34th (The)
- Director: Linda Cullen; Vanessa Gildea
- Producer: Linda Cullen; Vanessa Gildea
CGiii Comment
Hallelujah...there is a documentary filmmaking God!
This has absolutely everything a documentary needs to have...it's educational, emotional, engaging, enlightening and entertaining...with technical expertise to boot!
This is history...and, at the core, a love story...between two rather remarkable women. Without them, Ireland's fight for equality could have been delayed for decades! So...to Katharine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan, an unreserved and unbridled: Thank you.
And...a great big thank you to Linda Cullen & Vanessa Gildea for this film. For managing such a complex process with chronological clarity, for introducing us to a whole host of passionate and inspiring people. For the card-carrying feminist who [once] thought equal marriage was an athema, for the fantastic definition of the 'queer community' - that's cleared that one up! For highlighting the 'in-house' fighting...same target, different aims! And, for showing that the LGBTQI+ community is - indeed - a functional and aspiring community! Happy times!
Crowd-pleasers don't come anymore crowd-pleasing than this! The rewards for hard work!
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
‘The 34th’ tells the story of the driven and dedicated people who formed Marriage Equality in Ireland, and developed it into a highly effective grassroots force with one clear goal in mind - the extension of Civil Marriage to same sex couples. Through revealing interviews and archive material, former board members and staff outline the strategising, fierce battles, sheer hard graft and personal cost of running such an all-consuming campaign.
From the KAL (Katherine Zappone & Ann Louise Gilligan) case to a YES vote on 22nd May 2015, this documentary spans a decade culminating in the 34th amendment to the Irish constitution, allowing same sex marriage.