Cap­tured image while film­ing ‘John Ford: Dream­ing the Qui­et Man’.

Mer­ry Dance aka Sé Mer­ry Doyle is a doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er who heads the  Dublin based pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Loopline Film. Titles include ‘John Ford: Dream­ing the Qui­et Man’ ‘Jim­my Muraka­mi — Non Alien’, ‘Patrick Scott — Gold­en Boy’ and ‘Lament for Patrick Ireland’.

Mak­ing a film is like going on a Mer­ry Dance, its all con­fu­sion and then all of a sud­den it all makes sense.Career

Career

Before set­tling into the world of cre­ative doc­u­men­tary Sé had a career in the­atre work­ing along­side Jim Sheri­dan, Gabriel Byrne, Liam Nee­son and many oth­er peo­ple who like Sé would migrate to the world of film. Sé got a taste for doc­u­men­tary when he was giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work for the leg­endary Louis Mar­cus and nev­er looked back. Although he edit­ed sev­er­al Fea­ture Films it was doc­u­men­tary that became his life. First as an edi­tor on films like ‘Reefer and the Mod­el’, ‘Hobo’, Vel­vet Under­ground — Curi­ous’, ‘Clas­sic Albums; Fleet­wood Mac — Rumours’ and then estab­lished a name for him­self as a direc­tor with his most per­son­al film ‘Alive Alive O — A Requiem for Dublin’ which looked at the street trad­ing cul­ture that was being erod­ed as a shiny new city emerged through spec­u­la­tion and greed. Dublin was at the heart of many of Sé films like  ‘James Gan­don — A Life’ which explored, through the great 18th cen­tu­ry archi­tec­t’s life and how Ire­land dealt with the lega­cy of its impe­r­i­al past.

Sé wears as many hats as possible

Sé through his com­pa­ny and Screen Train­ing Ire­land has run sev­er­al cours­es for doc­u­men­tary stu­dents. Guest lec­tur­ers have includ­ed DA Pen­nebak­er, Kim Longinot­to, Mol­ly Dineen and John T. Davis.

Merry Dance Aims

Mer­ry Dance blogs about doc­u­men­tary as he believes it to be the most impor­tant medi­um for telling sto­ries and inform­ing peo­ple of the world around them.