2025 AI BABY - Arts Council Film Project Award 2025 in preproduction
a film by Trish McAdam
Funded by The Arts Council
SCI-FI short
2025 - The End of Romance ( in development ) [90 minutes]
a film by Trish McAdam
Screenplay in development with funding from Irish Screen and Creative Europe - Media - Single project
Feature film project based on three proposals on marriage by WB Yeats in the period 1916 - 1918.
2023 - Songs of Blood and Destiny - 97mins
A film by Trish McAdam
Producer and Director also Editing and Visual Artist
based on iGirl a poem by the acclaimed playwright, Marina Carr
Arts Council Film Production Award.
The filmmaker takes the semi-autobiographic words of Marina Carr's epic poem, as if they were her own, encouraging the audience to do the same. Using her unique visual language, the filmmaker mirrors the slippery nature of Carr's work, fire, earth, air, water, crash and bump, contradictory truths told by a dynamic troupe of actors, banging on the forth wall. Visuals untangle, re-tangle in multi-layered collages to augment performances of Eileen Walsh, Cathy Belton, Brian Gleeson, Brian Quinn and new-comers Ella Lilly Hyland and Holly Sturton.
- Official Selection Galway Film Fleadh World Premiere 15th July 2023
- Original Score Award Kerry International Film Festival October 2023
- Eileen Walsh was presented with the Maureen O' Hara Award 2023 for her work on all her films to date.
- Indie Cork Film Award 2023 - December 2023
- Official Selection - Chicago Irish Film Festival 2024
- Dublin Premiere - Irish Film Institute - November 2024
- Honourable Mention - Experimental Forum - 2025
2021 - To the Silenced
Director and Visual Artist
Short Animation commissioned by Frontline Defenders about 11 global Human Rights Activists unjustly imprisoned for speaking truth to power.
Voiced by Pom Boyd and Jack Lukeman with Music by Sean Millar and Faith Millar Boyd.
2020/22 - Archiving Award
The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) funded through the television licence fee, to encourage and promote the development of an archiving culture in the Irish broadcasting sector, contributing to the safeguarding of Irish heritage
- IFI in partnership with Margo Harkin, Anne Crilly and Trish McAdam: Preservation and digitisation of work, dating from the 1980s to the 2000s, of these influential Irish female film makers. Includes documentary, speech and film material.
2020 - Outcry and Whisper feature documentary
Director and Visual Artist
Drawing and Animation sections Directed by Trish McAdam.
Created as intervention in the feature documentary Outcry and Whispers (1.40mins) directed Wenhai Huang, Zeng Jinyan and Trish McAdam
Produced by Zeng Jinyan
World Premiere, Visions du Reel Documentary Film Festival 2020
Jean Rouch International Film Festival 2020
Special Jury Award, Seoul International Women's Film Festival
Screenings
2022 - Lund University Sweden Nov
2021 SIWFF Special Jury Prize 2021
2020 - Official Selection - Festival International Jean Rouch - Paris - November
2020 - Irish Film Institute - September 24th with Q and A
2020 - Deutsches Historisches Museum - Berlin
2020 - Official selection - Visions du Reél, Nyon - April 25th - August 2020
2019 - private screenings HONG KONG
2018 - private work in progress screening USA
2020 - I Oedipus (7.25 mins)
Director and Visual Artist Trish McAdam
I Oedipus is an aria from a new electronic opera iGirl by composer Roger Doyle with libretto
by playwright Marina Carr sung by counter tenor Morgan Crowley.
Video Commissioned by Clonmel Junction Art Festival 2020
Screenings
2020 Clonmel Junction Film Festival - July
2020 – New Triangle (7mins)
Filmmaker/Animation: Trish McAdam
Visualisation for composer of Roger Doyle's New Triangle Album
(2021) - TO THE SILENCED
2019 - Confinement (34mins)
A film by Trish McAdam
Director , Producer, editor, sound and Visual Artist
An animated film which journeys in time (1715 - 2020) through the architectural, psychological and socio-political changes in a defined space, a line between Henrietta Street and Grangegorman, manifesting itself in a rough, hand drawn, animated art, with original music composition and invented voices echoing through the telling of things that should and should not be heard.
