‘Dreaming the Quiet Man’ is directed by Sé Merry Doyle and features interviews with Maureen O’Hara, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovicz, Jim Sheridan and John Ford’s relations the Feeney’s from Conemara. The narration is by Gabriel Byrne and there is a beautiful music score by Ger Kiely and Paddy Moloney from the Chieftains.

Rosaleen McCorley Mná an IRA Episode 69th Feb 10:30 PM

Rosaleen was born in Belfast on 14th January 1957. She became involved in the republican movement in 1972 having witnessed the political unrest since 1969. She left school at seventeen and worked in the Housing Executive until the time of her arrest in 1990. She was jailed in 1991 for three terms of 22 years for the attempted murder of an RUC officer and possession of explosives. The sentences were to run concurrently.

Rosie spent nine years in Maghaberry Prison and was the first republican woman released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.While in prison Rosie made the most of her time there and obtained a first class honours degree in social science with the Open University, and subsequently a Diploma in Irish with the University of Ulster and a post grad diploma in Áistriúchán sa Nua Gaeilge with QUB.

A prominent Irish language activist in Belfast, she also serves on the West Belfast District Policing Partnership as an independent member. Rosaleen was also centrally involved for a number of years in setting up and supporting Naíscoil an Traonaigh and Bunscoil an Traonaigh in Lisnaskea Co Fermanagh. Rosaleen lives in Belfast and is a Political Advisor to Sinn Féin and serves on the board of the Community Relations Council.

Roseleen Walsh was born in Belfast in 1950. She came from a republican family, and joined Cumann na mBán as a young woman. This was a natural enough progression for young nationalists at the time, and wouldn’t have been seen as strange within her family. She believed it was the right thing to do at the time, as there was no other path available to take. Her cousin was a member of the IRA and was blown up while transporting her own bomb, aged 17.

Roseleen was interned in Armagh prison in 1973 for thirteen months and released without charge and unconditionally in 1974. She would have seen certain ‘freedoms’ in prison as internees had political status at that time. She had always composed poems and prose, from the age of 9. But in prison her writing flourished. She covered her white cell walls with poetry. It was forbidden to write on the walls, but the prison officers never painted over her writing, as they saw it as art, and would often come in to read it.

After her release, and throughout the troubles, she was not as heavily involved, her husband Martin was however. He was one of the Blanket Men, and served eight years in prison. She was actively involved with Sinn Féin in the lead up to the peace process. She fully agreed with it, and supported it.

Roseleen has written sixteen plays, eleven of which have been staged, twelve are political plays. One was translated into Irish ‘Prelude to 1981’.

She has just finished 4 short pieces for the national grade, on the leaders of 1916. She lives in Belfast with her family.

Born into a large republican family on Lecky Road in the Free Derry Corner area of the Bogside. Her earliest memories of the troubles are bringing buckets of water and vinegar out during riots, for those who’s eyes were hurt by gas. She witnessed many atrocities in Derry in her youth. By the time she was sixteen her family was known to the authorities and the army were raiding the house frequently. It was around this time she made the decision to become involved with the armed struggle.

She had been a member of Cumann na mBan, but wanted to get more involved so she joined the IRA. At 18 she was arrested and charged with possession and causing explosions. Martina’s trial came to Crumlin Rd Court. With the amount of people at the courthouse that day, she managed to slip out through the door and flee. She then went on the run, staying mostly in Buncrana.

She was again arrested in 1985 in Glasgow, along with four other IRA members including Ella O’Dwyer, they were held for 13 months in the all-male Brixton prison. They were sentenced to life at the Old Bailey. They were then sent to Durham prison, where conditions were appalling. They campaigned to be moved back to Ireland and in 1996 they succeeded and were transferred to Maghaberry Prison. Martina was released in December 1998.

She met Paul Kavanagh before they went to prison, and their relationship had started by the time she was arrested, he had been arrested about a year before her. They decided to get married while they were in prison. They married in Colsutton prison.  Martina did her O and A levels while at Durham, and a degree in Social Science from the Open University, she completed it in Magheberry, and she received 1^st Class Honours.

After her release she chose to enter politics and moved her way up the Sinn Féin ranks. In 2005 she accepted the role of Director of Unionist Engagement and in 2007 she was asked to be one of three Sinn Féin members on the policing board. She saw it as a human rights role; that all communities wanted a fair policing force. She ran  for the assembly in 2007, taking a seat in the Foyle constituency. She held her seat in 2011, topping the poll. She lives in Derry and currently holds the position of Junior Deputy First Minister in Stormont.

