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RTÉ News
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Belfast's New Lodge comes to the big screen in The Flats
"I'm very interested in watching how people that are very wounded can still stand, how they cope with life." So says Italian director Alessandra Celesia about her award-winning Belfast documentary, The Flats. Winner of the Best Documentary award at this year's Irish Film and Television Awards and also the top honour, the Dox:Award, at the CPH:DOX festival in Copenhagen in 2024, The Flats shares the lives and memories of the nationalist community of New Lodge. Mixing interviews, another-day-in-the-life footage, and reenactments, this is a special addition to Irish screen culture and is worth seeking out in cinemas if you want something different. Watch: The trailer for The Flats "I'm so proud of the fact that it's really Belfast. So Belfast," says Celesia as she salutes the locals who agreed to tell their stories. "I think they were brave. They were really brave." Here, Celesia, who lives in Belfast and Paris, talks about bringing The Flats to fruition and the discoveries made along the way. Harry Guerin: How long did it take to film The Flats? Alessandra Celesia: The Flats was a very long process because I started to work on the project eight years ago. Obviously, we didn't film for so long, but it was really just going to New Lodge, stay there, spend a lot of time - nearly like an anthropologist - trying to really deeply understand the place. There are so many shades and many nuances that you need to get before you can even be allowed to film. It was a very long process of coming back and coming back and coming back. Then, the actual filming wasn't that long. We shot for eight weeks, but we had maybe two weeks' shooting and two weeks off in which the team wasn't there, but I was preparing the next two weeks' shooting. What about finding the people who were willing to be on camera and earning their trust? That's something that's always a bit miraculous. You always wonder how people can trust you that much to really share their deepest emotions on the screen. I think it's if you're very, very honest and if you go with very honest intentions. I think for them it's important to understand why you have decided to do it. For me, it's because my husband's family originally is from New Lodge, so it was a very close and loving look I had about the place. And then time spent with them (the interviewees) - I think the secret, it's really time, where you become nearly the wallpaper. They forget that you're from outside. It's about shared intentions; everyone participates in a film like that for different reasons. I think for Joe (McNally, one of the stars of The Flats) it was to understand something about his past that I think probably it [he] was never really allowed to talk through. It's not something that people from the north of Ireland really speak about. Especially men. Somehow, I think he saw in this project a possibility to dig into the past himself. Everyone has, I think, a different 'why' for participating in a project like this. The trust, if you arrived and filmed immediately, you wouldn't get anything. You really just have to spend so much time with them and nearly create the film with them, in the sense that when you start shooting it's because you've been together wondering, 'What are we going to do? What are we going to say?' What was the hardest thing to get right with the film? It was really the consequences of a conflict; the long-term consequences and the trauma that is passed through generations. And how do you speak about that without going to touch things that are deeply unfortunately still there and that create a lot of controversy? How can you speak just about the personal aspect of having gone through trauma? I shot in a very republican area, but, of course, it could have been shot exactly the same in a very Protestant area. So, for me, the hardest thing was, 'Let the big history be behind but never invade our space. Let's try to stick with the very human aspect of the stories'. With the re-enactments, some of the film is very uncomfortable to watch. I can't imagine what it was like actually being in the room as that was taking place. I think when you work on a collaborative film like that there is a moment in which although it's painful, you know that there is something beautiful that's going to come out of it. You know there is some poetry that is going to be put on the pain that people express. So it is painful, but there is something deeply liberating as well. I think it was joyful in the end because every time we shot then we felt a little bit better. We felt, 'Oh, we're being closer to the truth or the memories'. One thing I thought you showed brilliantly in the film is Belfast almost being like a snow globe - the sense that there's no world outside of Belfast. Unfortunately, I think it's very common to a lot of deprived communities. Everywhere you go in an estate, people have a huge problem to see the outside world because they're so stuck in their own problems. They stick together; it has a very strong community that is... it's their strength, but it's nearly tribal. So it's a trap as well. I think doubly in Belfast because the history has made, 'You're on one side, you're on the other side'. And on that side, in your own community, you're someone. The minute you step out, there's nothing left, especially for people who sort of believe in ideals [and] had a moment where these ideals weren't their 'right fight', and then you're left without that. I agree with you, there is something extremely tribal, but it's also their strength. It's also what keeps them alive. I think what I'm happy [about] with the film is that it has been a very community-based film in a way. The community really came together because they thought, 'Oh, there is an opportunity to help someone, in this case Joe, to dig into his memories. Let's do it'. How many hours of footage did you have? That's terrible - I think I had 120 hours! So much - and so many beautiful things as well. It was really, really hard in the editing to let things go. I did it with a Belgian editor (Frédéric Fichefet), and thank God, he was very strong, and he helped me to deal with the loss of beautiful scenes. And then it was difficult to trace, 'What is the story now?' We realised it was this thread of violence that went from the men to the women because, as you see in the second part of the film, you see more of the violence that happened against the women as a result of the main violence going on. So, there is a transformation in the film, and I think at a certain point we realised that. What did learn about yourself as a filmmaker making The Flats? I learned a lot of patience! I didn't think I was patient. I must admit that it was very difficult to pull it together. I mean, the people are fantastic, but it's a process they don't know. So I had to be patient to give them the time to be involved at the right time. But also, what I learned, I think, for me, it was to deeply understand the society where I was brought to live. I'm an outsider. I'm not from there and I will never be really from there. But the privilege of being able to make this film allowed me to get a glimpse of what it is and have a deeper understanding of even our (my) family history. One day, Joe, the main character, said [to me], 'Oh, when are you coming home?' That's really a sentence that's really strong for them... and I was like, 'Oh, maybe I earned a little bit the fact that it is home after 27 years!' The Flats is in selected cinemas now.
