UCC and the Arts Council have appointed Alan Gilsenan as the 2019/20 Film Artist in Residence.

25 Jul 2019

The Film Artist in Residence role is jointly funded by UCC and the Arts Council, and is offered in association with the Cork Film Festival. It is designed to provide a screenwriter of distinction with a unique opportunity to develop his/her practice in a university environment, while offering students the opportunity to engage with a practising artist in a meaningful way during the course of their studies and their wider cultural involvement in campus life.         

Alan Gilsenan is the sixth film artist to be appointed to the role and follows Carmel Winters, Gerry Stembridge, Hugh Travers, Mark O’Halloran and Pat Murphy, all of whom have enjoyed successful residencies at UCC since 2014. During his residency, Alan Gilsenan will engage with students in UCC, both specialists in Film and Screen Media and undergraduates and postgraduates more widely through a range of events on campus. He will also participate in a public event at the Cork Film Festival in November 2019 and a public event in UCC in 2020.

Speaking of the appointment Fionnuala Sweeney, Head of Film and Architecture at the Arts Council, said:

The Arts Council wishes to congratulate Alan Gilsenan on his appointment as Film Artist in Residence at UCC. Alan has had a distinguished film career as a writer and director over thirty years and will bring his unique film-making talent to the role. We hope the residency will provide him with the time and space to further his own artistic practice.

Professor Chris Williams, Head of the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, UCC, added:

“We are very excited to be welcoming Alan Gilsenan to the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences in UCC as Film Artist in Residence. His residency will generate some fantastic opportunities for students across the campus, and we are delighted to begin planning for the multiple ways in which the presence of an artist of his extraordinary range and accomplishment will enrich our ongoing commitment to developing a creative environment for the university and the wider community.”

About Alan Gilsenan.

Alan Gilsenan is an award-winning Irish film-maker, writer and theatre director. His widely diverse body of film work extends across documentary, feature films and experimental work. Recent films - which he wrote and directed - include the feature film Unless, with Catherine Keener, in the lead role and based upon the final novel of Carol Shields; the hugely successful cinema documentary, Meetings With Ivor; an experimental film A Vision: A Life of WB Yeats; the drama-documentary Eliza Lynch: Queen of Paraguay; and The Meeting, a feature based around a real meeting between a woman and her rapist - which recently was on cinema release in Ireland. His theatre work includes his own adaptation of John Banville’s The Book of Evidence at the Kilkenny Festival and Dublin’s Gate Theatre; Samuel Beckett’s Footfalls at the Gate Theatre and London’s Barbican Centre; Knives In Hens by David Harrower at Dublin’s Smock Alley Theatre and a dance theatre piece The Burning House at the Dublin Dance Festival 2012. Alan Gilsenan has also served on the Irish Film Board (2000 – 2008); as Chairman of the Irish Film Institute (2002 - 2007); as Chairman of Film-Makers Ireland - now Screen Producers Ireland – (1995 - 1998); and as a member of the Board of the International Dance Festival Ireland (2001 – 2007). From 2009 - 2014, Gilsenan served on the Board of Ireland’s state broadcaster RTÉ. He is currently on the Board of Fighting Words, a creative writing centre for young people.