Skip the green pints of beer this year and instead partake in an antidote to St. Patrick’s Day: an evening of celebrating anti-colonialism and the struggle for Irish independence. Spectacle and NYC-DSA’s Emerge caucus are teaming up for a one-night-only presentation of Arthur MacCaig’s debut feature documentary THE PATRIOT GAME (1979).

The film will be introduced by Emerge members Brendan O’Connor and John White.

Rich in emotional images, often tender but more often terrifying, THE PATRIOT GAME documents the long and bitter battle for Northern Ireland. MacCaig, a leftist Irish-American, had been inspired by the stark disparity he perceived between the tribal, religious conflict he saw depicted in the media, and what he experienced on the ground as a struggle between “the colonizer and the colonized.” The end result was a searingly intense and poignant piece of political cinema.

The film tells the story of the Northern Irish conflict, covering Ireland’s history from British colonization to the territory’s division in 1922. It then depicts the events of the decade beginning in 1968, witnessing street riots, police violence and firebomb attacks. MacCaig shot much of the footage clandestinely, capturing in raw detail the spirit of Irish resistance, while also providing a lucid overview of the political struggle at hand, as well as the confusion and pain inside the Irish Republican Army itself.

Produced by Iskra, the radical French film collective founded by Chris Marker, THE PATRIOT GAME was one of the first films to portray the Northern Irish nationalist perspective, and the Troubles from an unapologetically socialist point of view. MacCaig would go on to make seven more films in Northern Ireland, earning unprecedented access to the underground IRA and charting the evolution of the struggle for a united Ireland over a 25-year period.

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Emerge is a caucus of NYC-DSA that has come together under the banner of communism. For us, communism is the goal as well as the process of full self-emancipation from capitalism and its attendant effects, including imperialism, colonialism, racial and national oppression. Political education is an important part of our caucus life, and we believe that cinema is an important tool for leftist education, which can deepen our politics.

With thanks to Dónal Foreman and Icarus Films.

Tiocfaidh ár lá comrades!