FUNDED By ‘…the lives we live’ Grangegorman Public Art. Grangegorman Development Authority and Dublin City Council.
Screenings
2020 - Indie Cork Film Festival - October
2020 - Lexicon Gallery Dunlaoire - Utopia Dystopia exhibition Dec 2019 - Jan 2020.
2019 UCCFSM University College Cork Kane B.10B with conversation with the filmmaker, 25th November
2019 Irish Film Institute - Trish McAdam Season May 2019
2019 Dublin Film Festival Official selection February 2019
2019 Launched in KIng's Inns Henrietta Street 21st February with discussion introducers by John Rogers, Barrister between Trish McAdam, Catriona Crowe, archivist, and Paul Caviston Psychiatrist.
2016 - Whistle-Blower - [11.59 minutes]
Director and Visual Artist
A short film of Cormac Breatnach’s audio-visual project, The Whistle Blower, based on an interview Trish McAdam conducted with Cormac in October, 2014, later explored between Cormac and director, Raymond Keane in Tyrone Guthrie in December 2014.
The pictures, music and sound excerpts featured in this film arose out of the intense collaboration of artists Trish McAdam (filmmaker and drawings) Trevor Knight (keyboards), Brian Fleming (percussion), Cormac Breatnach (whistles), Susan McKeown (vocals), Raymond Keane (workshop director), Robert Ballagh (advice), Derek Spiers (period photographs).
Screenings
2017 Galway Film Fleadh JULY 2017
2017 Wexford Doc FF SEPT 2017
2017 Cork Film Festival NOV 2017
2016 Mermaid Arts Centre Bray 2016
2015 - Strangers of Kindness [14.47 minutes]
A film by Trish McAdam
Producer and Visual Artist
Filmmaker and drawings: Trish McAdam
The Arts Council Production Fund Award.
Scripted documentary, animation and contradicting generational drama based on a true story from the 1980's about a young woman on her travels in America who accepts a lift from a stranger in a bar to a party that does not exist. Reimagined by a young actress today using Google earth and animation as location.
Screenings:
2019 Irish Film Institute - Trish McAdam Season May 2019
2017/18 Lexicon Gallery Dublin
2016 - Strangers: Film and Drawings, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny
Official Selection
2016 Chicago Irish Film Festival, March 2016 Audience Award
2016 Solas Nua Washington USA 2016
2015 Aesthetica Short Film Festival, 2015
2015 – A Poem To Liu Xia [3.28 minutes]
Director and Visual Artist: Trish McAdam
Online animation made on International Women's day 2015 for Chinese Artist Liu Xia, under house arrest in Beijing since 2010, without charge. This video was made to remind her that her art may be forbidden in China but she is not is not forgotten.
*From a poem by Zeng Jinyan: , Performed/s, sung by Liao Yiwu, Directed by Trish McAdam, read in English by Mark Kilroy
Screenings:
2019 Irish Film Institute - Trish McAdam Season May 2019
2016 – Strangers: Film and Drawings, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny
2014 - Imitation [30 second loop]
Director and Visual Artist
Filmmaker, clay objects and drawings: Trish McAdam
A short abstract art animation about imitation and individualism commissioned by MART for exhibition with four other Irish artists in the Kyoto Arts Centre (Japan) and later in Mart Gallery (Dublin).
2014 - Mart [10 minutes]
Filmmaker: Trish McAdam
Short film documenting the of building work in progress for before the opening of MART Gallery and Studios.
Screening at the official opening of the opening of MART. MART is, a visual arts organization based in Dublin whose primary aim is to create a platform for New Media, Installation, Experimental Film and Performance artists.
