In 1949, a gifted 22-year-old sculptor arrived in Dublin from post-war Berlin. Raised in an artistic Jewish German family in the heart of Nazi Germany, Imogen met Irish sculptor Ian Stuart, grandson of Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne. Together, they began their married life at Laragh Castle in County Wicklow, under the roof of Ian’s mother Iseult Gonne.
Seventy-four years later, Imogen is revered as one of Ireland’s most distinguished sculptors. Her striking works, rich in spirit and form, grace both public spaces and private collections across the world.
In this intimate documentary shot over ten years, her grandson filmmaker Emile Dinneen captures the essence of her life and legacy. Drawing on archives of her childhood in wartime Berlin, the bohemian world of her Irish family, and her working in the last decade of her life, it traces her path through marriage and motherhood while quietly becoming one of Ireland’s most respected and prolific artists.
Imogen from the Heart reveals how this remarkable woman came to embody, in sculpture and in spirit, a vital part of Ireland’s cultural soul.
Filmed & Directed by: Emile Dinneen
Producer: Adrian McCarthy
Editor: Mirjam Strugalla
Exec Producer RTÉ : Aifric Ní Chianáin
A Curious Dog Films Production for RTÉ © 2023
RTS (Royal Television Society - Ireland) Best documentary Nomination 2024
Imogen’s spirit is inherently infused in her work – a magical and almost childlike naive world of early monks, lyric poetry, and nature. This is a portrait not only of a charming and powerful independent woman, but a picture of a brilliant artist as she continues to forge an artistic path into her 90’s- THE IRISH INDEPENDENT
A beautiful meditation on the long, robust life of Imogen Stuart - IRISH TIMES
Mick O’Dea PRHA is one of Ireland’s leading painters. His diverse range of work includes a ten-year study of Ireland’s War of Independence, culled from found and researched images. He pulls the heart out of these reproductions, breathing the living present into our imagined past. As the artist prepares a monumental exhibition in central Dublin for the centenary of the easter rising, a film crew attempt to document the journey. Amidst the collision of history, memory and imagination, reality itself soon becomes an elusive combatant.
Filmed & Directed by: Emile Dinneen
Producer: Paul Duane, Screenworks
Editor: Jackie Jarvis
Cinematography: Basil Al-Rawi
Music: Oli Ryan
Running time: 42 minutes
“Alternating between the playful, poetic and profound, Dinneen’s film on painter Mick O’Dea’s seminal exhibition eschews the traditional artist biography for an unusual take on the process of artistic creation, gathering an explosive momentum from within all the doubt, confusion and blind alleys inherent in creating groundbreaking work, and emerging with something altogether unique” IFI
Amidst the heat and haze of Uganda's bustling capital Kampala, a rapidly growing breakdance movement is producing some of the best dancers in Africa. When the artistic director of London's Breakin' Convention Dance Festival, Jonzi D, arrives in Uganda to find new acts, local company Tabu Flo step up to the mark - proposing a stage show about a traditional local cult of gravedigging spirits called Abasezi.
As the dancers begin to delve into the background of their show they unearth some strange phenomena surrounding this powerful tradition, and the lines dividing religion from superstition, myth from reality, and possession from the dance become increasingly blurred.
With explosive performances, striking photography and a story born straight out of the Ugandan streets, Abasezi - The Nightdancers is a deftly woven portrait of a new generation of African youth taking their place on a global stage.
Featuring Tabu Flo Dance Company, Breakdance Project Uganda, Breakin' Convention, Sadler's Wells Theatre & hip hop artist Jonzi D.
Written & Directed by: Emile Dinneen
Producers: Nicky Gogan, Paul Rowley, Adam Park
Editors: Breege Rowley, John Walters, Paul Rowley, Emile Dinneen
Cinematography: Luca Rocchini, Narayan van Maele
Music: George Brennan, Nathan ‘Flutebox” Lee
"Dinneen combines sharp storytelling, striking imagery and hypnotic editing to create a compelling exploration of the artistic process where dreams and reality collide" Film Ireland
"the operatic intensity of street dance"
The Economist
Trailer
Heaven’s Edge explores the story of an Australian RAF rear gunner ten years after the second world war. Inspired by the real-life experiences of Irish actor Jamie Crerar’s grandfather Jack Kennedy, who enlisted at 18 and flew with the 101 Squadron, the film sheds light on the young civilians who became airmen in WWII—brave, hastily trained, and forever changed. Shot on 16mm in the Boyne Valley, this moving tribute explores courage, survival, and the haunting legacy of war.
Written, Produced & Directed by Emile Dinneen
Executive Producer: Trish Keogh
Cinematography: Helio Leon
Sound design: Owen Pratt
Featuring James Crerar
Watch film here
In March 2011 British photographer Guy Martin arrived in Libya on the trail of uprisings that were sweeping the Middle East. One month later he lay in a hospital bed in Misrata fighting for his life - having been caught up in the same ambush that killed world renowned photographers Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington. Rebirth is a dramatic exploration of memory and trauma charting one man’s descent into the terrifying reality of war.
"When I first saw Rebirth it immediately stood head and shoulders above most short documentaries. The film feels like a voyage into the mind of Guy Martin, exploring his memory and trauma from a tragic experience of photographing war in Libya. It's raw, gritty, gripping and embedded in reality while reaching to understand the pain and suffering of war. It's an extraordinary and stunning film” Ross Whitaker, Director
Director Emile Dinneen
Producer Aisling Ahmed
Based on photographs by Guy Martin
www.guy-martin.co.uk
Editor Emile Dinneen, Magali Charrier
Music Gareth Averill
Running time 19 minutes
Winner best short, Stranger than Fiction 2014
“Rebirth refashions the photomontage style of Chris Marker's La Jetée into bracingly fresh documentary — a visceral and valuable journey through calamity and scorched earth that allows us to witness war in a new way” Stranger than Fiction Jury
Watch film here
I am an Irish film director, photomaker and writer. I’ve made award-winning documentary films exploring art, tribal customs, war, crime, and spirituality and exhibited my work at film festivals, tv networks and galleries worldwide.
I began filming semi-nomadic Dinka herdsmen in war-torn Southern Sudan while still in school, travelling to the frontlines of the civil war and living amongst nomadic Dinka and Atuot cattle herders there. My debut documentary, New Sudan Dances, led to work with Oscar-winning director Kevin MacDonald on My Enemy’s Enemy and The Last King of Scotland.
My feature doc debut Abasezi: The Nightdancers, emerged out of a breakdance school I helped set up in Kampala, sharing skills I learnt in the South Bronx and Lower East Side of New York -through hiphop legends Ken Swift, Rocafella and Qwikstep- to disadvantaged kids in Kampala. The project developed into Tabu Flo dance company’s groundbreaking hip-hop theatre show Myth of the Nightdancers which premiered in Sadler’s Wells in London. Since then I have been making independent work while also directing and producing for television, including true crime series Evidence of Evil (CBS Reality’s highest-rated series in 2020/21) and Bloodline Detectives for Discovery Networks/Sky.
I could write more but by this stage you’ll definitely be moving on... so I’ll leave you with this quote from Nisargadatta...
“The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it”
∞