The Royal College of Physicians on Dublin's Kildare Street heaved with film-makers and producers as well as writers, singers and artists, as they gathered for the launch of the new RTÉ series, Arts Lives 07. The new series includes profiles of individuals such as musician Donal Lunny, theatre director Michael Colgan and poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill.
Photographer Fergus Bourke, who died last year, is profiled by film-maker Art O Briain. Others profiled include the poet, Sheila Wingfield, who was Lady Powerscourt from 1932 to 1961, Irish-American writer and funeral director Thomas Lynch, poet Paul Durcan, and Charles Haughey. The new season comprises "12 inspiring, original programmes on fiction, poetry, architecture and design, photography, theatre, music and painting", said Clare Duignan, director of programmes at RTÉ Television.
"Sung, told, written and painted; reappraising, reliving and retelling, the programmes . . . echo the creativity, cultural diversity and values of our community," said Cathal Goan, director-general of RTÉ.
"He's a complex individual," said producer/director David Blake Knox of his subject in Waiting for Colgan. Filming the artistic director of the Gate Theatre in New York, London, Sydney and Dublin, he said: "I was taken aback by his energy. He's like a kind of kinetic force and he is working virtually every moment in some shape or other."
Sheila Wingfield, the subject of Anne Roper's documentary, "was difficult, a wonderful poet", said Penny Perrick, her biographer.
Conor Moloney, producer of another programme in the series, Pop Fiction, said it explores "a secret shame of chick-lit". "The Lunnys were very musical," recalled Sheila Davey, sister of Donal Lunny. "My mother used to play the fiddle."
According to Kevin Dawson, commissioning editor for factual programming in RTÉ, the series aims to "capture creative talent and to investigate the relationships between artists and their audiences". Also at the launch were singer Camille O'Sullivan, photographer Karl Grimes and writers Christine Dwyer-Hickey, Denise Deegan and Kate Thompson, whose tenth novel, Love Lies Bleeding was also launched this week.
Arts Lives 07 begins Tue, Feb 13, at 10.15pm on RTÉ1