With the Stormont House Agreement proposals on how to address the legacy of the past out for consultation, filmmakers have attempted to address the gap in official records of testimonies from those who experienced the Troubles.

This talk will analyse several recent documentary films by independents such as the investigative No Stone Unturned by Alex Gibney and Unquiet Graves by Séan Murray, as well as the more reflective Sinead O’Shea’s A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot.

The question will be asked how filmmakers negotiate the risk of re-traumatisation and/or provocation with the desire to have one’s voice heard and story acknowledged in a society that continues to find it difficult to hear stories from a conflicted past in a contested present.

Cahal McLaughlin is Professor of Film Studies at Queen's University Belfast and director of the Prisons Memory Archive (prisonsmemoryarchive.com). He has worked on films in South Africa and Haiti, exploring the legacies of political violence. His latest film is It Stays With You: use of force by UN Peacekeepers in Haiti (2017) and his publications include Recording Memories from Political Conflict: a filmmaker’s journey (2010) Intellect.