Linda Cullen irst came to prominence in 1990 with the irst Irish lesbian novel, The Kiss. Since then she’s become one half of the powerhouse behind Coco Television, which includes First Dates Ireland amongst its diverse roster of productions. Her latest project, The 34th, the story of the Marriage Equality organisation in Ireland, will debut as the opening ilm at this year’s GAZE.

I was born in the house I still live in and raised with three brothers. One of them tragically died when he was 21 and I was 17, and that informed a lot of my life. My father was an alcoholic, and he absconded for a number of years when I was quite young. I had an amazing mother. She was this ‘you can do anything’ type of mother.

I wrote songs when I was a kid. I had my guitar and my piano and I loved all that. I was on a TV show called Youngline singing one of them when I was 12 or 13, which was called ‘Children’. It was all about children needing love and all the wars in the world. I’m sure the footage is somewhere.

I went in on myself a little bit as a teenager, but not because I thought I was a lesbian. I had relationships with guys, and didn’t have a relationship with a woman until my early 20s. It was like a huge surprise to me that it could happen. It just seemed to be another thing you could do in the world, and I thought it was fantastic. I wasn’t unhappy before; I hadn’t been waiting for it all my life.

After the relationship, I wrote a novel, a love story between two women called The Kiss. It was published in 1990 and it caused a bit of a furore. Everyone wanted me on their radio or television programme. I’d written a lesbian book, but I wasn’t part of the lesbian and gay community. I didn’t deny anything or lie; I just didn’t put it out there that I had had a lesbian relationship. I regret not being more open because maybe I could have helped more than I did. I got a lot of letters from women who were struggling in the closet.

I also got a letter from a woman called Anne Maguire, who worked for the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organisation (ILGO) in America and we struck up a friendship. She told me about the struggles of ILGO to march in the New York St. Patrick’s Day parade and I thought, Irish people need to know about this. So I went about making a documentary called We’re Here, We’re Queer, We’re Irish. It was screened on RTÉ in 1993. Then I made a documentary called Out of Sight, Out of Mind about the Traveller community.

As I was doing those projects I started directing a TV programme called Our House, freelancing for a company called Coco Television. They didn’t have people with experience making programmes in the company, so eventually they made me an offer to come on board. Quickly it became an equal partnership between myself and Stuart Switzer. I don’t direct anymore, I work across a diverse range of TV shows, documentaries like last year’s 1916: The Irish Rebellion, and returnable, renewable series like Room To Improve and First Dates. We love telling good stories around things that are popular.

I’m hugely involved in all our productions, so I’ll be looking at matches for First Dates, which I love doing. In the British version they have this thing called ‘The Chemistry Date’, but it doesn’t exist here. We don’t have young ones who want to crawl across the table and snog each other on camera. We have Paddy and Lauren who love having the craic, rather than Sophie or Sam who want to gaze into each other’s eyes.

I’m just back from a holiday with my partner, Feargha and our twin seven year-old daughters, Rosa and Tess. Having children is such a journey, and to have two at the same time is pretty full on. The first few years were very tough, but at this stage having twins really has become double the joy.

Making programmes is a bit like magic, you have a notion in your head, but other people become involved and it becomes something else. There are three of us involved in making The 34th. Myself and Vanessa Gildea are producing/directing and Cuan MacConghail is our editor. I feel like all three of us are directing on some level.

Predominantly it’s certain voices of the marriage equality movement, it’s their stories. It’s for people to understand that the movement didn’t come out of nothing, so it tells about the ten years before the referendum, and the people who came together to form Marriage Equality.

It’s also a bit of a love story, about Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan. They took their case against the Irish government in 2004 and out of that lots of things grew. We didn’t get to interview Ann Louise, unfortunately. It’s a great regret I have because by the time I was ready to make it, she wasn’t well enough. However Ann Louise is fully present in the film. It’s very emotional and raw, and I feel a huge responsibility to represent her and Katherine well. I was terribly fond of Ann Louise, and she made a big difference to my life.

It’s going to be shown to my peers at the opening of GAZE, and I feel a bit vulnerable, to be honest. It’s a hard story to tell, everyone feels that marriage equality is theirs, and it is everyone’s story. I’m only telling this part of the story, and it’s tricky to tell that story as well as possible. But we’re getting there.

‘The 34th’ is the opening film of GAZE, the 25th International LGBT Film Festival Dublin on Thursday, August 3 at The Light House Cinema, www.gaze.ie