Irish Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Flats: Excellent post-Troubles documentary that illuminates how trauma can nag away for decades
The Flats Director : Alessandra Celesia Cert : 15A Starring : Joe McNally Running Time : 1 hr 54 mins There is plenty to ponder during this excellent documentary on post-Troubles life in the largely republican New Lodge district of Belfast, but, among all the trauma, the most telling moment is perhaps a harmless exchange, carried on as Queen Elizabeth II's coffin is loaded on to an aircraft, between the charming Jolene and two older neighbours. Nonchalantly puzzled as to her status, she wonders if they are 'half-Irish and 'half-British'. Her friend explains: 'We're full Irish, but they stole our identity.' When God Save the King (as I suppose it already was by then) comes on, one neighbour turns his back while the other puts her hands over her ears. 'It's only a bit of music,' says Jolene, puzzled. For many of her generation these symbols matter less than they once did. Most of Alessandra Celesia's film focuses on a man who, raised among the worst of the atrocities, understandably finds it harder to set aside the old unhappiness. Joe McNally, an intense middle-aged man who has served time as an 'ordinary decent criminal', remembers the murder of his uncle, then just a teenager, by the Shankill Butchers. McNally has never been able to shake the image of a plaster on the corpse's nose – placed to cover up the exit wound from a shot to the back of the head. Now, he rails against the drug dealers who moved in when the paramilitaries went elsewhere. It's now nearly as bad as Dublin, argues McNally. READ MORE [ Trauma of the Troubles: 'I threw my first petrol bomb when I was nine. I felt like a man after that' Opens in new window ] In her treatment of McNally, Celesia offers a moving, rigorous character study of how trauma can nag away for decades. The desperation with which he hangs on to a famous phrase by Bobby Sands ultimately becomes a little unnerving. 'Our revenge will be the laughter of our children,' he repeats in the manner of a fraught mantra. The Flats keeps most of its focus tight on the subjects, but allows the occasional tasteful re-enactment. You could, at a stretch, see parallels here with Joshua Oppenheimer's approach in The Act of Killing, but here Celesia is in complete sympathy with her subjects. It is not all gloom. Jolene, a fine singer with a good line in Ulster wit, gestures to a happier and less fraught future. Her Irish passport will, she clarifies, allow her to skip the queues at the airport. So there is that. In cinemas from May 23rd
Irish Times
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Trauma of the Troubles: ‘I threw my first petrol bomb when I was nine. I felt like a man after that'
When Alessandra Celesia was making The Flats, her riveting new film about the New Lodge complex, in Belfast, as its residents confront the intergenerational trauma of the Troubles, she decided to embrace their view of her as the 'mad Italian journalist'. 'It's a bit like a joke, but my husband says they needed an Italian because we love talking about our problems and trying to get to the bottom of our souls,' says Celesia, who spent six years filming there. 'Whereas in Belfast – and this is something I adore about Belfast – people try to make a joke and not let the pain in. They think everybody else's pain is bigger than theirs. 'That was difficult in the beginning – convincing people that wasn't the case, that we were interested in the internal wounds of an entire generation. I remember I was told, 'We had one psychologist after the war: he was called Dr Smirnoff.' My husband explained they meant the vodka. It's a bit funny, but it's also a way to talk about self-medication and mental health.' A marriage of personal testimonies, reenactments and archival footage that won an Ifta this year to go alongside its prestigious Dox award, from Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, The Flats is an intimate, poignant and occasionally funny depiction of locals grappling with the legacy of conflict in an area that the documentary describes as 'a republican enclave among the most heavily impacted areas of the Troubles'. READ MORE It became a stronghold for the Provisional IRA, with frequent violence and sectarian tensions. The New Lodge Six shooting of 1973, when six Catholic men were killed, remains a poignant collective memory. One of the residents, Joe McNally, is still processing the murder of his favourite uncle by the Shankill Butchers. As a teenager he channelled his grief and anger into civil unrest against the British army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. 'I threw my first petrol bomb when I was 9½,' he says. 'I felt like I was a man after that. Five years later I was in the heart of making, organising and throwing them.' [ 'It's been retraumatising': Families of six men shot dead by British soldiers seek truth 50 years on Opens in new window ] 'I was always really fascinated by the architecture,' Celesia says. 'It's not peculiar to Belfast. It's the kind of social housing that makes a constant variation of stories possible. I needed to be there for a long, long time for them to trust me. 