Podcast: Joe Lee, Director of '406 Days'

In this Film Ireland podcast, Gemma Creagh talks to filmmaker Joe Lee about 406 Days, which is screening at this year’s Still Voices Film Festival (November 15th – 19th 2023).

The film tells the story of the 1,000 Irish Debenhams workers who were made redundant through a generic email on the 9th of April 2020 after Debenhams UK Retail Ltd closed all 11 Irish stores including their flagship store on Henry St. Dublin 1. The workforce, 95% female, had been denied an earlier agreed redundancy package.

They voted to go on official strike and blocked stock being removed from the 11 stores by the liquidator. The workers remained on the picket lines, through the Covid 19 pandemic for 406 days, making it the longest industrial dispute in Irish labour history. It finally ended in May 2021 through a compromise government-sponsored proposal based on a retraining fund.

But the telling of the very human stories of courage, determination, and friendship that lay behind the conflict are told here for the first time in ‘406 days-The Debenhams Picket Line’.

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406 Days is screening at Still Voices 23 on 10th November at 2pm the Bog Lane Theatre Ballymahon. Followed by a Q&A between director Joe Lee and film critic Tara Brady.

Joe Lee

Joe Lee a native Dubliner graduated from the National College of Art and Design as a Fine Art Printmaker (specialising in screen printing ) in the early 1980s. He has worked predominately as an independent film and video maker since then, directing film and television documentaries in a range of art and production contexts.

His work includes the arts documentary films Heartfield 1991 about the life and work of the German photomontage artist John Heartfield. Hindesight 1993 about the life and work of the photographer and postcard producer John Hinde on the occasion of an exhibition of his work at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. SIAR 50 2005 a film about the origins of Irish Modern Art with the Contemporary Irish Arts Society on the occasion of the SIAR 50 exhibition at IMMA

He has also made an extensive series of film/arts projects with local communities in areas around Dublin including; Inchicore, O’Devaney Gardens, North West Inner City Markets Area, the North East Inner City and the Fairview Marino areas. He has completed a range of arts documentation film projects with national cultural institutions including; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of Ireland and the National Theatre of Ireland, The Abbey Theatre. He has exhibited print and video artworks in various exhibitions, winning awards at the Exhibition of Visual Art (EVA) Limerick in 1979 and in 2003. His video installation Open Season1997 from the exhibition Once Is Too Much 1997 is in the permanent collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. A number of his giclée photomontage prints are in the collection of the Contemporary Irish Arts Society.

He was Film–Maker-in-Residence for Dublin City Council in 2009 and made Bananas on the Breadboard an affectionate tribute to the lives of Dublin’s women street traders from the markets area. Bananas on the Breadboard screened at the Light House Cinema in Smithfield during the St. Patrick’s Festival 2010 and went on to be widely seen in local and community venues around Dublin in the years that followed.

The dance film The Area 2013 co-directed with choreographer Rionach NiNeill of Ciotog Dance Company and the Machusla Dance Group won the overall Festival Award for best film at Cinedans Film Festival in Amsterdam in March 2014, Best Irish Dance Film Lightmoves Limerick 2014 and Best Dance Documentary Choreoscope Barcelona 2015. The Area has screened extensively at international dance film festivals since 2014 including the prestigious Dance On Camera Film Festival at the Lincoln Centre New York, the 6th ATHENS Video Dance Festival in January 2016 and FRAME dance film Festival in London in June 2016. The Area will be screened at the Dance Film Festival Warsaw Poland in December 2018.

The feature documentary film Fortunes Wheel The Life and Legacy of the Fairview Lion Tamer 2015, produced and directed by Joe Lee won the Dublin Film Critics Circle Award for Best Irish documentary at the Dublin International Film Festival 2015. It received critical acclaim in the press with four star reviews from: The Irish Times, Sunday Business Post and the Evening Herald. It had an unprecedented run of 4 weeks at the IFI cinema in Temple Bar Dublin in June 2015 and has been seen at numerous Film Festivals. It was broadcast on RTE television 2016 and was featured at a special screening at the Irish Arts Centre New York in May 2016.

Barracks Square Estate 2017 is a documentary film made with the support and co-operation of the Richmond Barracks Visitor Centre, CREATE, (the national agency for collaborative arts), Dublin City Council and local organisations in the Inchicore area of Dublin 8. The film tells the extraordinary story of life as lived over 200 years in Richmond Barracks, Keogh Square and St Michael’s Estate. By telling the intimate stories of these buildings and streets, vividly illustrated through personal and community archives, the film reveals a social and political history of Dublin and offers a reflection on Ireland’s changing urban landscape. Barracks Square Estate was presented as part of the Dublin History Festival 2017 and at the IFI cinema in February 2018.

Joe Lee shot a digital film archival project with the IMMA, an oral history project with the Sisters of Mercy congregation, a centenary film project with Marino Residence Association and a photomontage Giclée print portfolio with Dominic Turner at Exhibit A.

More recently, Joe Lee produced and directed 406 Days – The Debenhams Picket Line, documenting the extraordinary 406-day struggle of approximately 1,000 Irish Debenhams workers who were made redundant in April 2020 following the closure of all 11 Irish stores. The predominantly female workforce went on strike and maintained picket lines throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, making it the longest industrial dispute in Irish labour history. The film tells the human stories of courage, determination and friendship behind the dispute, and the workers’ campaign for justice, which finally concluded in May 2021 following a government-sponsored proposal.