2014 - Millenarian, The Second Coming - WB Yeats [2.47 minutes]
Filmmaker and drawings: Trish McAdam
As part of LUX13 'How does the group function' exhibition at Enclave Projects (Nov 1-22/ 2014), LUX13 invited LUX Critical Forums from Dublin & Glasgow to present an evening of new moving image work. . Millenarian is a film made by Trish McAdam based on the word " Millenarian" given to her by the Dublin Critical Forum group as the inspiration for a 3 minute film.
Screenings:
2016 - Strangers: Film and Drawings, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny
2015 - MEx15 Maynooth, launching of a new national database of Irish visual artists
2014 - Laban Centre, London
2014 - Conversations with Dead People [4 minutes]
Filmmaker and drawings: Trish McAdam
Manhattan Syndrome animation for a track on their new album, American Heart
2013 - Étude No 1 Relentless [4 minutes]
Filmmaker and drawings: Trish McAdam
Trish McAdam visuals for Benjamin Dwyers’ Étude No 1 Relentless - Fractal Music
Screenings:
2013 - Fractal Tour
2014 - Dublin TCD programme 6.30pm, 26 March, ATRL, Pearse St
2012 - Rough Time [12.18 minutes]
A film by Trish McAdam
(director, producer, animation drawings)
Arts Council Production Fund Award.
Charcoal animation and live action film based on interviews with 5 homeless men, shot on RedCam in Ardmore green screen stage and edited in Tangerine using After Effects. Funded by The Arts Council Butoh dance Gyohei Zaitsu, Camera PJ Dillon, and Music Trevor Knight.
Screenings:
2016 - Falling Man - Manifestation
2016 - phizzfest - window back projection Screening - North Circular Road - Dublin
2016 – Strangers: Film and Drawings, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny
2015 - Capital Irish Film Festival - Washington DC - Goethe-Institute
2013 - Odessa live - Curator's Club - Perpetual Motion
2013 - Indie Cork Film Festival
2013 - First Cinema screening as part of Synthesis in The Irish Film Institute
2012 - Work in progress screening at Dancing with Fire Symposium, Trinity College, ATRL, Dublin accompanied by 6000 word essay.
2012 - Patterns
Arts Council Bursary Award
Research project on the cultural importance and a continuous parallel between ancient and present day patterns with particular reference to Arabic patterns and patterns in quasichrystals.
2012 – Éalu [3.5 minutes]
Filmmaker and drawings: Trish McAdam
Charcoal animation and After Effects - commissioned by Cormac Breathnach as an artistic conversation with his Album Éalu (meaning escape)
2012 - No Enemies - Liu Xiaobo [4.36 minutes]
Filmmaker and drawings: Trish McAdam
Commissioned by Front Line Defenders
Charcoal animation and After Effects uses an extract from the statement, ‘I have no enemies’, written by poet Liu Xiaobo. Read by: Salman Rushdie, Seamus Heaney, Ariel Dorfman, Mark Kilroy and Adam Shapiro read the extract.
Screenings:
2019 Irish Film Institute - Trish McAdam Season May 2019
2016 - Strangers: Film and Drawings, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny
2015 - Short and Sweet, Cape Town
2015 - International Exiles Film Festival, Sweden
2014 - Amnesty Festival, Holland
http://www.moviesthatmatter.nl/english_index/festival/programma_en/film_en/1600
2013 - Nominated for the ICCL Human Right Film Award
2013 - Blackrock Animation Festival
2011 - Caged Bird Sings [2.21 minutes]
Director and Visual Artist- Trish McAdam
Commissioned by Front Line Defenders
Charcoal animation and After Effects commissioned by Front Line Defenders and launched on You Tube in December 2011.
Based on the Maya Angelou poem Caged Bird with kind permission of Maya Angelou
Screening:
2016 - Strangers: Film and Drawings, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny
2012 - Nominated for the Irish Council of Civil Liberties Film Award
2011 - AIWW Petition Animation [30 second loop](concept, director, animation)
A film by Trish McAdam
Director and Visual Artist
Charcoal animation in support of the change.org petition for the release of Ai Weiwei posted on You Tube in June 2011 while AIWW was being held in detention by the Chinese authorities.
