Dr Michael Holly is a filmmaker and practice-based researcher working across documentary, installation art and experimental film. His research focuses on the development of nonfiction filmmaking methodologies and creative participatory practices, with a particular focus on rural and agricultural communities on the island of Ireland.
Michael has exhibited extensively as a visual artist, often working in video installation of nonfiction films, including at Tulca Festival of Visual Arts (2024 & 2022), PUBLICS, Helsinki (2024), Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre (2022), South Tipperary Arts Centre (2022), Riverbank Arts Centre (2018), Nieuwe Vide, Haarlem (2017), Roscommon Arts Centre (2015), and Y Galerii, Tartu (2015).
Since 2018 he has worked in collaboration with artist, filmmaker and sheep farmer Mieke Vanmechelen and her production company Fierce Quiet Films. Together they have co-directed two feature documentaries, Hungry Hill (2023), an ethnographic- style film on the tensions between the agricultural community and ecological fragility of the Beara Peninsula of Co. Cork, IMMRÁM, about a community of Gaelic culture revivalists in Ireland who follow the teachings of the enigmatic mystic and philosopher John Moriarty, and a short film, Like a mouse (2019) about the ecologist Dr Rory Hodd, who discovered a rare fern in Killarney National Park.
Michael is a long-time collaborator with the art, publishing and curatorial organisation Askeaton Contemporary Arts, run by Michelle Horrigan and Sean Lynch. He has worked with ACA on several projects, including eight short films and a book exploring the systematic destruction of historical and folkloric objects on the Irish landscape, Men Who Eat Ringforts in 2019.