Community groups use unique Film Centre scheme to tell their stories

Date Published: {J}

It’s a new organisation, but when members of Tiernascragh Heritage Project in south-east Galway were invited by Galway Film Centre to make a short documentary recording their work, they leaped at the opportunity.

The film will be screened in Galway Town Hall this Sunday along with documentaries from four other community groups around the city and county as part of the Film Centre’s Project ID scheme, now in its 10th year.

Earlier this year, the Tiernascragh Heritage Group discovered a series of essays written in 1937 by nine children from the local national school as part of an Irish Folklore Commission project in the new Irish State.

The 74-year-old essays consisted of legends, superstitions, pastimes, prayers, curses and other oral history which the children had collected from their grandparents and other parishioners, giving an extraordinary glimpse into ordinary people’s lives as far back as the 1800s.

The 1937 project was carried out under the supervision of teacher Éamon Quigley and the resulting essays are now in the Department of Folklore in UCD, explains Tiernascragh Heritage Project Chairman, Pat Madden. Members were granted access to the original documents and were thrilled with what these revealed about the history of this place, located between Portumna and Eyrecourt.

Around the same time, they saw an ad seeking applicants for Galway Film Centre ID Projects, which helps community groups to tell their own stories while learning how to make films in the process.

They applied to make a film and the result is a documentary shot over several days, in which local children – several of them related to the original pupils – read the essays.

“There are a number of aspects to it,” says Pat. “It helps us to tell the story and it remembers the local people who wrote the essays.”

A classroom from the 1930s was recreated in the Lady Gregory Museum in Kiltartan, thanks to support from local historian Sr de Lourdes Fahy, while much of the other footage was shot in Tiernascragh.

“Where possible we tried to get a child related to the original essay-writer to read that essay,” says Pat. “The process showed those kids what life was like for their grandparents and older relations.”

When filming began, five of the original nine participants were alive. One person has since died and the remaining four are in their 80s.

People aged from five to 90 were involved in making the film, and in addition to learning about local history, they also learned technical skills, says Pat.

“Galway Film Centre taught us how to use the camera, to control the light and sound and gave us the skills to do that. And the editor was brilliant.

This ID Projects scheme, which began in 2000, allows communities throughout Galway to tell their stories via short films, which they make themselves, with full support from trained staff at Galway Film Centre, explains Nuala Broderick who co-ordinates the scheme.

The ID Projects was the brainchild of Galway Film Centre which sought funding from the Arts Council for the scheme ten years ago because film equipment – once prohibitively expensive – had become more affordable. Galway City and County VEC also came on board and other organisations may give funding for specific projects.

“Galway is the only place I know of that is doing this,” says Nuala, adding that the Centre works with communities in Mayo and Clare on similar schemes, but without similar funding.

The Centre advertises for participants each year, and interested groups apply and go through an interview process.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.