The IFB has announced the Irish Producer has been appointed to the Production and Development team.
The new role will see McKimm manage part of the slate of IFB supported projects across all genres from the initial development stage right through production financing, to the market exploitation of these projects.
McKimm has over 25 years of experience in the independent film and television industry and 21 as a producer. In this time she has worked in a range of roles, from script supervision to various areas of production and post-supervision.
Her credits as a freelance producer include ‘Relative Strangers’, ‘Southpaw’, ‘In Search of Ancient Ireland’ and the controversial drama ‘No Tears’, starring Brenda Fricker and Maria Doyle Kennedy which dealt with the Irish Hepatitis C blood scandal which rocked Ireland in the early 90’s.
In turn she set up Comet Film & TV in 1998 which produced ‘Any Time Now’ for BBC1, RTÉ 1 and the IFB during its eight year run. She co-ran Newgrange Pictures for ten years with fellow producer Jackie Larkin and in this time worked on projects such as ‘My Name is Emily’ (Simon Fitzmaurice), ‘It’s Not Yet Dark (Frankie Fenton) and international projects such as ‘Call Girl’ and ‘A Thousand Times Goodnight’.
Lesley is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, EAVE 1998 and the Media Business School 2002. McKimm is also a founding member of Women in Film & TV Ireland and former Chair of the SPI Film & TV Drama sub-committee.
James Hickey, Chief Executive of the Irish Film Board:
"We are delighted to welcome Lesley to the team. I believe that the Irish film, television and animation industry will strongly benefit from her in-depth knowledge and experience as an independent producer. Lesley will be working alongside IFB Project Managers Keith Potter and Mary Callery.”
Lesley McKimm:
“I’m delighted to be joining the team at the IFB at such an exciting time for Irish film. As a creative producer, I understand the challenges that are there for writers, directors and producers and I really look forward to being part of helping grow the existing talent base and to foster new talent going forward.”