Meeting Room, documentary on Concerned Parents Against Drugs (1980s), will have its world premiere at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival on February 21st.

Meeting Room, the new documentary film by James Davis and Brian Gray, will have its world premiere at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival on February 21st.

The film shines a powerful searchlight on a controversial moment in recent Dublin history. Meeting Room tells the contested story of the Concerned Parents Against Drugs movement from its emergence in Hardwicke St and St Teresa’s Gardens in the early 1980s to its decline with the imprisonment of some of its leaders at the end of that decade. The film includes an interview with Tony Gregory and features Christy Moore, John ‘Whacker’ Humphries, Bernie Howard, Mick Rafferty, Padraig Yeates, Chris McCarthy and Fr Jim Smyth.

CPAD began in response to the explosion of drug addiction in Dublin in 1982. A lack of action from the authorities meant that residents of the flats complexes where heroin was available were on their own. A mass movement was born in response and dealers were confronted with meetings, patrols, checkpoints and late night evictions. These tactics saw the movement spread throughout the city.

But CPAD’s direct action strained its relationship with the authorities and the media. Charges of vigilantism and republican infiltration dogged the movement and undermined it. Hostility in the press, prosecution in the courts and a violent response from criminals was all balanced against successfully tackling the dealers as the movement rose and fell during the 1980’s in Dublin.

Beautifully shot by Palestinian American artist Nida Sinnokrot, Meeting Room reconstructs the social history of CPAD through archival newspaper, film and photographic sources and through the voices of those who participated.

It will screen at Cineworld on Parnel St. February 21 at 3.30pm. 72 minutes. Directors present.

Tickets.

Many thanks to the person who forwarded this which I think will be of particular interest to many of us here on the CLR. We’ll keep you updated with its progress.