Esras Films Ltd

Address: 43 Mount Merrion Avenue, Blackrock, Co. Dublin
Telephone: +353-1-288 1939
Fax: +353-1-283 6253
Website: http:// www.esras.com
Email: info@esras.com

Personnel:
Peter Kelly - Managing Director/Producer/Director
Neal Boyle - Producer/Director
Mary Brophy - Producer/Director
Jennifer Davidson - Production Assistant

Company Description:

Esras Films Ltd. is one of Ireland's top media production companies working in the arenas of both broadcast production and corporate communications. Award winning producers of factual TV and drama, Esras has produced series for the national broadcasters RTÉ and TG4 and work for the BBC, ITV and Granada. Esras also specialises in internal communications and information campaigns for the corporate sector, working across the full range of media from video to the Internet, CD-rom to DVD.

Esras also administers the Radharc Archive on behalf of the Radharc Trust - over four hundred titles of social, religious and historical documentaries from five continents, spanning thirty-five years. A comprehensive website of the archive was produced by Esras including a database search facility www.radharcfilms.com

Award winning productions for Esras include "Blood Diamonds - the International Response", a news report from Sierra Leone; "As a Seal Upon your Heart", presented by actor Martin Sheen; "The Last Resource", a rural development series which won Esras the Agricultural Journalist of the Year award in 2000; "John Charles McQuaid - What the papers say", a two-part documentary on the former archbishop of Dublin, presented by John Bowman and winner of the ESB National Media Award.

Genre:
Documentary, current affairs/news, multimedia, education, corporate DVD/video

Languages:
English, Irish

Pre Production:

"Fíor Sceál" Summer/Autumn 2006
Cogar for TG4
This documentary follows Deirdre Ní Chongaile as she traces the life and times of her ancestor James Concannon from his beginings in 1847 on the Aran Islands to the wilds of Mexico where he befriended President Diaz and to Livermore, California where he established a large and successful vineyard.

Previous Production:

"The Search for Tristan's Mum" September 2005
Ireland was outraged when journalist Ann McElhinney reported how, as a newborn baby, Tristan Dowse was adopted by Irishman Joe Dowse and his Azeri wife Lala. For 2 years he was part of the Dowse family, an Irish passport holder and citizen. When Lala became pregnant, Joe returned Tristan to the orphanage. This groundbreaking documentary about Tristan, an Irish child, illegally adopted and then abandoned in an Indonesian orphanage followed Ann McElhinney to Indonesia to try to find Suryani, his natural mother. McElhinney's investigation exposed a baby selling network and also raised disturbing questions about international adoption.

"Stradbally Hall Days" August 2005
Stradbally Hall, venue for the annual Electric Picnic concert is the setting for this TOWNLANDS where we meet the 15th generation of the Cosby family. Once upon a time this was a life of leisure - hunting, fishing and entertaining but now the 'days of the footmen and servants are over' and the unusual efforts to keep the estate going, endless. This documentary gives a rare look at what life is really like in the 'big house' in rural Ireland.

"Preachers" August 2004
Where are you going? Heaven or Hell?
This atmospheric slice of life film provides a unique look at the working lives and beliefs of three preachers set to the spiritual soundtrack of the original Man in Black, Johnny Cash. The preachers' motivations, stories and methods of spreading the 'good news' are profiled in this engaging documentary.

"Crosaid sa Spainn" March 2004
A documentary for TG4 from Arkhive@Esras
Eugene Downey was born into a working class background Cuffe Street, Dublin to' the sound of bullets and bombs' during Ireland's War of Independence and Civil War. He was active in left-wing politics and decided to go to Spain to join the international brigade to fight Franco. Using quotations from his memoirs of the period, this film recounts his adventures - the training, the battles, being injured and recovering in a military field hospital. An ordinary man in extraordinary times.

"Nation Builders" June 2003
In a short series on prominent Irish public servants in 20th Century Irish history, broadcaster and historian John Bowman tells the life stories of three key figures in the building of the nation.
Seán Lester was the last Secretary General of the League of Nations, an Irishman who came head to head with the Nazis in Danzig and built Ireland's reputation as a nation abroad. Todd Andrews revolutionised the Midlands with his work in the Turf Development Board, later Bord na Mona employing thousands of workers in the 1940s and 50s. And Ken Whitaker, who through the Department of Finance was instrumental in planning the economy, played a pivotal role in diplomatic relations and was deeply influential in advising Jack Lynch on policy on Northern Ireland.
Produced in association with the ESB 75th Anniversary Committee and RTÉ.

Further productions listed on www.esras.com