Pamela Kane

Pamela Kane comes from a Republican family. She grew up in Baldoyle, in north Dublin but her roots lay in Tyrone where her father is from. Throughout all the family holidays she spent in Cappagh in Tyrone as a young girl, she learnt of how the “nationalist population was treated” and felt she wanted to do something about it. She became actively involved in the republican movement during the 1980 Hunger Strikes. She joined Na Fianna Éireann, the republican youth movement, at 16.

One of the more daring publicity stunts she was involved in was the climbing of the RTÉ TV mast on the eve of the 1984 European elections to protest Section 31. Sinn Féin candidates were banned from the airwaves because of the state censorship of Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act. Herself and the other young people who climbed the mast were arrested but given the Probation Act. After she was arrested in London in 1988 and held for seven days in Paddington Green top-security police station, Pamela was told by a Special Branch detective on her ‘escorted’ journey back to Ireland that she would be in prison or dead within five years. On May Day 1990, she was arrested during a botched bank robbery in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, along with five others. She was sentenced to 10 years and sent to Mountjoy Prison. Shortly after she began her sentence, she was moved to the high-security Limerick Prison and served the rest of her sentence there.  She was released in 1995.

Born in County Waterford, Josephine Hayden became aware of a curious fact when she worked in a hotel for the summer as a young girl. She noticed that a large influx of people arrived around the time of the 12^th July and she discovered that they came South to avoid the Orangemen’s marches. This piqued her interest and made her question what life was like for Catholics in the North. Over the years, what began as sympathy for the people she met then hardened into direct involvement in the armed movement towards a united Ireland.

She served four-and-a-half years in Limerick prison for transporting arms and ammunition. She refused to support the peace process while in jail and despite suffering two heart attacks while imprisoned, did not take early release under the Good Friday Agreement as many other prisoners did. She has become a symbol of opposition to the Agreement.

Now the general secretary of Republican Sinn Féin, she has remained a hard-line Republican who believes the “armed struggle” is not over yet and that until Ireland is united the country will never progress.

Director: Martina Durac Producer: Vanessa Gildea Editor: Genevieve Murphy

Rose Dugdale 5^th January 2012 – episode 1 @ 22:30, with a repeat the following Monday @ 23:55 Episode 1

Rose Dugdale has led an extraordinary life and her unexpected involvement in the I.R.A. and subsequent imprisonment became headline news in the 1970s all around the world. In this programme she tells the story of how she came to be in Ireland and why she became involved in the Republican movement. Imprisoned for a botched bombing attempt in Strabane and an audacious art theft in Co. Wicklow, Rose Dugdale went on to give birth in prison and to become one of the first Republican prisoners to be allowed to get married while in gaol. Released in 1980, she now lives in Dublin and  works in adult education.

Born into a aristocratic English family, Rose Dugdale went on to reject their wealth and became involved in militant politics as a young woman. By 1972 she devoted herself to helping the poor, after resigning from her job as an economist for the government. During these years, she gave away a large portion of her family inheritance.

By the time she arrived in Belfast in the early 1970s she was determined to overthrow capitalism. She joined an IRA active service unit operating along the border. In January 1974 Dugdale and other IRA members, including Eddie Gallagher, hijacked a helicopter in Donegal. Dugdale and Gallagher used the helicopter to drop bombs in milk churns on the RUC station in Strabane. The bombs failed to explode and they escaped. A few weeks later, she took part in a robbery at Russborough House during which valuable old master paintings were stolen. A ransom note offering to exchange the stolen paintings for IR£500,000 and the release of the Price sisters, convicted of IRA bombings who were on hunger strike attempting to secure repatriation to Ireland. A nationwide hunt was soon underway and a couple of weeks later the authorities raided a house rented by Dugdale in Cork. They found all nineteen paintings in the boot of a car. Dugdale was arrested and charged in relation to the helicopter attack and the art theft.

In 1974 she was sentenced to nine years imprisonment after pleading “proudly and incorruptibly guilty”, and she gave a clenched fist salute to supporters. While in prison she gave birth to Eddie Gallagher’s son. After her release, she continued to be involved in left wing politics and Sinn Féin.

In this award winning feature documentary, the famous animator of ‘Snowman’ and ‘When the Wind Blows’ makes a pilgrimage back to Tule Lake Concentration Camp, where  alongside his family, he was interned for four years after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The film has had several prestige screening worldwide and won the ‘Director’s Choice Award’ at the Sacramento International Film Festival.