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.
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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https://www.filmireland.net/podcast-joe-lee-director-of-406-days/
Joe Lee
Joe is a native Dubliner who graduated from the NCAD in the early 1980s as a Fine Art Printmaker, specialising in screen printing. Since then, he has worked predominantly as an independent film and video maker, directing documentaries across arts, television, cultural and community contexts.
His arts documentaries include Heartfield (1991), about German photomontage artist John Heartfield; Hindesight (1993), about photographer and postcard producer John Hinde, made for an exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA); and SIAR 50 (2005), documenting the origins of Irish Modern Art. Joe has undertaken extensive film and arts projects with communities across Dublin, including Inchicore, O’Devaney Gardens, the North West and North East Inner City, Fairview and Marino. He has also completed documentation projects with IMMA, the National Museum of Ireland and the Abbey Theatre.
He has exhibited print and video works widely, receiving awards at the Exhibition of Visual Art (EVA) Limerick in 1979 and 2003. His video installation Open Season (1997) is in the permanent collection of IMMA, while a number of his Giclée photomontage prints are held by the Contemporary Irish Arts Society.
In 2009, Joe was Film-Maker-in-Residence for DCC. His resulting film, Bananas on the Breadboard, explored the lives of Dublin’s women street traders and screened at the Light House Cinema during the 2010 St Patrick’s Festival before touring community venues throughout Dublin.
His dance film The Area (2013), co-directed with choreographer Rionach Ní Neill, won awards at Cinedans Amsterdam, Lightmoves Limerick and Choreoscope Barcelona. It subsequently screened at international dance film festivals including Dance on Camera at Lincoln Center, New York, and festivals in Athens and London. Joe’s feature documentary Fortune’s Wheel: The Life and Legacy of the Fairview Lion Tamer (2015) won the Dublin Film Critics Circle Award for Best Irish Documentary at the Dublin International Film Festival. It received strong critical reviews, enjoyed a four-week run at the IFI in Dublin, screened at festivals internationally and was broadcast on RTÉ.
Barracks Square Estate (2017), made with Richmond Barracks Visitor Centre, CREATE, DCC & local organisations, explores over 200 years of life in Richmond Barracks, Keogh Square and St Michael’s Estate.
Joe has also worked on film archive and oral history projects with IMMA and the Sisters of Mercy, a centenary film project with Marino Residents Association, and a Giclée photomontage portfolio with Exhibit A.
More recently, Joe produced and directed 406 Days – The Debenhams Picket Line, documenting the 406-day struggle of approximately 1,000 Irish Debenhams workers following the closure of the company’s 11 Irish stores in 2020.
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