ALAN LAMBERT is an Irish filmmaker, artist and musician. He has directed award-winning science-fiction art films, such as Pushtar (2015), winner of the Spirit of IndieCork, and Remat (2023), winner of the Best Experimental Film at the ‘World Class Film Awards’ and Best Narrative Feature Film at the ‘Vegas Independent Film Awards’. He also received a Best Director Award from ‘4Theatre’, for Remat. These films generally fall into the ‘non-narrative’ framework and explore themes of history, environment and human survival. Lambert’s work has been described in FilmIreland as “an outstanding contribution to Irish cinema”.

Lambert also provides original artwork for commercial film and television productions, such as Ridley Scott’s ‘The Last Duel’ (2021), Yorgos Lanthimos’ Oscar Winning ‘Poor Things’ (2023) and Tim Burton’s highly anticipated ‘Wednesday Addams’ – Season 2 (2025).

DETAILED BIOGRAPHY

Having graduated in painting in Dublin, Lambert exhibited regularly throughout the 1990s, culminating in the group exhibitions ‘Utopias’, in the Douglas Hyde Gallery, and ‘First Look’ in the RHA.

From 2000 onwards his work shifted towards the audio-visual, making music videos for D1 Recordings and visual mixes for the ‘Darklight’ and ‘D.E.A.F’ festivals. He also co-founded platforms for experimental film, like the ‘Solus’ group and ‘The Experimental Film Club’, through which he curated Irish experimental films in Africa, the Middle East, North America, Russia and the Caribbean.

 These activities gathered footage that culminated in his first feature film Ouroboros: Ocean Dreams (2009), which premiered in the ’54th Cork Film Festival’ and was described by filmmaker and critic Maximilian Le Cain as a “powerfully enriching experience and an important film”. 

In 2012, The End Of The Earth Is My Home won the Spirit of the Festival award at its premiere in the ‘Darklight’ Festival and went on to win the Best Narrative Film Award at the ‘Mosaic World Film Festival’ in 2014. It was the first fiction feature film crowd-funded in Ireland and was described by Steven Galvin in Film Ireland as “an intense trip into a stunning visual and auditory dreamworld”.

 In October 2015 Pushtar, an environmentally informed science-fiction funded by the Arts Council of Ireland, premiered at the ‘IndieCork’ festival where it won the Spirit Of IndieCork Award.  At its international premiere in ‘The Earth Day Film Festival’ in San Francisco in April 2016 it garnered the Best Sound Award.

These films are concept driven and largely improvised, rarely working to scripts. They generally fall into the ‘experimental’ or ‘non-narrative’ framework – exploring themes and subtexts while varying in interpretation with each viewing. Filmmaker and critic Fergus Daly wrote, of Pushtar, “…it’s as if Hollywood was suddenly taken over by artists”, and Maximilian LeCain calls it “[the] product of a truly independent cinematic sensibility.”

Remat (2023) expands on ideas developed in Pushtar.

COMMERCIAL WORK

In addition to making films and building platforms for the experimental community, Lambert has also been contributing to the Art Departments of many commercial productions. He re-created the art of the Bloomsbury group for the Virginia Woolf bio-pic Vita and Virginia (2017), re-created Vermeers and Duchamps for the gallery scenes in Normal People (2019) and provided the heraldic artwork for the battle scenes in Ridley Scott’s 13th century epic The Last Duel (2021). In addition to Ridley Scott he has also worked for such directors as Neill Jordan, John Schlesinger, Jim Jaramusch and Tim Burton. In these various productions he has provided portraits of such actors as Ed Harris, Tilda Swinton, Robin Wright, Ethan Hawk and Jenna Ortega – most recently providing original artwork for the Oscar winning Poor Things (2023) and Wednesday Addams Season 2 (2025).

INTERVIEWS / REVIEWS / ARTICLES

Interview in Totally Dublin, 2019;
https://www.totallydublin.ie/more/alan-lambert-metal-dragon-and-the-iron-mountain/

Interview with Steven Galvin in FilmIreland, May 2013;
http://filmireland.net/2013/28/interview-alan-lambert-writer-and-director-of-the-end-of-the-earth-is-my-home/

Article on Irish Experimental Cinema in FilmIreland, February 2015;
http://filmireland.net/2015/02/19/irish-experimental-film/

Collection of reviews and articles, available from the website;
http://www.metaldragon.net/art/Water-Curtain-Cave-24.pdf