THE first public audience to see Neil Jordan's controversial film Michael Collins stood and applauded for 10 minutes at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.
Although Jordan rejects suggestions that this film condones the military campaign waged by the Provisional IRA, he concedes there is a clear parallel between Michael Collins and today's Sinn Fein leadership.
"Yesterday's terrorist is today's statesman. This film shows the attempt of one character who was engaged in warfare at a very specific moment to disengage from that and replace warfare with normal politics . . . and if people ask me for the relevance of this movie to today's situation, the only relevance is that it is very easy to set an army up but it is very difficult to disestablish it . . . peace is very hard to work for, it requires a lot of patience."