COMPANY PROFILE – STILL FILMS
Founded by Maya Derrington, Nicky Gogan, and Paul Rowley in 2007, STILL FILMS is a production company based in Dublin and New York. Our company focuses on the production of feature films, documentaries, animations, and artist films. STILL FILMS has a collective ethos, with the team collaborating on producing and editing each other’s work as well as supporting a wide group of associated filmmakers.
Our work together began with the founding of the DARKLIGHT Festival, Ireland’s first digital arts festival that Nicky started in 1999. DARKLIGHT was set up to support digital filmmaking and distribution in Ireland, and promote Irish filmmakers internationally. The production company grew organically from our collaborations on the festival.
Soon after starting STILL FILMS we received slate funding from the Irish Film Board to develop a slate of projects. Our first feature documentary SEAVIEW premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. SEAVIEW was nominated for an IFTA (Irish Film and Television Award) in the Best Feature Documentary category and received a special Jury mention at DMZ DOCS in Korea.
2010 feature documentary PYJAMA GIRLS was the opening film at the Irish Film Institute’s Stranger than Fiction festival, was released theatrically to much critical acclaim, and sold out theatres countrywide. The film was also was nominated for an IFTA and won the audience award at the Capitol Irish Film Festival, Washington DC.
Our doc hybrid co-production LAST HIJACK opened the documentary strand for the Panorama section of the 2014 Berlin Film Festival and went on to play SXSW, New York Film Festival and many international festivals. The interactive film site lasthijack.com was recently awarded an EMMY for best non-Fiction production.
Our recently completed feature drama THE PARTICIPANTS is a dystopian fable with a strong anti-bullying message filmed with a cast of children who play endlessly repetitive games to gain the favour of Mikhail, the self-proclaimed leader of their strange and isolated society.
Arts documentary BUILD SOMETHING MODERN was commissioned by the Irish Arts Council and premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival in 2011. BUILD SOMETHING MODERN was selected to represent Ireland by APORDOC for Doc Europa.
Artist films include feature length experimental film THE ROOMS which had its international premiere at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and INTERZONE by Dennis McNulty which recently screened at the Wexner Center. Award winning animations include LEARNING TO FISH, A COAT MADE DARK and WE, THE MASSES all of which picked up awards at the many festivals they played internationally as did award winning
doc shorts ALIBI and RAT’S ISLAND.
We produced workshop-based young people’s series for Irish national broadcaster RTE, Sweded TV. This ran for two seasons and was selected by the Irish National Jury for Input, the international conference to celebrate challenging public television programming worldwide. We also produced a second young peoples series, STEREOSWIPES for RTE and it was selected for Galway Television Fleadh.
We’ve participated in EAVE, Documentary Campus, and Beyond Borders, a collaborative programme for creative producers from Europe and Africa.
STILL FILMS have been awarded the Dublin Critic’s Choice Discovery award for new talent and the Irish Film New York Rising Star award.
STILL FILMS PRESS QUOTES
“STILL FILMS has embellished national genre preferences for homespun, heartfelt miniature real-life drama with quirky and experimental leanings.” Irish Times ****
“STILL FILMS is a unique and innovative production company behind some of the most intriguing work in the current renaissance in Irish documentary making.”
Irish Film Institute website
“The Michael Dwyer Discovery Award, instituted to acknowledge fresh new talent, went to the smart young people from Still Films. That company, a tightly run collective, has delivered a truly superb series of documentaries over the last few years – handled with such verve that we felt no reluctance in giving them this year’s prize”.
Dublin Film Critics Circle. From The Irish Times