Galvin. Courtesy of the artist.
Frank Sweeney, People enjoy my company at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2021, single channel video, 17 minutes. Photograph: Frank Sweeney. Courtesy of the artist.
🎆🎆🎆Across 2026 aemi will continue to scale our ambitions and part of this is an expansion of our board; in saying this we are thrilled to welcome filmmaker Frank Sweeney to aemi’s Board of Directors.🎆🎆🎆
🎬🎞️Our board is instrumental in guiding aemi to realise our strategic function to serve the needs of film artists and advocate for them, and their work so that it can reach as wide an audience as possible. 🎬🎞️
💜We are immensely grateful to Frank; his thoughtful and creative insights have already greatly enhanced aemi’s operations. 💜
Screening ‘Ireland: Behind the Wire’ 1974 by Berwick Street Collective next Thursday at @connollybooks Film Club @thenewtheatre
Doors at 6.30pm screening starts at 7 + tickets link in bio/stories
“Unlike their counterparts in mainstream TV news, the investigative Berwick Street Film Collective were given exclusive access to Belfast’s Catholic community. The testimonies and footage of life ‘behind the wire’ that they captured amounts to a grim but arresting picture of Northern Ireland at the height of The Troubles. Ireland - Behind the Wire is a now regarded as a landmark of the 1970s oppositional cinema movement.
As well as using film to convey alternative viewpoints to those aired via established news channels, the Collective embraced formal experiment, perhaps influenced by the work of Jean Luc Godard and Chris Marker. The film signalled the beginning of what is often called the reflexive tradition in documentary film in the UK. It may seem surprising that the BFI Experimental Fund committed state funds to a film that so outspokenly opposed government policies and practices. One of the Collective’s founding members, Marc Karlin, later revealed that the Special Branch seized some of their original footage and the Ministry of Defence pressurised ACTT, the film technicians’ union, into erasing some of the frames.”
Very excited to be programming some of my favourite films as part of @connollybooks Live events throughout December!
Programme:
* Dec 5th - No Japs At My Funeral (1980) - Jamie Nares & Very Gentle Work (2024) - Nate Lavey @nate_lavey . Introduction by political geographer & cultural critic Rory Rowan @badbwoyroro
* Dec 11th - West Indies (1979) - Med Hondo. Introduction by artist & curator Clodagh Boyce @clodaghassataboyce
* Dec 18th - La Commune (2000) - Peter Watkins. Introduction by artist Jesse Jones @jessepresleyjones
Screenings start at 7pm @thenewtheatre .
Tickets €5.
⭐️⭐️⭐️aemi is thrilled to recommend two screenings programmed by filmmaker Frank Sweeney @frankbeee , taking place this Friday 5th December @ The New Theatre; No Japs At My Funeral (1980) & Very Gentle Work (2024) as part of the Connolly Books Live collection.⭐️⭐️⭐️
🎞️🎞️🎞️With an introduction to both by political geographer and cultural critic, Rory Rowan
🎥🎥🎥Doors @ 18.30. Screenings @ 19.00
No Japs at My Funeral. 1980. Directed by James Nares. 60 mins.
Named after a provision in Lord Louis Mountbatten’s will made public after his assassination by the IRA in 1979, this video work is a portrait of the North of Ireland’s liberation struggle through the stories of one IRA operative. Close-up shots of the man are intercut with British television reports on the Troubles, recasting the conflict as one over control of information. As described by Gary Indiana in a 1980 East Village Eye interview, No Japs is “a deconstructive propaganda piece that demolishes the British version of events”
Very Gentle Work. 2024. Directed by Nate Lavey. 24 mins.
Through a fictional protagonist’s psychogeographic research into militant revenge and Jewish tradition, Very Gentle Work connects Sholem Schwarzbard, the Black Liberation Army, FALN and Weather Underground to the ongoing struggle against a proposed police training center near Atlanta, Georgia.
🎟️🎟️🎟️SEE connollybooks.org or thenewtheatre.com for booking details🎟️🎟️🎟️
Join us November 20 for ‘The said and the unsaid’, aemi’s exciting, new 2025 touring programme platforming some of the most exciting new moving image work by Irish artists in conversation with key international works.
Featuring a workshop and Q&A with filmmaker Frank Sweeney. Frank Sweeney is an artist with a research based practice, using found material to approach questions of collective memory, experience and identity through film and sound.
Recent work includes ‘Few Can See’ (winner of the Tiger Shorts Competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Special Mention at Filmadrid Awards, commissioned by EVA International - Ireland’s Biennial), ‘2 Channel Land’ (Cork International Film Festival, Docs Ireland, LUFF Switzerland), ‘People enjoy my company’ (IMMA 2021-22, Transmediale Berlin, BFI Southbank LSFF 2022) and ‘Made Ground’ (collaboration with Eva Richardson McCrea, Temple Bar Gallery 2021, purchased for the Arts Council Collection in 2021).
Recent awards include Best Documentary at LUFF Switzerland, the Arts Council's Next Generation Award, aemi+Sirius Film Commission 2022 & a 3 Year Studio at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.
