Concerns have been raised about the under-representation of the black community in the Irish film and television sector, reports RTE.
The issue was highlighted today at an event in Dublin, which coincides with Black History Month, which runs until the end of October.
Fuel on Camden Street celebrated the contribution of Black people to the film industry by screening short films from filmmakers from Ireland and the UK.
Mamobo Ogoro from Gorm Media said: “What we’re doing is we’re really highlighting the voices of black stories through film and storytelling. Black people make up roughly 1.5% of Ireland’s population and we’re grossly underrepresented when it comes to Irish media, Irish film and Irish television,” reports RTE.
“This month, we wanted to show the on the ground work that black storytellers are making through the art of film,” added, reports RTE.
Fair City actress Rachel Wren says it’s important to have all communities represented on screen, as she said she “didn’t see any of that growing up”.
The 22-year-old said “we have so much of our own stories to share and being uniquely black and Irish is such a beautiful thing,” reports RTE.
Daniel Nwambu told RTÉ News: “Over the years it’s improved a lot, definitely in terms of accessibility for black actors and POC [people of colour] actors but I definitely think there’s a lot more work to do in terms of creating black stories and POC stories and telling those stories and in mainstream media. There’s just a lot more work to be done,” reports RTE.
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