Adjunct History Professor Rory Duffy teaches history in the classroom and through documentary filmmaking

Rory Duffy Headshot

Ever since his father took him to Gettysburg as a teenager Professor Rory Duffy has been captivated by history. Currently, alongside teaching United States history here at CCNY he concentrates much of his creative, intellectual energy on documentary filmmaking—investigating historical and contemporary social movements and presenting his findings in emotionally compelling ways. His latest picture, A Fragile Peace, already won Best Feature Documentary at the Crown Points Film Festival in Chicago at just the beginning leg of its festival circuit.

“Growing up,” Duffy recounts. “I loved historical movies like JFK, All the President’s Men, Braveheart, and Saving Private Ryan. I loved the escapism. But the film that changed my life was Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine which I saw in my freshman year of college and the feeling I had watching that movie was something I never experienced before and have been chasing ever since.” After graduating with a BA/MA in History from CCNY Rory Duffy worked as a professional actor. He held recurring roles on Blue Bloods, Law and Order SVU, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. On stage and screen, he has worked with director Hal Hartley, Academy Award winner Jeremy Irons, and Amy Sherman-Palladino. He co-runs the production company Maci Duffy with his wife Hyun Joo Lee. Together they produce films with a concentration on history, politics, and art. “Film is a great medium for teaching people who are not interested in history,” Duffy says. “Many people don’t read historical books or visit locations, but they go to historical films produced by Hollywood. No better example than the success of Oppenheimer.”

The type of stories Maci Duffy Productions aims to tell varies on what interests Duffy and Lee. Pre-production, at least in documentary films for me, is a ton of reading, which Duffy loves. He visits his local library and checks out a ton of books on a variety of subjects. He and Lee work through them until one grabs their attention and draws out their curiosity. The inspiration behind A Fragile Peace: Brexit and Northern Ireland arose from the threat that Brexit posed to the Good Friday Peace Agreement—which had ended The Troubles in 1998. After seeing how narrowly focused Brexit was, Duffy and Lee set out to acknowledge the greater implications of it. Making the film was also important to Duffy because he simply loves Ireland: along with being educated at Trinity College in Dublin, Duffy’s family traces their roots there. 

Duffy sees studying a subject as one element of his understanding but in teaching it he's often experienced this initial knowledge deepening and becoming much richer. Duffy attributes much of his pre-production success to teaching at CCNY: “Brexit, The Troubles, 800 years of British colonization are huge subject matters to distill down to its essence so that a film audience could understand it with no previous knowledge is something I would not be able to do if I did not teach history at CCNY." 
 

Audiences can stay up-to-date on information regarding A Fragile Peace and upcoming films by visiting www.roryduffy.net
 

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