Dublin’s inner city to be razed but it’s just CGI

New 1916 f ilm to show destruction

THE centre of Dublin is to be restored in minute detail to its Easter 1916 appearance – and then razed to the ground. But it’s all for a new film about the Rising – and the destruction will only be computer generated imagery.

‘We will be working off the architectural plans that survived and the photographs of the buildings and we will rebuild them to destroy them,’ director Nick Ryan told the Irish Mail on Sunday.

‘I want to give people a sense of what it was like to be on the ground in Dublin in 1916 and that will encompass showing the level of destruction,’ he said. ‘The film will begin on Easter Monday and will end at the surrender on Moore Street on the Saturday at which point you will have seen the city go through that total arc of destruction.

‘I’m not sure people are actually aware of how much destruction took place in Dublin. If you look at photographs, you’ll see - and it’ll become more apparent as more articles start coming out about the centenary.

‘The entire lower half of Abbey Street down to the Liffey and O’Connell Street was completely and utterly destroyed by the gunboat Helga and the artillery from Trinity College.’

He said: ‘While there was fierce fighting in some parts of the city, there was shopping on Grafton Street. For the first three days, many people carried on as if nothing was happening.

‘They stood at the bottom of D’Olier Street looking up O’Connell Street and several people were hit by sniper fire from both sides.’

Mr Ryan is seeking funding through an Indiegogo campaign, with the movie scheduled to go into production in early 2015.

‘The 1916 story is inherently dramatic. It was 1,200 people against 20,000 men of the largest empire the world has ever known,’ said Mr Ryan.