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Film Fest Cast who
made it to the final of
the Fresh Film Fest

Performing Arts

- Fresh Film Festival

For our Performing Arts module we decided to create a short film, with the
help of Ms Burns and Ms McQuaid, highlighting the effects of drug use on
the daily life of a student. We came up with the concept to use handcuffs to
symbolise how restricted and disabled a drug user can be, it was from this
concept the film title “All Cuffed Up” was chosen. The film follows the life of
a teenage boy at school and how drugs negatively affect him and disable
him to do normal day-to-day activities at school and also how he chooses
to resolve the issue.
We entered our short film into the Fresh Film Festival and to our delight
the film got through to the Regional Finals. We travelled to Dublin for the
Leinster Heats Regional Finals on March 7th where we had the chance to
see our film, as well as many others, on the big screen in Odeon Cinema.
After viewing over 30 films, we got a huge shock as it was announced that
we were 1 of 12 films that got through to the All Ireland Fresh Film Festival
National Finals in Limerick on the 22nd of March. We were all extremely

excited and couldn’t quite believe the news.
It was an early start on the morning of the Finals and after a long bus journey
we arrived in at Odeon Cinema in Limerick. We also brought students in our
year to support us at the Finals. At this point it was only sinking in that we
were in the top 68 films in the country out of over 1500 that were entered.
After watching all 68 amazing short films, and almost 6 hours later, the
awards were given out. To our disappointment we did not win an award
but we were all so grateful to be there as reaching the All Ireland Fresh Film
Finals was a great achievement in itself. Every winner was well deserved. It
was a very long day but it was worth it as we were so amazed to see our own
creation on the big screen and reaching a lot of people.
Creating this film in the performing arts module was a great experience
and achievement for us all involved, myself, Sophie Reilly, Michael-James
Metcalfe, James Graham, Rachel Alexander, Cassie O’Connor, Emmanuel
Bakare, Jamie McDowell, Ana Flores, Craig Ebbitt, Daniel Moorhead and
Brendan Liu. A big thank you to everyone who supported us and we will
never forget this wonderful experience.
By Hannah Fegan

The Royal Times 2017-2018 67