STILL FILMS PRESS QUOTES [ scroll down for company bio ]
"Still Films has embellished national genre preferences for homespun, heartfelt miniature real-life drama with quirky and experimental leanings." Irish Times ****
From the Irish Film Institute website:
"Still Films is a unique and innovative production company behind some of the most intriguing work in the current renaissance in Irish documentary making."
Dublin Film Critics Circle. From The Irish Times:
"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. You may have seen Seaview, their picture set in the old Mosney holiday camp, or Pyjama Girls, a moving, funny study of life in Ballyfermot. Their latest film, Build Something Modern, doesn't sound like an obvious idea for a doc — it's an examination of modernist Irish architects' experiences in Africa during the 1950s and 1960s
— but it is handled with such verve that we felt no reluctance in giving them this year's prize".
On SEAVIEW:
"As far as documentaries go about asylum seekers and the immigration debate, no other is as human and evocative as SeaView" Sheffield Doc/Fest
"Melancholy but sparkled with poetic moments of beauty and even humor... evokes the almost surreal collision between the camp's faded seaside glamour and the refugees' tragic stories" Variety
"powerful" Top Picks - Wall St Journal for Belinale 2008
"Directors Paul Rowley and Nicky Gogan's approach to storytelling is solemn and innovative. This lyrical and deliberately displacing film captures the irony of a space repurposed and stories of migration put on hold." Silverdocs
On PYJAMA GIRLS:
' A beautifully underplayed yet utterly haunting film'
Irish Examiner
''A touching, absorbing slice of Dublin life.... had the audience transfixed from beginning to end'
Film Ireland ****
'Smart and an absolute hoot' Irish Times ••••
'[An] acclaimed and cleverly orchestrated documentary' Hot Press ****
'Top 5 films 2010'
Donald Clarke. Film Critic, the Irish Times.
On BUILD SOMETHING MODERN
"Directors Gogan and Rowley unearth a strange cross-cultural architectural mash-up between Ireland and Africa." Irish Times ****
"Build Something Modern finds Irish fingerprints in unlikely places. Slyly, the film-makers set up a complex tangle of post-colonial ironies using small, evocative images." Irish Times ****
"Employing geometric animations that echo their subjects' designs, the directors engulf the viewer in the architects' still-challenging aesthetic." Irish Times
COMPANY BIO
Founded by Maya Derrington, Nicky Gogan, and Paul Rowley, in 2006, Still Films is a production company based in Dublin and New York. Our company focuses on the production of TV, transmedia productions, feature films, animations, documentaries and artist films. Still Films has a collective ethos with the three founders Nicky, Maya and Paul, all producing and editing for each other's work as well as supporting a wide group of associated filmmakers. Sinéad Ni Bhroin joined the company in 2008 as producer.
Our work together began with the founding of the Darklight Festival, a 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 Still Films grew organically from our collaborations on the festival over the last ten years.
Our feature documentary Seaview premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and was nominated for an IFTA (Irish Film and Television Award) in the Best Feature Documentary category 2009 and received a special Jury mention at DMZ DOCS in Korea. The documentary was released theatrically in Germany, screened on TG4 in Ireland and is now available on DVD through Indiepix films.
Our 2010 feature documentary Pyjama Girls was the opening night film at the Irish Film Institute's annual Stranger than Fiction festival, and was released theatrically to much critical acclaim and sold out theatres countrywide. Over the course of a year Pyjama Girls follows the lives of a group of teenage girls who wear pyjamas as daywear, all day, every day. Focusing principally on teenagers Lauren and Tara, the film tracks the intense micro-dramas of teenage life in Dublin's inner city. The film was also was nominated for an IFTA in 2011. It also won the audience award at the Capitol Irish Film Festival, Washington DC 2010.
Arts documentary Build Something Modern was commissioned by the Irish Arts Council and premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival in 2011. The film examines the peculiar and untold history about adventurous Irish architects who began their career in Africa in the early 1960's. Build Something Modern was selected to represent Ireland by APORDOC for Doc Europa June 2011.
Artist films include a feature length experimental film The Rooms which had it's international premiere at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and Anne Maree Barry's short Rialto Twirlers which premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival and was also exhibited as an installation at The Lab in Dublin.
We produce workshop-based young people's series for Irish national broadaster 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 in 2010.
We have produced a number of award winning short documentaries including, Alibi, Rats Island, Making Michael and short animation, We, The Masses.
Still Films are in receipt of slate funding from the Irish Film Board under their Multiple Project Development scheme. We currently have in development several feature docs and dramas, including a feature drama to be shot in Morocco, and a feature film based on Algis Budrys 1960 sci-fi classic Rogue Moon. Still films are currently co-producing various projects both in animation and documentary.
We've participated in EAVE, Documentary Campus, and Beyond Borders, a collaborative programme for creative producers from Europe and Africa.
In 2011 Still Films was awarded the Dublin Critic's Choice Discovery Award for new talent. |
