Brendan Bourke is a photographer and film-maker, born and reared in Dublin, Ireland. He started taking photographs as a hobby when he worked in an audio-visual equipment rental shop, where he bought his first camera. He liked it so much, that he went to Kevin Street College to study this new found passion, and before qualifying, his work was being published in newspapers and magazines.

Coming from a theatrical family, Brendan was always interested in cinema and theatre, and took a lot of visual inspiration from the cinema and stage of his youth. He’s at his best with a story to tell, be it in photographs, screenplay or on film.

In the early days he worked principally in fashion photography, specialising in studio and catwalk shoots. His photographs were regularly published in all the Irish monthly fashion magazines and in the national newspapers. An eye for shooting live bands led to Brendan becoming the principle photographer for Fresh Magazine, an ambitious full colour music magazine published in the late 80’s.

Always intrigued by moving images, he eventually shot some footage on a borrowed CP16 camera. The interest in film developed in parallel with stills. Brendan has shot and lit a number of short films on 16mm film and various video formats, and a feature film on DV video.

After receiving the rights to the short story Fishing the Sloe-Black River, as a gift from Colum McCann, Brendan went on to co-write and direct his first short film. This was the first Irish short to be shot in 35mm scope, and went on to be the first Irish short to receive a mainstream cinema release. It also enjoyed considerable festival success, it’s world premiere being the opening film at the 1995 Cork International Film Festival. Other notable festivals include Rotterdam, The Hamptons, London and Cork.

Having been commissioned by Producer Joe Condren to write a screenplay about the life of Francis Hughes, Brendan decided to return to college and took a Masters in Screenwriting at The National Film School, Dun Laoghaire. As his final submission, he adapted Colum McCann’s novella Hungerstrike, and the resulting screenplay was the first draft of Here Comes the Summer. Now in collaboration with Colum, this screenplay has received development and production finance from the Irish Film Board.

Brendan is a director of 1i Films, the production company that made his most recent short film, Dust.