Marcel Ophuls, 1972, 135 min.

A Sense of Loss is screening in the cinema on Sunday 3/20 at 5PM for a suggested donation of $15 as part of Ár Lorg Saoirse: A Radical Irish Cinema

At first glance, A Sense of Loss may seem like a conventional talking-head documentary exploration of Northern Ireland in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday. However, whereas the talking-head format is typically used as a way of filling out a linear narrative line, German-born documentarian Marcel Ophuls’s exhaustive approach seems genuinely investigative. Ophuls would begin with a bombing or shooting, question everyone involved, and gradually draw out the historical and ideological causes.

Over 40 interviews feature, with everyone from victims’ families and internees, to Bernadette Devlin and Ian Paisley. Each speaks at length, but is also challenged thoroughly, with Ophuls often presenting someone with opposing views from another interview and intercutting the results.
-Irish Film Institute

16mm print courtesy of NYPL.