YOUNG GUN OF 1916 REVIVED
ONE of Michael Collins’s hired guns has become a voice from the grave in a new animated film telling the story of being a 14year-old boy soldier in the Easter Rising.
Filmmakers created foot tall puppets and miniature sets of the GPO and St Stephen’s Green in Dublin to depict Vinny Byrne’s role alongside 1916 rebel leader Thomas MacDonagh i n the Jacob’s biscuit factory.
A Terrible Hullabaloo uses documentary recordings from 1980 when, aged 78, the former Irish Volunteer recalls the dramatic events and his role in the revolution as a boy.
Writer Aoife Noonan said: ‘We took the audio from him talking about the Rising, so he narrates it himself. He’s a character you warm to. Immediately he’s funny, a little cheeky oul lad... He was a character.’
The eight-minute short made using ten puppets was produced by Bowsie Workshop in Dublin’s Liberties. It premieres at the Audi Dublin International Film Festival on Sunday.
Mr Byrne was initially told to leave the Jacob’s factory by older Volunteers because of his age but made his way back in among the ranks of the 2nd Battalion and ultimately held two policemen prisoner at gunpoint.
From 1919 he was said to have played a key role in The Squad, the counter-intelligence and assassin unit assembled by Collins in the War of Independence.