The Arts Council has announced the recipients of its first Reel Art awards.  Reel Art is an Arts Council scheme designed to provide film artists with an opportunity to make highly creative and imaginative documentaries on an artistic theme.  Operated in association with Filmbase and the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, Reel Art films are made for theatrical exhibition and will be premiered at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival in February 2010.

The recipients of the award are:

• Director Conor Horgan and producer Martha O'Neill for The Beholder - a film which explores the nature and process of contemporary Irish portrait artists and their relationship with their subjects.
• Director Sé Merry Doyle and producers Martina Durac and Vanessa Gildea for Flight to Freedom - a film that follows film-maker Jimmy Murakami to the Japanese prisoner of war camp in the US, where he spent his childhood.

• Director Fergus Daly and producer Katherine Waugh for Outliving Dracula: Film Versions of Carmilla - a film which explores the film adaptations of Sheridan le Fanu's groundbreaking vampire classic.