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Title: BLIND FLIGHT

Reference number: 4443

Date: 2003

Director: [d. John Furse]

Sponsor: UK Film Council and Scottish Screen

Producer: [ Sally Hibbin]

Production company: [ Parallax Pictures, Makar Productions]

Sound: sound

Original format: 35mm

Certificate: 15

Colour: col

Fiction: fiction

Running time: 97.00 mins

Description: Brian Keenan and John McCarthy spent four and a half years confined together, held underground for much of their captivity. at times chained to each other and to the walls of their prisons. The two men, who could have easily found themselves at opposite ends of a gun barrel in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, instead forged a relationship which transcended all that appeared to divide them. Blind Flight tells the compelling story of this extraordinary relationship as they both resurrect their deepest memories, feelings, fears and loves. In their near biblical journey they uncover many of the forces which made them blind and captive human beings prior to their physical captivity. They finally discover a compassion for their captors which makes the film a love story in the fullest and most humanistic sense. [synopsis from Scottish Screen Feature Films 2005 brochure]

Final cost of production report and press kit held at Scottish Screen Archive. Shot in Glasgow, Belfast and Tunisia at the beginning of 2003.

Credits: In 1985 Brian Keenan left Belfast to teach English in Beirut where religious factions were fighting each other. Islamic fundamentalists had begun to take Western hostages

Based on the book "An Evil Cradling" by Brian Keenan and on John McCarthy's account of his hotage experience in the book "Some Other Rainbow"

Brian Keenan and John McCarthy were held together as hostages in the Lebanon for four and a half years. John returned home to England in August 1991 one year after Brian's release.