Screened:
2011 - The LAB - Dublin as part of MA show, Public Gesture
2012 - Electric Picnic
2009 - What Am I doing Here? [52 minutes)
A film by Trish McAdam
Producer - Filmmaker and drawings: Trish McAdam
Arts Council and Film Base, Irish Film Board, Documenting the Arts Award
Arts documentary on Donal O'Kelly’s theatre tour, Ireland and Poland.
Screenings:
2019 Irish Film Institute - Trish McAdam Season May 2019
2009 - Galway Film Fleadh
2010 - Irish Film Institute
2002 - Flirting with the Light [56 minutes]
Director Trish McAdam
Producer Ned O'Hanlon and Trish McAdam
A documentary about the making of Glare, Leo O'Kelly's first album in 25 years
Screening:
2019 Irish Film Institute - Trish McAdam Season May 2019
2002 - RTE prime time
1998 - Hoodwinked [3 x 45 minutes]
Director/producer: Trish McAdam
Funded by Irish Film Board, RTE television/EU.
A three part series debating women's roles in Irish society since the 1920's - a history told as often from the side lines as from the centre.
Screenings:
2019 Irish Film Institute - Trish McAdam Season May 2019
2015 - As part of International Women's Day 2015, Rathmines Library Dublin
2014 - Irish Film Institute open day (screened over three days)
1998 - Primetime RTE
The Hoodwinked Collection of all interviews from the shoot is held in the Irish Film Institute Archive.
1996 - Snakes and Ladders [90 minutes]
Writer/director: Trish McAdam
Funded by the Irish Film Board, ZDF, Miramax and others
Fiction Feature. Quirky romantic comedy set in Dublin's city centre about the secrets and friendship between two women street performers
Producer Chris Sievernich (Paris Texas, The Dead)
Screened:
2019 Irish Film Institute - Trish McAdam Season May 2019
Festivals including Sundance, London, San Sebastian (in Competition) Toronto
International cinema and TV distribution
2024 - New print from original negative in progress in the IFI
Selected Film Shorts
1989 - Berlin [30 minutes]
Director, camera, editing: Trish McAdam
Funded by Arts Council
16mm experimental cityscape of Berlin with animation sequences painted by Mick Cullen and music by Raymond Deane. Producer, Jane Gogan.
Screened at festivals
2019 Irish Film Institute - Trish McAdam Season May 2019
2009 – The Irish Film Institute Open Day
1984 - The Drip [20 minutes]
Available on the IFI Player
Director, camera, editing by Trish McAdam
Writer: Trish McAdam and Jack Lynch
Cast Pom Boyd, Jack Lynch, plus, Mannix Flynn, Brian Maguire, Aiden Gillen, Eamon Hunt, Charley O'Neill.
Producer Jane Gogan
funded by The Arts Council, Irish Film Board,
16mm comedy and fantasy film
Producer, Jane Gogan.
Screenings:
2019 Irish Film Institute - Trish McAdam Season May 2019
1985 - Ha'Penny Film Club - Temple Bar Studios
1985 - Festivals in Ireland and England.
Available on the IFI Player
Selected 35mm Slide Installations
1983 - Heroin [30 minutes]
Trish McAdam (photography and co compiler with Jane Gogan
35 mm slides, real and fictional, - sound track interviews with heroin addicts in Dublin.
Screenings:
1983 - Ha'penny Film Club - Temple Bar Studios, Dublin
In community groups.
Later transferred to video for Eastern Health Board.
1981 - New York 81 [30 minutes]
Trish McAdam photography and compiler
35 mm Slide show, inspired by living in New York, East Village and the Bowery 1980/81 and working in Tin Pan Alley..
Screenings include
1981 - Ivy Rooms Dublin support to band Some Kind of Wonderful
1983 - Ha'penny Film Club - Temple Bar Studios, Dublin
1982–1985 - Various Dublin Slides shows [30 minutes each]
Trish McAdam photography and compiler
Photographic work of Dublin and Temple bar Studios, some hand painted.
