Dublin Film Maker in Residence Selected

Dublin City Council in association with The Arts Council has announced that Joe Lee has been selected as Dublin City Council's Film Maker in Residence.

Joe grew up in Artane, in Dublin 5 in the 1960s and 70s and has lived for the best part of the last thirty years in Marino, Dublin 3.

Joe studied Fine Art at the NCAD and graduated in the early 1980s. On graduation he specialised in film and video making. Through the late 80s and 90s he worked as a freelance director completing projects with Irish, British and German broadcasters. Central to his work from early on is an exploration of the city of Dublin, its multiple identities and the shifting narratives of place.

From the late 1990s onwards he has worked as a film maker on a series arts based projects with Dublin communities. The focus of these projects has been to work with local people to tell stories of local relevance.

"This residency programme will facilitate me to continue to develop an approach to film making that I have been working on since the mid 1990s. That is, to permit story and actuality in the film process to arise out of a dialogue with people about the reality and experience of place... The Irish urban story is still a relatively new phenomenon. This is the first generation to experience a reflection of contemporary Irish urban life in film, music, literature and visual art. What emerges from these reflections of the contemporary is that there is no single way or approach to telling these stories. What I aim to do in my work is to work with people on the basis of mutual trust, in an attempt to find an authentic voice, to articulate or reveal the reality and patterns of life in places that are, for the most part, just a few miles from where I was born" - Joe Lee

Joe has three objectives for the filmmaker residency. The first is to complete The Markets film, which he has been working on for the past year. Footage already filmed includes 13 interviews with local residents. These interviews range from long time street traders, to archaeologists and community activists, to interviews with younger and older people- including John Giles (who grew up in Ormond Square) and the late Tony Gregory, local TD.

The second is to create new work with communities in the South and South West inner city. This work builds on previous work in these areas and will be completed in the second part of 2009.

Thirdly to disseminate his film and video work of Dublin from the last 25 years. In that time he has made and filmed a great deal about and around the city. The Film Maker Residency programme will allow him to explore ways of making his work more accessible to the general public by linking with the Dublin City Council, Archive Unit, Pearse Street Library.