Biography

Paul Rowley is a director and co-founder of Still Films known for the award winning film 'The Red Tree' about Mussolini's prison island for gay men. He is also known for the feature documentaries 'Seaview' (2008) and 'Build Something Modern' (2010) which he co-directed with Nicky Gogan. He produced and shot the SXSW winning doc This One's For The Ladies for director Gene Graham and produced No-Wave director Vivienne Dick's first feature 'New York Our Time'.
- IMDb mini biography by: Still Films

Paul Rowley is a visual artist and filmmaker. He first began making films in 1995. Since then he has completed over 30 shorts, documentaries, video installations, and experimental films.

His work has received many awards over the past years including the Glen Dimplex award, the Irish American Art Award (both the under 35 and overall prize), the New Langton Arts Award, and nominations at the Irish Film and Television Awards. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell artist colony, the Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa, and the Atlantic Centre for the Arts in the US. He was the winner of the Irish Film New York Rising Star award.

His first short (with David Phillips) Suspension was completed in 1998 and won a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. In 2000 they won the Glen Dimplex Artists' Award, the Irish Museum of Modern Art's annual contemporary art prize. They have continued to collaborate on a variety of projects since, principally video installation works and experimental film. Their latest public commission, Local Time, is a sixty screen permanent installation in the International arrivals terminal of Los Angeles airport.

In 2007 Rowley along with Nicky Gogan and Maya Derrington founded the production collective Still Films. The company produces documentaries, artist films and experimental films. Still Films have received slate funding from the Irish Film Board, have been nominated for two Irish Film and Television awards, and recently were awarded the Michael Dwyer Discovery Award by the Dublin Films Critics Circle for their work.

Feature films include Seaview, Pyjama Girls, The Participants, The Rooms, and Build Something Modern. Seaview, which Rowley co-directed with Nicky Gogan, was filmed in the former Butlin's holiday camp at Mosney, Ireland, which is now used as a holding centre for asylum seekers. The film eschews the traditional talking heads approach to documentary and instead uses the style of video installations to create a portrait of this very particular place and the people who find themselves stuck there for years on end. The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and toured to many festivals internationally, including Hot Docs, Sheffiled Doc/Fest, Silverdocs, and the DMZ doc festival in Korea where it was awarded a special jury mention. Seaview was also nominated for an IFTA (Irish Film and Television Award).

In 2010, Rowley completed a feature length experimental film, The Rooms. Funded by a Project Award from the Irish Arts Council, the film looks back at the ruins of the 20th century and presents a world abandoned that somehow continues to operate. The film had its premiere in the Irish Film Institute in Dublin and it's international premiere at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Rowley and Gogan co-directed a second collaborative feature documentary, Build Something Modern, a Reel Art commission funded by the Irish Arts Council. The film looks at the little known phenomenon of Irish architects designing hundreds of modernist buildings in Africa in the 1960s and 70s, many of them never traveling to supervise the work, but instead designing solely by correspondence. The film premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival.

Rowley Is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective. He serves on the overview committee for the Bogliasco Foundation, has been a juror at the Sheffield doc/fest and was Director of Programming for GAZE, the Dublin International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. He is the video producer and steering committee member for Gays Against Guns in New York City, a direct action group working to end bigotry and gun violence.
- IMDb mini biography by: Still Films