Sharp Focus, a cross-border art project bringing community groups together with experienced filmmakers, has come to and end of its three-year run. Niamh Creely looks back on the project and talks to some of those involved.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you put eighty people in a room together, make them jump up and down, improvise death scenes and generally go a bit mad, the odds are that community, cultural and ethnic differences will, for a time at least, be forgotten. It usually helps, however, if the group is united in one particular thing – in this case, the making of a film.

Reaching out
In the late nineties, Darren Thornton, artistic director of Calipo, a theatre group set up with the intention of creating more opportunities for young actors to perform and continue training, recognised the fact that in Calipo's community outreach programmes, film workshops were more popular than theatre. At the end of the process, the participants would receive a finished product, and have something concrete to show for their work. The idea of doing this on a broader, cross-border scale was pitched to the Area Development Management Ltd. and Combat Poverty Agency (ADM/CPA) under the EU Peace Programme. As a result a combination of EU and Irish Government funding has kept Sharp Focus going for the past three years.

On paper, it can be hard to judge whether or not a project will prosper. Sharp Focus is a Community Art Project, (a cross-border one no less) in which forty young people from both sides of the North-South divide are taken under the wing of professional filmmakers and the films must address themes relevant to North-South divide. To those inclined to be cynical, phrases like 'Community and Identity' and 'Conflict and Reconciliation' are more likely to induce eye-rolling than anticipation. Yet no amount of eye-rolling can disguise the fact that, when it comes down to it, Sharp Focus works. Calipo, now a 'dynamic multi-media theatre that is relevant to and for a younger audience', have created what could easily have been an empty gesture or a means to an end (funding) and have developed it into a genuine, life-changing, enriching experience.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 113.