THE O'DONOVAN ROSSA SOCIETY

The O'Donovan Rossa Society is a cultural organization dedicated to raising awareness of of the history of Irish republicanism in New York City.

The society is named after Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa who was born at Rosscarbery, County Cork in 1831. After serving numerous jail sentences for republican activity, O'Donovan Rossa was exiled to the United States in 1871. He settled in New York City and dedicated the remainder of his life to the cause of Irish freedom. He died in Staten Island in 1915.

O'Donovan Rossa Society meetings take place the second Wednesday of every month at 8:00 p.m.

To stay informed of the proceedings of the Society, please join our online community.

This month, the O'Donovan Rossa Society, Brooklyn, New York, invites you to join us for a film screening:

The O'Donovan Rossa Society, Brooklyn, is pleased to invite you to a screening of 'Matilda Tone' a documentary film about the life of Matilda Tone, the Irish Revolutionary, by Irish filmmaker Moira Tierney. Every year in June, Irish Republicans from all over Ireland travel to Bodenstown, County Kildare to the grave of Theobold Wolfe Tone to commemorate his role in the founding of Irish Republicanism in the 1790's. Often overlooked in the history of the struggle for Irish Freedom is the important role played by the women who were part of the Irish Republican movement. This film tells the story of one such woman. Martha Witherington was born in Dublin in 1775. She eloped with future revolutionary Theobald Wolfe-Tone (who re-named her Matilda) at 16, lost him to a British prison at 23, spent 20 years fending for herself & their one remaining son in post-revolutionary Paris & ended her days at the head of a 3-generation household in Washington DC, outliving two husbands & three children. She was, to judge from her correspondence, a pragmatic revolutionary.

The restoration of her tombstone located in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY in 1998 provoked an excavation of her own long-buried story. First-hand accounts (from Matilda's pen & those of her contemporaries) combine with a soundtrack of political songs from the 1700s to create a portrait of the hitherto invisible Mrs. Tone. The film ends with the official unveiling of her tombstone by then Irish president Mary Robinson, followed by a lively wake held in her honor in Mona's Bar in New York's Lower East Side. Matilda's tombstone was restored by Sean Webster at the behest of the New York Irish History Round Table, to commemorate the bicentennial of the 1798 Irish Rebellion.

The film (2005) is 16mm, 25 minutes, color, with music by Susan McKeown & Eamon O'Leary. Funding was provided by: The Irish Arts Council; Anne Doyle; Roinn An Taoisigh and The Irish Fulbright Commission.

Moira Tierney was born in Dublin in 1969. She graduated with an honors BA from University College Dublin and went on to study fine art at l'Ecole Nationale d'Arts de Cergy-Paris, graduating in 1997 with an honors Diplome Nationale Superieure d'Expression Plastique. She was granted an Arts Council film award and a Fulbright Scholarship (to Anthology Film Archives in New York) in 1998 as well as a grant from the Taoiseach's Department for her film project 'Matilda Tone'. Since moving to New York Moira has completed 10 short films as well as the half-hour documentary 'Matilda Tone', which have screened internationally at venues such as the Fondation Cartier in Paris, the Rio Film Festival, the London and Edinburgh Film Festivals, the Rotterdam Film Festival and the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. Anthology Film Archives in New York and L'Alternativa Film Festival have screened retrospective programs of her work. Her films are distributed by Third World Newsreel and the Film-Makers Co-operative in New York and the Collectif Jeune Cinema in Paris.