BIOGRAPHY
Pat Mire is an award-winning documentary filmmaker from Lafayette, Louisiana. Mire's cultural documentaries have been broadcast nationally on PBS, the Discovery Channel, and TNN's American Skyline and have won the highest awards in the most prestigious national and international competitions including the Margaret Mead Film Festival and the American Anthropological Film Festival's coveted "Award of Excellence." Mire and his films have been the subject of numerous articles and reviews in major magazines, newspapers, and journals. Carl Lindahl, film reviewer for the Journal of American Folklore called Pat Mire "an important artistic force at work in French Louisiana whose camera work and editing are excellent." He currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Southern Humanities Media Fund.
Recognized for his creative filmmaking skills, Pat Mire was the only Louisiana filmmaker to receive a 1991 regional fellowship from the Southeast Media Fellowship Program that included fourteen states. In December of 1993, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities honored Mire with a Special Humanities Award for his film work which has made a major contribution to the humanities in Louisiana. He was also the recipient of a 1994 fellowship from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, which had not given a fellowship to a filmmaker in six years. In 1995, Mire was called a "Louisiana Success Story" at the Governors Arts Awards. On May 17, 1997, the Acadiana Arts Council honored Mire with the "Distinguished Artist Award," which is given to an artist who's work has achieved national recognition. Pat was in the Leadership Louisiana Class of 1998. In February, 2000, Mire was presented an "Artist of the Year Award" in Washington, D.C. by Senator Mary Landrieu.
Mire’s feature film debut, Dirty Rice, was an official entry at the 1998 London Film Festival where it played to two sold-out auditoriums. Neal Norman, film critic for the London Evening Standard, reviewed the film and wrote, “While the Big Easy, No Mercy, and more recently, Eve’s Bayou have flirted with the Cajun world, this is the real deal, 100% proof. This is not to be missed.”
Mire directed Against the Tide: The Story of the Cajun People which was a November 2000 PBS “Pick of the Week” and had a 49.3% market coverage.
Clay Fourrier, executive producer of LPB, mentions enthusiastically that Mire's work has led to a number of high-profile projects that have been aired nationally on PBS, garnering "both LPB and Mr. Mire numerous awards, including nationally recognized Telly and NETA awards of excellence."
All of these films highlight "the good things about South Louisiana and the Cajun culture," Fourrier says, adding that "In his films, Pat shows the contributions of real people, not Hollywood stereotypes, to our country. This is the underlying theme of all his work."
Pat Mire was born June 23, 1953 and grew up in a farming community near Eunice, Louisiana. He is an English and French-speaking Cajun, busy at correcting stereotypes and misconceptions of his beloved Cajun culture by presenting an insider's perspective.
