McQueen, Beyond Hunger
Mar 2, 2010If the harrowing, formally daring Hunger, just out in Criterion Blu-ray and DVD editions, left you wanting to deepen your acquaintance with director . . .
Synopsis
With Hunger, British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen has turned one of history’s most controversial acts of political defiance into a jarring, unforgettable cinematic experience. In Northern Ireland’s Maze prison in 1981, twenty-seven-year-old Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands went on a hunger strike to protest the British government’s refusal to recognize him and his fellow IRA inmates as political prisoners. McQueen dramatizes prison existence and Sands’s final days in a way that is purely experiential, even abstract, a succession of images full of both beauty and horror. Featuring an intense performance by Michael Fassbender, Hunger is an unflinching, transcendent depiction of what a human being is willing to endure to be heard.
Cast
| Bobby Sands | Michael Fassbender |
| Raymond Lohan, guard | Stuart Graham |
| Raymond’s mother | Helena Bereen |
| Father Dominic Moran | Liam Cunningham |
| Lohan’s wife | Laine Megaw |
| Davey Gillen | Brian Milligan |
| Gerry Campbell | Liam McMahon |
| Gerry’s girlfriend | Karen Hassan |
| The governer | Frank McCusker |
Credits
| Screenplay | Enda Walsh and Steve McQueen |
| Producer | Robin Gutch and Laura Hastings-Smith |
| Director of photography | Sean Bobbitt |
| Editing | Joe Walker |
| Production Design | Tom McCullagh |
| Costume Design | Anushia Nieradzik |
| Makeup and hair | Jacqueline Fowler |
| Music | David Holmes and Leo Abrahams |
| Director | Steve McQueen |
Disc Features
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Steve McQueen (with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Video interviews with McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender
- A short documentary on the making of Hunger, including interviews with McQueen, Fassbender, actors Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, and Brian Milligan, writer Enda Walsh, and producer Robin Gutch
- “The Provo’s Last Card?,” a 1981 episode of the BBC program Panorama, about the Maze prison hunger strikes and the political and civilian reactions across Northern Ireland
- Theatrical trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Chris Darke
From the Current
Press Notes: Hunger
Feb 24, 2010According to critics, rarely has a film so skillfully combined poetry and atrocity as in Hunger, Steve McQueen’s astonishing Cannes award winner about Bobby Sands’s 1981 hunger strike at Northern Ireland’s Maze prison, now available in Criterion Blu-ray and DVD editions . . .
Hunger: On the Threshold
by Feb 17, 2010The feature film debut of British artist Steve McQueen, Hunger dramatizes the final weeks in the life of Irish Republican Army commander . . .
Next for McQueen
Dec 10, 2009British visual artist turned narrative filmmaker Steve McQueen is getting back in the director’s chair following the success of his award-winning Hunger. Variety announced this week that McQueen will be joining forces with Focus Features to make a biopic about Nigerian musician . . .
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