_Directed by Alan Gilsenan_ “The Yellow Bittern” will be released on the 11th of September in the Gate Cinema in Cork, The Eye in Galway, SCG in Dungarvan, The Lighthouse Cinema in Smithfield Dublin and also it will play in the IFI in Temple Bar. There will be a gala screening of the Yellow Bittern on Wednesday the 2nd of September in the Lighthouse Cinema in Smithfield. Liam will be conducting a Q & A session after the screening and a plethora of Irish musicians will be in attendance on the night.

The Yellow Bittern Official film trailer from Element Pictures Distribution on Vimeo.

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem are a powerful iconic presence on the Irish cultural map. They have garnered worldwide success and huge popular acclaim, but opinions are still are divided about them. To many, they are the true embodiment of the Irish popular folksong tradition, while to others, they are represent the worst excesses of stage- Irishness. Yet despite this, their songs remain our songs, the songs of a people, the inner soundtrack of a nation. But for all their fame, their story remains largely untold – or at least misrepresented. Many myths and legends have grown up around The Clancy Brothers, but the legend of Liam Clancy, the youngest of them of them all, is perhaps the most potent. The Yellow Bittern charts the remarkable rise to fame of the Clancy Brothers from their small-town beginnings in County Tipperary to the folk hey-day of Greenwich Village in the Sixties where they out-sold the Beatles and influenced a host of artists from the young Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger. But the film also delves deep into the personal psyche of Liam Clancy as well as his dark and troubled personal life where excesses of rock-and-roll found their way in to the world of folk.