Our most recent Rough Cut event of 2026 took place in person on Tuesday June 9th at the International Centre for the Image, sincere thanks to the team there for hosting us.

All of our Rough Cut events are now tied into aemi’s Film Artist Development Programme, an initiative through which we provide a group of 9 film artists with regular support over a 12 month period at the centre of which is the opportunity to share works in progress as part of these Rough Cut events.

The idea with Rough Cut events is to open up the filmmaking process for discussion and reflection in a supportive setting, to form connections around works in progress and to fold in external perspectives on a project before its shape and form is finalised.

These events are not open to the public; instead the audience is made up of a small group of peers who are invited to participate in conversations about the works in question. Because the works being presented and discussed are still in process, Rough Cut events are not recorded for public presentation.

Film artists Aoife Carolan, Michael Dignam and Olivia Normile all generously presented works in progress at our event on June 9th 2026 with Emer Reynolds kindly leading responses to all three film projects.

Aoife Carolan is a film artist and editor. She makes digital films arising from her mediated first person perspective on the world. Her primary material comes from her phone camera archive. Her work often grapples with ethical tensions in the urge to capture life and the world, to do with environmental consciousness, consumer desire, self-knowledge and the integrity of representation.

Film Synopsis:

I am exploring whether I can be moved by the new nighttime landscape of LED street lights in Bray. Through sound and filming with VHS cameras, I am experimenting with established forms of nostalgia, and the images and language which may emerge.

Michael Dignam is a visual artist and filmmaker. His practice explores shifting ideas of class, labour, and belonging, often responding to fractured histories and speculative futures. Through layered, research-led projects, he examines how identities are shaped by changing dynamics of space, power, and collective memory. Working across film, installation, performance, and archival reconstruction, he uses layering, material experimentation, and collaboration to explore the slippages between memory, politics, and place. His work is grounded in lived experience and place-based research, often beginning from personal or local histories and expanding outward to engage with broader social, political, and economic structures. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Art in Sculpture from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, where he received the NCAD Student of the Year Award (2013), and a Master’s in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London, where he was awarded a Junior Fellowship (2016). Michael is a current studio artist at Rua Red. Recent exhibitions include ISLANDS, Zyrland Zoiropa Gallery, Berlin (2026); A Phenomenon Only Slightly Strange (screening), Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia (2026); and ANTHROPOZÄNTA, T. Cook Building, Hof, Bavaria (2023).

Film Synopsis:

Homelands explores the history and material culture of rave and electronic music in Ireland, and their intersections with commodification, gentrification, and systems of enclosure. It centres on Mosney Holiday Centre in County Meath, once the site of Ireland’s first electronic music festival in 1999, which has since been repurposed as a Direct Provision Centre. A space once associated with freedom and collective expression is now reconfigured through containment and control.

Olivia Normile is an artist exploring language, communication, and perception through animation, installation, and experimental film. Through deconstructing film, drawing, and sculptural making, her work revolves around the notion of interruption and disruption in relation to speech and movement. Slow-making, repetition, and interludes feature prominently throughout, laying bare material elements, labour, and overlooked narratives.

Recent awards include; Platform Commission, 41st EVA International (2025), South Dublin County Council Individual Artist Bursary (2025), Digital Media Practice Award, Firestation Artists’ Studios (2024), Arts Council Agility Award (2024, 2022, 2021). Recent exhibitions and screenings include; Desire Lines, AEMI Touring Programme, Irish Film Institute premiere, 2026, Tilt the interval, Screen Service film programme, Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), 2025, Limits and Demonstrations, 41st EVA International, 2025, Dog-Eared Paradise, online, Screen Service, 2023, Matters of Table, Periphery Space Gorey, 2023.

Film Synopsis:

This new film explores the disconnect between sound, speech and the body’s capacity for knowing. This work will present ideas around approval and belief, questioning who or what is a reliable voice. A combination of autobiographical truths and the blurring of fictional reenactments, this film enacts a disconnect and delay of speech and sound.