was very, very palpable. were you scared? most certainly scared. i mean, there s a scene at the beginning of the film which recreates the moment where it kicked off for us. and, you know, it was very alarming, really, to see ten year old jude hill, under this table in the back room as my brother and i were, reallyjust, unable to comprehend what was going on but we knew that stones and bricks were flying through the windows, it turned out, of neighbours, but it could easily have been ours. and, erm, it puts you, it puts you in that position of sort of facing the world with your shoulders hunched, ready for the unexpected. it means that what follows is not easy but sometimes, it means that you rush to every possible means of losing that feeling so any humour to be found, any distraction,
a film is it? well, erm, it s seen through the eyes of nine year old buddy. it s seen at 50 years distance from me. so inevitably, not everything happened absolutely as per but a vast amount of it is very directly autobiographical and where it isn t, i think there s a sort of emotional truthfulness about what the film embraces which is, that at nine years old, when the world for this young lad, literally turns upside down, where the ground is taken from beneath his feet, the pavements on which we stood 20 minutes previously are lifted up by a rioting mob, and a few hours later, the population s scared and back in their houses, spills out, lifts those same paving stones and suddenly, there s a barricade at either end of the street, so there was a quality of dream, nightmare, that a nine year old was trying to cope with that is, that is part of the nature
inspiration, cultural influences. what is your earliest cultural memory, do you think? something that had a big impact? i think, early doors, i can remember winston churchill s funeral, i think it was 1965, seeing it on the television and just being told about the great man. the world cup final of 1966, where the nation stopped, and in our own household, my brother had a sort of flirtation with meningitis which was very dramatic, as you know, those can be fora minute, and then he was fine, thank goodness. but i watched the world cup final in a neighbour s house and ijust remember in both those cases, in belfast, as i was, i was very aware of a national event, or at least it seemed to galvanise everybody and everything, and i was looking at images that said, the world is watching. wow. and you mentioned belfast there. some people, i think, are still surprised when they hear that you grew up in working class belfast. uh-huh. and you ve now written and directed a film called belfast. uh-h
funeral, i think it was 1965, seeing it on the television and just being told about the great man. the world cup final of 1966, where the nation stopped, and in our own household, my brother had a sort of flirtation with meningitis which was very dramatic, as you know, those can be fora minute, and then he was fine, thank goodness. but i watched the world cup final in a neighbour s house and ijust remember in both those cases, in belfast, as i was, i was very aware of a national event, or at least it seemed to galvanise everybody and everything, and i was looking at images that said, the world is watching. wow. and you mentioned belfast there. some people, i think, are still surprised when they hear that you grew up in working class belfast. uh-huh. and you ve now written and directed a film called belfast. uh-huh. how autobiographical a film is it? well, erm, it s seen through the eyes of nine year old buddy. it s seen at 50 years
1969, where real violence erupted on the streets. i mean, the idea of the father in the film being threatened by the protestant hard men for refusing to go along with the gangs and threatening his catholic neighbours, was that something that directly happened to your father? there was a sense, you couldn t be in that part of belfast at that time, at least through my nine year old eyes, you couldn t be, unless there was some sense of threat and the possibility of intimidation. and are they really vivid memories that you have? i mean, just taking yourself back to those moments, of those paving stones being dug up and the barricades being erected, was there a sense in your mind, as a young kid, that something very dangerous was happening, that there was some kind of weird seismic shift happening on the streets outside? yes, because for a while, what had been really a sort of wonderland where the street where you lived was your wild west town, it was your castles, it was your place for dra