Alive Alive O – A Requiem for Dublin’ Plus Q&A with Director Sé Merry Doyle

Over the years the ICC has presented many of the films of Ireland’most celebrated documentary filmmaker Sé Merry Doyle who in recent times has worked closely with the ICC as a Creative Consultant and helped to establish ICC’s on-line platform ICC Digital.  

Here in this double bill “Looking On” and “Alive Alive O – A Requiem For Dublin” we bring you two of Sé’s most powerful films, which so superbly compliment each other. Both films focus on a subject very close to Sé’s heart, the destruction iof Dublin’s North Inner Community and the demolition of hundreds of homes and tenement dwellings. “Looking On’ was Merry Doyle’s very first film which he made in 1982.  In 1997 Sé once again returned to the same subject to make his most personal film to date, “Alive Alive O – A Requiem For Dublin”. What inspired him was observing the arrest of a Street Trader who was selling goods she bought that morning from the early morning markets. This inspired. Sé to make a film about the erosion of street markets in Dublin, while at the same time a statue was erected to Molly Malone on Dublin’s richest street. The result was a film which gave  a voice to a vanishing community while at the same time depicting a city fighting to retain it’s soul in the midst of rampant speculators who wanted these communities driven to the outer suburbs. 

The screening of both of these films are particularly vital and poignant right now in 2022, when the housing crisis throughout Dublin and Ireland and also in the UK, has reached a peak and when homelessness is continues to rise.

‘Looking On’ 

Photo By Christine Bond

Made in 1982, against the background of the demolition of the Dublin tenements that were the setting for many of Sean O'Casey's plays. As people were being dispersed to new suburbs outside the city, a group of people decided to protest and organise a summer long festival to celebrate their culture. The film features rare footage of the demolition of Georgian Dublin, of the houses in Gardiner Street and Summerhill. The Film Director Sé Merry Doyle captured this film as he is stood among the rubble of half-demolished houses, and as the young Irish Socialist T.D. Tony Gregory, proclaimed his plans for new housing and decried the vandalism of people’s homes and his city. The film includes rare footage of a young ‘U2’ performing on the roof of the community hall in Sheriff Street.

(A Loopline Film Production  Made in 1982: Length 35 minutes).

‘Alive Alive O – A Requiem for Dublin’ 

Photo by Derek Spiers

Sé Merry Doyle’s ‘Alive Alive O – A Requiem For Dublin’, premiered at the Irish Film Institute, by Ronnie Drew and has had prestige screenings worldwide. The film  chronicles the dispersal of Dublin Street Traders whose Patron Saint was ironically  ‘Molly Molone’  who gave us the famous street call ‘Cockles and Mussels, Alive Alive O’.  Through the spirit of ‘Molly Molone’ the film demonstrates how an extraordinary culture and community has become increasingly fragile, with the closing of marketplaces, the scourge of heroin and a city that has sold its soul. Shot in stages over many years, there are poignant scenes of Dublin’s female street traders, (The Mollies,) being harassed off the streets by police and we witness the last days trading of the famous ‘The Iveagh Market. set up by the Guinness family to alleviate poverty in the city. 

‘In this powerful and moving award winning film, the poems of Paula Meehan, the songs of the late great Dublin Street-Singer, Frank Harte and old photographs and film clips are all gelled and woven so beautifully together’ – The Sunday Times

Here is a link to watch a trailer   Alive Alive O - A Requiem to Dublin

A Loopline Film Production. Made in 2001 - Length 58mins:

Film Director Sé Merry Doyle will do a Q&A following this Screening

‘Alive Alive O – A Requiem For Dublin’ was premiered at the Cork Film Festival in 2001 and went on to win awards at The Galway Film Fleadh, The Bilbao Film Festival – Spain and The Berlin Ethno Film Festival in Germany. In 2009 the film represented Ireland at The Doc Europa Festival in Portugal.

Both of these Films, “Looking On” and “Alive Alive O – A Requiem to Dublin” have been preserved by The Irish Film archive in Dublin