Dan Ireland
American film director
Daniel Frederick Ireland (May 11, 1949 – April 14, 2016) was an American-Canadian film producer and director. He was the co-founder of the Seattle International Film Festival. Ireland began executive-producing films for Vestron Pictures in the 1980s, his first being John Huston's final feature, The Dead (1987). He also executive-produced multiple films by director Ken Russell, such as Salome's Last Dance (1987), The Lair of the White Worm (1988), The Rainbow (1989), and Whore (1991).
He made his feature film directorial debut with the drama The Whole Wide World (1996), followed by The Velocity of Gary (1998) and Jolene (2006).
Early life
Ireland was born in 1949 in Portland, Oregon, the second of four children of Rainsford and Betty Ireland (née Shantz). When he was five years old, his mother moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where Ireland spent the remainder of his childhood.
Career
Ireland and Darryl MacDonald ran the Seattle International Film Festival for ten years. They were immigrated from Vancouver to take on the task of creating the festival, and opening a first run art theatre, The Egyptian. During his tenure, the festival selected and launched some films, including Blood Simple, The Stunt Man, The Empire Strikes Back, Alien, Poltergeist, Another Country and One False Move.
The public source identifies “Dan Ireland” as american film director. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ireland, American and film.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5213738. VIAF identifies the subject as 58822267. The Library of Congress control number is no2005099979. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949, 2016, 1987 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dan Ireland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.