Margo Harkin is probably best known as the maker of the film Hush A bye Baby, but has built up a very impressive body of work within the documentary genre; her most recent work being an excellent documentary on Frank McGuinness. Opinionated, passionate and a compulsive talker she talks to Noreen Collins about, among other things, her documentary 12 Days in July that covers the crisis in the Garvaghy road during the marching season last year and which is getting its first public screening during the upcoming Cork Film Festival.

The first thing that struck me about your work, especially in 12 Days in July, was that you maintained a very balanced and fair-minded approach throughout, which I imagine must have been difficult to do, considering the subject being covered. Was this deliberate?

With 12 days in July we made a great effort to be fair. It was part of the deal of gaining access to the two parties. The whole idea was that we would try to get both sides of the dispute, a dispute which people would be seeing on the news and not really getting under the surface of. We wanted to get beyond confrontational views that you see on the news all the time.

Had you trouble getting the type of access necessary to make this type of documentary that got beyond stereotyping on both sides. Was there much resistance to it?

It took a long, long time to negotiate access and I would almost go as far as to say that it was as difficult on the Garvaghy Road as it was on the Orange Order side. The main reason was that both sides perceived their life to be at risk if they left someone into a more intimate side of their life. It was very difficult to get people to agree to appear in front of a camera because Portadown is a very dangerous place and if you raise your head in any public way; if you give yourself a profile; then, for Catholic people going up Portadown, they can be targeted fairly ruthlessly. One of the big issues for the Garvaghy Road people is that they don't feel the town of Portadown belongs to them. Because they made a fuss about the issue of the road and the Orange Order marching down it, they claim that they are-and they are-being continually harassed.

Being brought up a Catholic from Derry, did you have to work hard to gain the trust of the Orange Order?

Very, very hard. A fundamental problem for them was the degree to which they could agree to trust me. It has to be said bluntly-you don't trust people- it's as simple as that. So it took a long time with them as well. Basically they had decided that they had to work harder at their media image. They had made that decision, it was almost like a policy decision of the orange order, that they had come across as being unyielding and unfriendly and they felt they were being misrepresented and that they ought to work more at it. But few were prepared to take the personal risks associated with that. The guarantee I gave both sides was that I would not do a hatchet job. I had the material to do it with but we had given agreements.

Did the Portadown band that you covered in the programme see the finished product?

They asked to see the programme beforehand and we agreed that they could see it, but that they could not vet it, that we could not make a programme and have people vet it afterwards. The agreement was that we gave everybody who was involved in the course of our filming the guarantee that if there was something that they said, which they later regretted and if they really did not want it to go out, we would not include it; we said we would honour that promise providing that they told us soon afterwards. But this was further complicated because the commissioning editor for Channel 4, had difficulty in getting it passed. It's very difficult to get on the schedule and they said that they did not want it to sell months afterwards, they wanted it at the time and they wanted it fairy quickly which was a fast turnaround. This was a different kind of programme to what we were doing, which was an observational documentary over a long time. We're not the sort of people who can do fast turnarounds; we're just not set up for it. But we did agree to deliver it two weeks later.

Did that mean untold pressure?

It was hell. I can't tell you the pressure we worked under. We worked at incredible speed, we worked nights, all out all the time.

Did this sudden rush compromise you in relation to the guarantees which you gave both communities regarding prior viewing etc.?

It involved a lot of courier work with tapes going back and forth to both communities and we'd getting feedback on the material all the time. Because the deadline was pushed back we explained that this was going to make it very difficult for us to have a screening as panned before and as it happened we worked right up to about eight hours before the programme was broadcast. It also meant that we spent a lot of time working closely with the commissioning editor and Channel 4 trying to anticipate any problems that could arise from it. For example, if the people who were part of the group saw it and didn't like what they saw and wanted to take legal action; we had to look at all aspects of how we'd deal with it. Then there was the problem of where to locate ourselves because you can get paranoid whenever the whole situation in Northern Ireland gets politically hot and trust becomes a hard won commodity.

What was the feedback from both communities like.?

Both sides were happy with it. I got more feedback from the Garvaghy Road people, as I developed quite a friendship with those people by the end of the filming. But even then, Eamonn Stack, the priest in the programme, was very irate with us on filming right up to the last minute. When he saw the programme though he was bowled over.

I noticed you had three directors on the piece. Does this suggest that you see film as very much a collaborative process rather than as being the product of a director's vision?

I think one persons version is what ends up on TV, but with 12 days we had to bring in other directors in order to deliver that fast turnaround needed. They were both very trusting; to direct something and then give it over to another person. They must have had frustrations with that. We did not let the two directors- Michael Hewitt and Dearbhla Walsh- meet that much during the shooting, to ensure that their interests were very much vested within the community that they worked with. I think both of them at various points wanted more from the side they were filming.

At last it is being screened in the south.

Yes, its being shown during the Cork Film Festival. Even though it was more a story for last year, it still has a lot of relevance for this year as well. I felt it should have got a wider audience in the south but I'm delighted about it being shown in Cork. Mick Hannigan has shown any work I have been involved with. He's been so supportive and I'd love to go there this year particularly. I actually love talking to people about what's going on up here and what happens in Portadown is absolutely central to the peace agreement.

Do you think the South has ignored the northern situation for too long?

I know people have to get on with their lives-people have terrible problems in their own lives. A lot do shove off what's going on in the North; they do not realise the extent to which nationalist communities in the North believe we are Irish and that we are one people really-although there are huge differences as to how our lives are affected, I do think that other people have abrogated their responsibilities and that they don't think about us being the same people at all.

Does this anger you?

I never use the word anger about it. But I was angry with Hugh Lenihan a few years ago at a festival in American when he said that there was too much stuff made about the north and that there were other problems in Ireland. He was speaking to a wide audience, mainly American and I replied "that's exactly why we keep making programmes -TO REMIND YOU ABOUT US"....

The remainder of this article appears in Film West 34.