FIS Film Award

St Patrick's College Graduate Kathleen O’Connor and the children of 5th class, in Ballyadams National School, were presented with the Aileen Mac Keogh Award for Outstanding Achievement for film making at the recent FIS Film Festival in The Helix, DCU.  Their film ‘Nightmare in Toy Town’ also received the award for ‘Best Adaptation’.  Kathleen is a graduate of the college and also completed her MEd with the Digital Learning Team.

FÍS is a national project through which pupils are taught film production skills. They are encouraged to use these skills to create cinematic stories to share with other children. Their stories link the children’s technological skills to a broad spectrum of curricular objectives across the Primary Curriculum, Films developed by the children are screened in regional venues and are then forwarded to the national judging panel. This panel have the unenviable task of choosing just 24 for inclusion in the annual FÍS Film Festival held in November.  Schools travel from as far away as The Beara Peninsula to attend this event and all receive the red-carpet treatment.

Following a life-long commitment to the arts and culture, President Michael D Higgins, during his first week of office, chose to accept an invitation to attend the award giving ceremony, honouring not only the 24 schools whose films received special recognition, but all of the children throughout Ireland who had engaged with the FÍS project in 2011.

When speaking to the children about the importance of their work, President Higgins spoke of a world in which media plays such an integral part and encouraged all present to remember that in such a world they should strive to “be the arrow, not the target’, a message being spread by all those present through their schools today. Following the President’s speech, the assembled schools waited in anticipation to see whose film would receive the Outstanding Film of the Year Award. According to the children from 5th Class in Ballyadams NS, they could hardly believe it as they were ushered onto the stage to meet President Higgins and accept their award. They were later featured on the RTE 9 o’clock news.  

 

 

 

Last Updated: Monday December 05 2011