Our third and final Rough Cut event of 2024 took place in person on Monday November 25th 2024 in Unit 44, Stoneybatter. Rough Cut sessions offer film artists the opportunity to share and discuss works-in-progress in a supportive environment. They play a central role in aemi’s artist support programme

This session was the first edition of Rough Cut tied into our Tier 2 artist development programme. We launched this new artist development programme through an open call in summer 2024 and have met with the nine participating artists on a monthly basis since then. The programme consists of information sessions, access to peer to peer support, artist-led workshops and the opportunity to present works in progress as part of these Rough Cut events. The idea with these events is to open up the artistic process for discussion and reflection, to form connections around works in progress and to make space for outside perspectives on a project before its shape and form is complete.

These events are not open to the public; instead the audience is made up of a small group of peers who are invited to actively participate in the 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 Colm Higgins, Ann Upton and Michael Barwise generously presented works in progress at Rough Cut on November 25th and Alice Black, Head of Cinema for the Light House Group was invited to lead responses to all three projects.

Alice Black has been a cinema programmer for over two decades developing and delivering all aspects of a successful dynamic daily programme, focused strands, festival and special events for a wide range of audiences. In that time, she has worked for the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and MoMA in New York, access CINEMA, Irish Film Institute, and Dundee Contemporary Arts to bring films and people together in a range of settings. Alice is currently Head of Cinema for Light House Group, overseeing all aspects of the business for their two venues: Light House and Pálás

Colm Higgins‘ work sits somewhere between creative documentary, artists’ moving image, and the weirder side of narrative film. He is currently using tableaux, costume, experimental music, and various digital and analogue formats. Some recent creative impulses are the iconography of the bogland, camp insular art, and pictures of the edge of the world. He shared footage from St. Brendan’s Dream, a camp retelling of the legend of Brendan the Navigator. The early Christian saint sleeps in his cell and dreams of the ocean. It combines decadent religious iconography with a vision of mirages, glaciers, and rivers of fire in the unknowable lands beyond the sea.

Ann Upton is a filmmaker from Waterford. Challenging film form, she plays with operational images, semantics, psychophysiology, non-human emotion and interactivity. Ann shared footage from Philip, a short film resembling an eye test, with the narrator prompting the audience to choose between images. Hazily recalled and broken images are assembled of a limited ‘visual alphabet.’ The narrator becomes concerned with his own ‘memories,’ reality, truth, and trust. He reveals his dependence on others, even the audience, to define his reality. The piece explores animation as empathy, as the audience is encouraged to relate to aesthetic forms through embodiment.

Michael Barwise is an award winning filmmaker from Derry, Northern Ireland. Alongside his directing work, Michael works as a documentary editor. His work explores the dynamic between the known and the hidden and how the relationship between these two worlds impacts our lives. The Ear Biter is a look at the spree of ear biting attacks that took place in Derry in the mid 1990s. It explores collective memory, place and the ‘other’ through the lens of rumour, myth making and childhood.

If you’re a film artist, film programmer, producer or curator and have an interest in attending Rough Cut in the future, contact us at [email protected].

Our sincere thanks to Unit 44  and Paul Scully in particular for generously hosting us for this event.

More information on Colm Higgins’ work HERE
More information on Ann Upton’s work HERE
More information on Michael Barwise’s work HERE
More information on Unit 44 and the Kirkos Ensemble HERE