Laurence McKeown

The film marks 50 years since riots erupted across Northern Ireland, widely seen as the beginning of the thirty-year conflict known as The Troubles. Mark Cousins – who left Belfast at 18 – returns to his hometown to reflect on how the place and its history have been used and occasionally abused by cinema. He traces how the legacy of division has impacted on the nation’s cinematic imagination; and, in a city that once had one of the highest rates of movie-going in the UK, he scrambles around the ruins of Belfast’s once-grand cinemas.

'H3' is a universal story of endurance and courage set inside Europe's most secure prison, the Maze prison in Northern Ireland. Here, in H3 - the bleakest of all the H-blocks - a group of young republican prisoners hold out for what they believe in, refusing to be labeled as criminals or co-operate with prison authorities. However, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is determined that these Republican prisoners will be treated like all the other common criminals in British jails, ending a special regime which allowed the inmates political status to organise life inside the jail along POW lines. The republican prisoners immediately start a 'no-wash' protest, refusing to wear prison-issue clothes or perform work duties, a protest which results in their being locked in their cells for hours on end without exercise, recreation, reading materials and with only blankets to wear for heat...

Timewatch is a long-running British television series showing documentaries on historical subjects, spanning all human history. It was first broadcast on 29 September 1982 and is produced by the BBC, the Timewatch brandname is used as a banner title in the UK, but many of the individual documentaries can be found on US cable channels without the branding.