'When I started to go there I was brought in by a friend who worked there as a social worker. We were knocking on doors. That's when I found Joe. At the beginning I met a lot of people who knew exactly what to say to journalists. But I'm not really a journalist. I just have curiosity. 'And when I met Joe I thought, Oh, here we have someone who is a natural actor and is poetic enough to try something else.' Something else includes dramatic re-creations. Unlike Joshua Oppenheimer's startling use of docudrama in The Act of Killing , in which former leaders of Indonesian death squads restage their mass killings from the anti-communist purge of 1965-66, Celesia concentrates on smaller details. Joe 'directs' a 12-year-old local boy, Sean Parker, in the role of young Joe as he dramatises his uncle's funeral. 'I didn't study cinema,' Celesia says. 'I come from theatre. I still work with a theatre company. I'm lucky enough, because in Belfast there is a very strong tradition of political and community and amateur theatre. A lot of theatre groups were used to allow the communities to say what had happened and as a kind of healing process as well. 'A couple of months before we started shooting, I don't know why it came into my mind, but I thought I could find a coffin. A friend of mine had a chipped coffin that was very cheap. I arrived with the coffin, not sure if it would work. But Joe and the others made it their own. 'The guy in the coffin is actually my son Liam. That was another key to me being accepted. Nobody else wanted to go into the coffin. My friend in Naples says it's good luck, but nobody thinks that in Belfast.' Two local women, Jolene Burns and Angie B Campbell, similarly relive the events that allowed them to escape domestic abusers. Those incidents happened a generation apart; the pair now bond over tanning-bed sessions. They also play Joe's grieving mother and granny during the funeral scene. Jolene also featured in The Bookseller of Belfast, Celesia's portrait of a local bibliophile, John Clancy, from 2012. Makeup artist Abbey O'Reilly with Jolene Burns in The Flats, directed by Alessandra Celesia 'In Italy we had the actress Anna Magnani,' Celesia says, referring to the tough, magnetic, Oscar-winning star of Roma, Open City and The Rose Tattoo. 'She was an important mirror image for me. She's like the woman of New Lodge. I followed Jolene immediately from when she was so young. She doesn't care about politics. She's an animal of survival. She has all the tools. If I'm ever lost in the jungle I want to be lost with her. She will make sure I survive.' Celesia, who lives between Northern Ireland and Paris, arrived in Belfast almost three decades ago, just before the Good Friday peace agreement. Unit she her husband, the writer, director and producer John McIlduff, and his west Belfast family, she had gleaned what she knew about the conflict that dominated the North mostly from television. 'I come from a mountain village in Italy,' she says. 'I was totally naive. I remember being around 15 or 16 and listening to U2. For us they represented a far, exotic world. We were very interested in Ireland as a generation. And it's funny: I realised when you talk to people under 50, they don't remember any of it.' New Lodge is a difficult area to become embedded in. It is the North's fifth most deprived area overall and second in terms of income deprivation, according to the Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure . Joe threatens to go on a hunger strike to protest against the drug dealers we see circling the block. 'Rule number one, if you don't go and put your nose in their business, it's okay,' Celesia says. 'We always had the porter or someone who would say hi. I never felt unsafe. High-rise public housing flats in the republican New Lodge district of North Belfast, July 21st, 1972. Photograph:'It's really like two parallel worlds. There were families living there before, but then they realised the flats were too small and the windows were too dangerous for kids, so they've moved the families out and mostly single men in, including some drug addicts and unemployed. 'I've seen a couple of situations. Burning the bonfires on August 8th, they built one that was maybe 10 metres from the flats. It was huge. That was the only time my husband said, 'You come back home now'.' During one of the film's most memorable sequences, Jolene is astonished to learn that she is entitled to an Irish passport and, theoretically, shorter queues at the airport. The exchange that follows flags a bewildering generational divide: Joe is of an age to recall sectarian murders and quote the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands – 'Our revenge will be the laughter of our children' – while the younger Jolene is affected by inherited trauma without knowing its political and ideological context. 'There was another scene that is not in the finished film,' Celesia says. 'I was filming some young kids, maybe 14 years old. And we went on the roof of the flats where you have all the pictures of the hunger strikers and their names. They were discussing the murals, and they thought they were the architects of the flats. They have in them the capacity of hate and anger when they talk about something that is related to the conflict. But what is this faith based on? It's very complicated. It's good that they have forgotten, but they've forgotten so much they don't even know who they are.' The Flats is in cinemas from Friday, May 23rd
