Rocky Road to Dublin (film)
Rocky Road to Dublin is a 1967 Irish documentary film by Irish-born journalist Peter Lennon and French cinematographer Raoul Coutard, examining the contemporary state of the Republic of Ireland, posing the question, "what do you do with your revolution once you've got it?"The editor of The Irish Times, Douglas Gageby, is in favour of open debate over the contraceptive pill in the correspondence columns of his newspaper, and reflects on the emerging difficulties of censorship.Professor Liam Ó Briain contrasts Ireland with Britain where he sees the complete loss of faith, moral values and the abolition of "sin".For this reason, contact between adolescents and young of both sexes for the middle classes is restricted to the tennis club dance halls where strict decorum is observed.Father Michael Cleary, posthumously the subject of a scandal, is shown singing a secular song "Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy" in a women's hospital ward.The articles gained much notice lasting over a year, and he was able to make the film when his friend, Victor Herbert, who had made a fortune selling mutual funds, agreed to finance it.After a single press screening in Dublin in 1967 – which provoked a hostile reaction from newspapers and RTÉ – Lennon entered it for that year's Cork Film Festival, but it was rejected on the grounds that it had already been shown in the capital."[4] Lennon organised his own screening in Cork the following day, the resulting furore leading to a single Dublin cinema – the International Film Theatre – giving it a seven-week run to packed audiences.