Curated by Derek O’Connor
Presented by Regional Cultural Centre and Donegal Film Office
Supported by Creative Ireland
It Is In Us All – a moviemaking masterclass
The event: A one-day moviemaking masterclass focused on the development and production of filmmaker Antonia Campbell Hughes’ award-winning Irish film ‘It Is In Us All’, with writer/director/actor Hughes and cinematographer Piers McGrail.
This session is aimed primarily at filmmakers, both practicing and emerging, and is also of particular interest to anyone interested in making a feature film.
About the film:
A Londoner returns to his ancestral homeland of Donegal and is drawn in by a teenage boy who almost kills him in a car crash…
Filmed entirely in County Donegal and starring Cosmo Jarvis and Claes Bang, ‘It Is In Us All’ was produced under Screen Ireland’s POV scheme for female filmmakers, aiming to foster distinct Irish female voices through the development and production of a low-budget feature film.
The premiered at the celebrated SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas in 2022, where it won a Special Jury Recognition prize for Extraordinary Cinematic Vision.
The film was released theatrically in Ireland and the UK in 2022 and described in a review in The Guardian as ‘a forthright and fiercely intended drama’ from a filmmaker ‘with a real sense of landscape and place’ who ‘goes out on a limb with her feature directing project’, while Sight & Sound wrote ‘her visual confidence and eye for emotive detail mark her out as an exciting film talent’ and Variety decared the film ’a darkly provocative and promising debut mood-piece from Campbell-Hughes’.
In 2023, Campbell-Hughes received an Irish Film & Television Award (IFTA) nomination for Best Director, with McGrail winning the IFTA for Best Cinematography for his work on the film.
The day will be broken into four main sessions:
-A workshop with Antonia Campbell-Hughes focusing on scriptwriting and directing, and the evolution of It Is In Us All.
-A workshop with Piers McGrail focusing on cinematography, with specific focus on his award-winning work on It Is In Us All.
-A discussion with Antonia Campbell-Hughes and Piers McGrail, focusing on the production and the challenges of making a feature under lockdown in Donegal.
-A screening of the film, also open to the general public, introduced by Antonia Campbell-Hughes.
The participants:
Antonia Campbell-Hughesis an award-winning actress, screenwriter, and director. Named a Screen Star of Tomorrow and a Shooting Star at the Berlinale, her acting credits include films such as Jane Campion’s Bright Star, Kelly + Victor, 3096 Days, and most recently Colum Eastwood’s Black Medicine. TV acting credits include BBC comedy Lead Balloon, My Mother And Other Strangers, and Dangerous Liasons for Playground/Starz. As a director she has created written and directed two acclaimed short films, Acre Fall Between and Quest For Love – It Is In Us All marks her feature filmmaking debut. As well as her own projects she is co-writing a dramedy, Good Grief, with Dolly Wells for Out of Orbit, Lucia, a biopic of Lucia Joyce, with Alexandra McGuiness, and will write and direct Lynott, a feature inspired by My Boy, the story of Philomena and Phil Lynott, for Shy Punk Productions.
Three-time IFTA nominated cinematographer Piers McGrail’s feature film credits include Ordinary Love, Never Grow Old, and Calm With Horses (all 2019). McGrail’s previous credits include Lorcan Finnegan and Garret Shanley’s debut feature film Without Name, Junita Wilson’s Tomato Red, Gerard Barrett’s Glassland, as well as the BBC mini-series Little Women. Recent credits include BBC mini-series Girl/Haji, Netflix mini-series Obsession and Ivan Kavanagh’s film Son.
The facilitator:
Derek O’Connor is a writer and filmmaker, and the Digital Culture Editor with RTÉ.
