Easter Rising shorts to screen at Dublin film festival

At 14, Vincent "Vinny" Byrne was one of the youngest rebels during Easter Week, 1916.

The teenager found himself in Jacob’s Biscuit Factory during the Rising, but he was so young that the British let him go after the rebellion.

He was subsequently responsible for the execution of two British officers on Bloody Sunday 1920 and was a member of Michael Collins’s squad.

Byrne’s story has now been made into an animated short using puppets.

The short will be shown as part of After ’16, a programme of short films that were commissioned by the Irish Film Board (IFB) to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising.

The short, titled A Terrible Hullabaloo, was made by the Bowsie Workshop in Dublin 8.

It was directed by Ben O'Connor and written by Aoife Noonan.

A Terrible Hullabaloo will be screened along with the eight other short films on the Rising on Sunday, February 21st, at the Light House Cinema in Dublin, as part of the Audi Dublin International Film Festival (ADIFF).

Another of the shorts, My Life for Ireland, is a black comedy about a rebel cycling to Dublin for the Rising who gets a puncture and decides to take over his own post office instead.

It is written by Pat McDonnell and directed by Kieron J Walsh, who made the feature film Jump.

Former Irish Times columnist Ann Marie Hourihane wrote and co-directed the documentary Mr Yeats and the Beastly Coins, about WB Yeats's ill-fated attempt to design a coinage for the Irish Free State.

Joe Dolan's A Father's Letter is a documentary based on interviews with Fr Joseph Mallin conducted by historian Sinead McCoole .

Fr Mallin, who is 102, is the only surviving child of the executed leaders of the Rising.

His father was Comdt Michael Mallin of the Irish Citizen Army.

Baring Arms

Other shorts includes Baring Arms, which was directed by Colm Quinn and brings the story of the Rising up to date by setting it in a modern tattoo parlour.

Actor Conor McNeill makes his screenwriting debut with the Northern Ireland-set The Party, directed by Andrea Harkin.

Dave Tynan, whose film Rockmount won the IFTA for Best Short Film in 2015, has written and directed The Cherishing, which follows the children of the Rising.

The short Goodbye Darling is written by novelist Alex Barclay and tells the story of The O'Rahilly, who was killed during Easter Week. Irish Film Board production and distribution manager Emma Scott said they had received 100 entries for the After '16 competition and were "blown away" by the calibre of entrants.

“You can see the depth of feeling that is being put into these films, more than any in any other similar scheme I’ve been involved in.”