A DOCUMENTARY depicting women's experiences over a 25 year period as political prisoners will be screened next week to mark events around International Women's Day.
Belfast Film Festival will presents a special screening of 'A Kind of Sisterhood' (2015), a documentary about women prisoners in Armagh and Maghaberry prisons, followed by a Q&A session with directors Claire Hackett and Michele Devlin and participants, Liz Maskey, Eileen Morgan and Rosie McCorely.
It will be shown at 7pm on Tuesday, March 10 at Omniplex Kennedy Centre.
The compelling and revelatory documentary covers a 25 year period from the first women to be interned in the 1970s, to the killing of a prison officer outside the Gaol in 1979 and the republican women’s protest for political status.
The film’s strength lies in its candid interviews with eight women imprisoned at different times – seven republican and one loyalist – as well as accounts from journalist Nell McCafferty and the former prison chaplain, Fr Raymond Murray. The result is an important document that reveals a perspective on recent Irish history rarely seen or discussed.
Liz McKee, now Liz Maskey, became the first woman in the North of Ireland to be interned by the British government during the recent conflict, on New Year’s Day 1973.
Aged only 19 at the time, the news caused shock and outrage amongst nationalists, who were on the sharp end of internment which began on 9 August 1971 and was used exclusively against the beleaguered Catholic community.
In December 2022, Liz had her internment conviction quashed.
Speaking to the Andersonstown News ahead of Tuesday's event, Liz said: "The film covers internment, the women in Armagh, the women on protest and hunger strike and the women in Maghaberry.
"I talk about the experience of being an internee. I was the first woman in the North to be interned.
"I think it is important that people know about internment. Young people seem to know more about hunger strikes, Long Kesh, the Maze but not a lot of people know about the role that women played in the prisons.
"I think it's important that people know the history of women's struggle, both inside and outside of prison. Women played a very important role. It wasn't a male-orientated struggle. Women participated fully in it just as much as the men."
Tickets for the screening of 'A Kind of Sisterhood' at Omniplex Kennedy Centre on Tuesday, March 10 are available here.
