In the Name of Peace: John Hume in America chronicles John Hume’s approach to politics in Northern Ireland in co-ordination with senior political figures in US. This is the story of the extraordinary work of Nobel Prize-winner John Hume to secure peace in Ireland. The film shows how Hume, inspired by Martin Luther King, rose up from the riot-torn streets of Northern Ireland to work with American Presidents from Carter to Clinton to harness and leverage US support. Narrated by Liam Neeson and with musical score by Bill Whelan, the film includes interviews with President Bill Clinton, President Jimmy Carter, US Senators and Congressmen, as well as Irish leaders and British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and John Major. At a time of political instability, this is a timely film examining steady leadership and international co-operation.
About Maurice Fitzpatrick
Maurice Fitzpatrick is a film director and an author from Ireland who was educated in Trinity College Dublin. He was a recipient of the Monbukagusho scholarship 2004-2017, a lecturer at Keio University, Tokyo, 2004-11, a lecturer at Bonn University 2011-2012 and a lecturer at the University of Cologne 2012-2016. He has made two documentary films for the BBC: The Boys of St. Columb’s (also an Irish public television RTÉ production) which tells the story of the first generation of children to receive free secondary education as a result of the ground-breaking 1947 Education Act in Northern Ireland, whose participants included St. Columbs’ Nobelists John Hume and Seamus Heaney; and a second film for the BBC, an examination of Brian Friel’s play, Translations which shows how Translations came to spearhead a cultural movement in both Northern and Southern Ireland, Field Day, which attempted to achieve a measure of cultural pluralism in advance of a political settlement. In 2017, he wrote, directed and produced a documentary feature film, In the Name of Peace: John Hume in America. which has been has been welcomed by Thomas O Neill, former Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, as ‘the most succinct narrative on the history of Northern Ireland spanning from Bloody Sunday to the Good Friday Agreement I have seen’; and by Northern Ireland Assembly member, Claire Hanna, as ‘one of the most important documentaries ever screened about the Irish political process’. He is also the author of a book entitled John Hume in America (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019). He is a Poynter Fellow at Yale University.