Screenings:
Various venues including
1982 - The Magnet - Dublin - support to Tokyo Olympics
1983 - Ha'penny Film Club - Temple Bar Studios, Dublin
1982 - 22 Years of Independent Art
Trish McAdam photography and co compiler with Jane Gogan
Commissioned by Jenny Haughton, Independent Artists - screened at Independent Artists Exhibition 1982
A 35mm slide show with music by Donal Lunny and narrated by Pom Boyd, celebrating 22years of the radical Independent Art movement in Ireland.
1984 - October [20 minutes]
Trish McAdam photography and co compiler with Jane Gogan. -
35mm installation based on the October exhibition in Temple Bar Gallery.
Artists included: Brian Maguire, Robert Armstrong, Eithne Jordan, Michael Cullen and Patrick Hall, Tadgh McSweeney.
Other
1987 - Mirror Films - partnership with Jane Gogan and Mark Kilroy,
Film development and produced Hard Shoulder, financed by the IFB and Channel 4
1983 -Ha'Penny Film Club founder member of Temple Bar Studios where, with Jane Gogan, set up the Ha'Penny Film Club, an avant-garde cinema club. Photographed and compiled various slide shows and documentation of shows in Temple Bar Gallery and Studios.
Residencies
2019 - Bavaria- Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus
2009 - Paris - Irish Cultural Centre
1992 - Berlin - Nipkow Programme
Member of VAI (representative body of visual artist in Ireland) and IVARO ( VAI collecting agency)
Member of Screen Directors Ireland - representative body of Irish film Directors
2017 elected member of Aosdana Established in 1981 to honour artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the creative arts in Ireland, and to encourage and assist members in devoting their energies fully to their art. In receipt of Cnuas.
Education
2011 MA in Visual Arts Practice IADT
2000 BA Open University LIT 1 ,
1985 Diploma in Media Studies College of Marketing and Design
1976 BA first year HIST 1, Philosophy 1, Archaeology 1
My presentation paper Hollywood and Ireland is published in the book Re - Imagining Ireland edited by Andrew Higgins Wyndham, Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press 2007
Various part-time: directing, digital technology, narrative and interactive script writing, screen printing, graphics and photography, including :
1995 Film Seminare - Feature film Directing and Screenwriting - Berlin
2003 Content and Creative - Interactive Narrative - Berlin
2004 Korsakow interactive Game Structure - Berlin
2005 Insight Out - Digital Production/Special Effects/Postproduction - HFF Academy - Berlin
Various part-time: directing, digital technology, narrative and interactive script writing, screen printing, graphics and photography, including :
1995 Film Seminare - Feature film Directing and Screenwriting - Berlin
2003 Content and Creative - Interactive Narrative - Berlin
2004 Korsakow interactive Game Structure - Berlin
2005 Insight Out - Digital Production/Special Effects/Postproduction - HFF Academy - Berlin
Board Memberships
2006-2010 - Vice President on the executive committee of FERA Federation of European Directors' Organisations (Umbrella organisation of 35 European Directors organisations)
2001-2007 - Founding member and founding chair of SDGI Screen Directors’ Guild of Ireland (SDGI)
2001-2007 - The Irish representative at the founding and following meetings of International Association of English Speaking Directors' Guilds (IAESDO) (Directors' Guild of America, Directors' Guild of Canada, Directors UK, Australian Directors' Guild, Screen Directors' Guild of New Zealand, Screen Directors' Guild of Ireland) which published IAESDO THE DUBLIN DECLARATION the first World and Television Directors Rights Guide
https://sdgi.ie/wp-content/uploads/Dublin-Declar-book.pdf
1997-2002 - Irish Film Institute Board member
1992-1995 - Cork Film Festival Board member
1987 - Filmmaker Ireland - Co founder and Board member - Producers and Directors organisation founded in reaction to the winding down of the IFB.