The 12th Fresh Film Festival featuring Ireland’s Young Filmmaker Awards will take place from 24th – 28th March in Limerick City. Jayne Foley Artistic Director of the Festival reveals the issues that Ireland’s future film talent are delving into.
Each year The Fresh Film Festival hosts the premier awards in Ireland for filmmakers aged 18 and under as well as offering forums to young people and giving them a chance to see their work on the big screen.
A specialised panel of judges come together to view the films which are judged in the following categories: The senior Ireland’s Young Filmmaker Awards panel (13 – 18 years) , The Junior Ireland’s Young Filmmaker Awards Panel (7 -12 years), The Brownbag Animation Award panel, The Radharc Documentary Award Panel, the pilot International Young Filmmaker and RTÉ 60 second Shot Award.
With such a high number of entries to this year’s festival - regional heat screenings have been taking place in Limerick, Galway and Dublin. Jayne Foley talks to IFTN, on the importance of these screening heats and about bringing Ireland’s young talents to an international platform.
IFTN: Jayne: how many submissions have your received this year?
Jayne: Overall we have received 180 films from young people. They would be inclusive of the Juniors and some of the Internationals which is a new section for us this year. The Senior Section aged 12 to 18 year olds would still be our largest category and that would include any school group, individuals or youth groups.
From the films submitted this year -what type of issues are coming through?
Jayne: In the senior section, the films are very hard to generalise. Young people’s films are not restricted of any fear of technical weaknesses. They have an idea and they go for it. That idea could be a sixty second animation or a fifteen minute film about refugees - completely different issues. We have seen a lot of films this year from girl’s schools and about cliques - sort of the “Mean Girls” type attitude, where it is the Goths versus the ‘plastics’, lets say. Over the past few years there would have been a lot of films about drug and moral issues, but now we are seeing less of these and more of these cliques within schools. With the individual film makers it can be more varied - they may try to make a re-make of a Mafia type film to anything really.
What about the junior section, what are their films like?
Jayne: With the junior section they are softer, really sweet and very imaginative. They are more of a play that is acted out for film like looking for treasure or fairies. It is very much what influences them at their age. When you move onto secondary school you are going to be influenced by the establishment, who you are and where you fit in.
What format are the majority of people filming on?
Jayne: There is a wide variety. We have seen a huge improvement in the technical stuff that we are getting in. When we started eleven years ago now, everything came in on VHS so when we went around judging we had this huge bag of tapes. Now we put them all onto a hard drive or DVD. Some people have very good equipment and some of the school projects would be bringing in people like co-ordinators or film makers to work with them. Then you have the other people at home who are filming on their mother and father’s camcorder.
What winners or submitters have gone on to work in the industry since entering the Festival?
Jayne: At the end of the day what we are looking for is Ireland’s Young Film maker of the Year but with that person or people, we want to see that they are the type of person who is going to go on and have a career in the film industry. We have if you like proved right over the past few years as in nearly everyone who has been a winner has gone on to further a career in film.
Connor McMahon would be one of our more successful people. He made the feature film, ‘Dead Meat’ and I think he is in production for another feature at the moment. It’s very interesting because when he was entered about ten years ago now, he sent in a trilogy of horror films and all the way through film school he stayed true to his horror genre films. Actually horror would be something we would see a lot of, you know a group goes camping in the woods and they are knocked off one by one.
For the animation submissions, what techniques are being used?
Jayne: One of our first prize winners was a boy from Belfast who made a film called ‘Midnight Feast’ that was set in his kitchen. It was a claymation and took him I think eight months to make. Every night he detailed it - one night he might do three hours and the next two hours and gradually built it up. What we would see with the animations is that they are created by either as a group project in school but more often than not they are made by individuals. The individual tends to be male, in his bedroom who is interested in computers or with a lot of patience. It’s the sort of thing that lends itself to working solitary maybe.
How have you formed the international links with the festival?
Jayne: We opened submissions to any country but I suppose what happened is that we have relationships with Germany, Austria, Brussels and we got some US films now. About four years ago we screened some films from Carolina in the US, basically trying to make links with other young people film festivals. It’s about broadening those links.
We have also travelled to quite a lot of places over the last few years entering the young people’s films into international film festivals. I feel that this is really part of our role - to represent them abroad and get their films out there. As a result of this, Eoin McQuinn won in 2006 in Berlin and he is now in the National Film School. He was 16 at the time and made a remarkable film called ‘The Cycle’ on a very serious topic about a young boy who has got cancer. We have been to another festival in Austria and then in the past few years we went to Korea. We took five young filmmakers there to a film making camp, where their films were screened and they got to see other films.
What format do you screen on?
Jayne: We put them all onto a hard drive which is a huge job and then put them into a programming order. It’s complicated as well as a lot of the DVDs are different format, we would spend a lot of times getting back to the film makers asking them for another copy.
Last year we screened a record number of 40 films at the final but we were finding that people were getting slightly discouraged when they didn’t get see their films. So we made a commitment that we would show all of the films that were received. With the heat system, we have a way where everyone gets to see their films up on the big screen with an audience of their peers. For most of them, that is the most important part, getting the recognition of your work being up there. We are completely booked out for the heats so it’s clear that people really have a need to see their own work.
Do you have a few names of who are on any of the judging panels this year?
Usually, the panel is made up of a film maker, a young film maker, somebody from education and someone from production. Also maybe a teacher who might have experience of working with film and school groups. For the senior section we have Alicia McGivern from Irish Film Institute who is on our Board, film maker Kevin Liddy and we would have the first and second prize winners from last year. That is one of the conditions that you come back onto the judging panel and have your say.
The Ireland’s Young Filmmaker award winners will be announced at the Senior Ireland’s Young Filmmaker finals in Storm Cinemas, Castletroy, Limerick, on Wednesday, March 25th.
For more information visit: www.freshfilmfestival.net
