::: CREDITS :::
Directed and Produced by Brendan J. Byrne
Executive Producer Gil Rossellini
::: TRANSMISSION DETAILS :::
The Kickhams was a broadcast on Channel 4 on Saturday 25th September 1993.
Running time: 60 minutes
::: SYNOPSIS :::
Directed by Brendan Byrne, The Kickhams is an insider's look at an Irish Gaelic football team and club based in the Catholic neighbourhood of Belfast known as Ardoyne.
The Kickhams is a one-hour documentary, which was part of the series Enemy Mine, produced for Channel 4/RAI by Rossellini & Associates.
The Kickhams shows how sport and politics are linked in a country like Northern Ireland. The Kickhams club, in supporting and playing an Irish nationalist sport, express their solidarity towards Irish nationalism. This also makes them targets for loyalist paramilitaries. Ardoyne, a small Catholic enclave in a largely Protestant area, has been the scene of 600 sectarian murders since the Troubles began.
The film also conveys the sense of occupation and surveillance that common people feel every day in Ardoyne, and communicates the deep sense of community that exists in spite of the troubles.The film is now part of historical record, before the ceasefires and the Good Friday Agreement. It captures a community which perceives itself as the underdog awaiting a fair political dispensation.
As well as being a consummately human portrait of a community, it is also a perceptive analysis of the reasons behind the Northern Ireland conflict.
::: QUOTES :::
"[The Kickhams] strength comes in its matter of fact down-to-earth approach which neither exploits nor sensationalises these people's lives. With the effect that The Kickhams pulls a powerful punch." - The Irish News, Friday 30th July 1993