Special Film Screening: Ireland Will Be Free

​Join us for a special screening of the silent film "Ireland Will Be Free" in the Members Bar on 7th May. Historian and author Dr Val Noone will also be joining us to speak about the significance of the film.

​This is a free event - registration is required.

​Ireland Will Be Free is an amazing silent film of St Patrick’s Day 1920 in Melbourne. It was filmed by the famous Bert Cross and sponsored by Archbishop Daniel Mannix and entrepreneur John Wren. It shows 14 Victoria Cross winners (8 Catholics, 3 Anglicans, 3 Presbyterians), 10,000 returned soldiers and sailors and 30,000 young Australians who marched up Bourke Street, watched by a crowd of 100,000. The march was followed by displays of Irish Dancing and so on in the park at the Exhibition Buildings.

​This remarkable parade was an epic public demonstration of the extent of support in Melbourne for Irish self-determination. March that year was the month that the first Black and Tans arrived in Ireland and that the Royal Irish Constabulary assassinated Tomas Mac Curtain, the lord mayor of Cork. Thus, by the time the film premiered two months later at the Princess Theatre, its message had become even more topical. Around Australia it was greeted by sell-out audiences.