Monday 3rd & Tuesday 4th, 10am, The Regal Cinema & The Mall Arts Centre

Animation plays a major part in First Cut Youth Film Festival because nothing conveys the magic of cinema like animation. That’s why we open the festival every year with a programme dedicated to animation for a local primary and secondary school audience.

Schools Workshop Screening

This year First Cut Youth Film Festival provided animation workshops to over 500 young people in twenty schools in and around Youghal and Midleton: Cloyne National School, South Abbey National School, St. Mary’s National School Grange, Kinsalebeg National School, Scoil Realt na Mara Ballycotton, Bunscoil Mhuire, Kilcredan National School, Shanagarry National School, Gaelscoil Choráin, Inch National School, Kyle National School, Pobalscoil na Trionóide, Clonpriest National School, CBS Midleton, St. John The Baptist National School, Midleton College, St. Colmans Community College and Midleton Educate Together National School, plus Greywood Arts Youth Club.

In Youghal, working with Matchbox Mountain tutors Pádraig Fagan, Aoife Rhatigan and Aidan O’Sullivan, the workshops covered all the basic principles of hand drawn and stop motion animation.

In Midleton, Flip Fest with animator Belinda Walsh enabled participants to create their own hand drawn flip books and optical toys.

The resulting short animations get their first screening today!

First Cut would like to thank all participating schools for their support of these workshops which were made possible through the generous support of The Arts Council, Cork County Council, Youghal Credit Union, Creative Ireland and the YIFM Network.

Our Wonderful Tutors

Belinda Walsh is a visual artist who graduated from Crawford College of Art and Design. Her special interest is in the use of stop motion animation techniques as a wonderful platform to encourage children and adults to communicate stories, ideas and concepts. She is one of the founders and coordinators of Midleton Arts Festival.

Matchbox Mountain was founded in February 2021 by Eimhin McNamara and Pádraig Fagan. They create animation using a variety of techniques. Eimhin and Pádraig have created animation for clients such as Adult Swim, Netflix, TG4, Cartoon Saloon, RTÉ the NHS and UNESCO. In 2018 Eimhin was the Wolfvision sequence director on Cartoon Saloon’s Wolfwalkers, which has been nominated for an Oscar, and won 5 ASIFA-Hollywood Annie Awards alongside numerous other accolades since its release in 2020. Eimhin’s role involved prototyping and developing innovative technological solutions for animation production and creating an immersive and novel experience for the audience. In addition to their commercial and film work Pádraig and Eimhin have facilitated animation workshops for students of all ages around the country since 2010. Films created by students in their workshops have won awards at International and domestic film festivals.

Aidan O’Sullivan, Aoife Rhatigan and Pádraig Fagan

Pádraig Fagan has been working in animation in a professional capacity since 2006. In 2008 he directed his first professional short film, ‘The Rooster, the Crocodile and the Night Sky’ funded by Screen Ireland, RTE and the Arts Council’s Frameworks scheme. It was created in collaboration with Eimhin McNamara and produced by Barry O Donoghue of Barley Films. It was awarded the Screen Director’s Guild of Ireland award, a special mention at the Cork Film Festival and was nominated for an ASIFA- Hollywood Annie Award. He has been facilitating animation workshops since 2010 for students of all ages. These workshops have been facilitated for schools, art centres, third level educational institutes, film festivals and youth filmmaking organisations, including recurring programmes for the Young Irish Filmmakers in Kilkenny, the County Wexford Youth Film Project and the Blon Animation and Video Games Festival in Lithuania. Pádraig received an award for best professional short film at the Animation Dingle Festival in 2020 for ‘An Gadhar Dubh’, an Irish language stop motion horror film which he wrote and directed. In addition to these short films Pádraig has directed work for clients such as Adult Swim, RTÉ, TG4, Cartoon Saloon, the Screen Directors Guild of Ireland, UNESCO and the NHS.