Glenn Marshall | Culture Northern Ireland

Glenn Marshall

Learn more about the award-winning filmmaker

Glenn Marshall is a multi-award winning animator and composer with unique experience and expertise in computer graphics and digital technology. Beginning his career as a self-employed video game designer, he then began concentrating his animation skills in the area of film production.

Based in Derry for two years, Marshall worked on the Nerve Centre’s short animated film The King’s Wake, one of the first films to combine cell animation with computer generated images. It won the best animation award at the 2001 Celtic Film and Television Festival.

Glenn Marshall moved back to Belfast in 2000 and began working with Dream Ireland Ltd, an organisation that develops local talent in the creative industries. From this new base he was able to develop ideas that communicate a unique creative and philosophical vision through music, animation and film.

Summer 2002 saw the completion of a first commission for the Irish Film Board, Butterfly. A computer generated epitaph to the cyclical nature of life, Butterfly is a fusion of electro-acoustic music, three dimensional design and image compositioning combined in a complex structure of narrative, harmonics and Buddhist philosophy.

Butterfly subsequently brought Marshall to global acclaim, screening at more than 30 international festivals and winning three major awards including Best Experimental Film at the Brooklyn International Film Festival. It is currently a finalist at the British Animation Awards.

Butterfly was followed by two further commissions from the Irish Film Board, Mannequin and Lotus. Marshall also created a music video for British rock singer Peter Gabriel. The Drop was screened at the National Film Theatre, London, in February 2004, with Marshall profiled in Res Magazine magazine as one of the UK’s most promising, upcoming directors.

In 2003 Marshall signed to Nexus in London, a world leading production agency responsible for Dreamwork’s famous ‘Catch me if you can’ title sequence. Several exciting projects with Nexus are now in the pipeline.

Based on this success to date, Glenn Marshall has also recently set up Make Films, an independent film, art and design company, with fellow Northern Irish filmmaker Hugh McGrory.

Further information on Glenn Marshall, his various productions, and clips from his films are available from www.butterfly.ie

Biographical details reproduced with kind permission of the Millennium Court Arts Centre 2004