THE UNUSUALLY high level of entrants by third-level students to an inaugural film competition, which was launched in Dublin late last year and limited to Dublin colleges only, has taken the organisers by surprise.
Budding film-makers who are students at colleges such as the National College of Art and Design, UCD and Ballyfermot College of Further Education, have submitted their work to the Dare2bDrinkAware Digital Film Competition, which is organised jointly by the Digital Hub Development Agency in Dublin and Meas, the alcohol and social responsibility organisation.
Twenty-five short films have been shortlisted from the 50 submitted outlines. Five category winners will be announced next week (Thursday, 17th), and given €1,000 each in prize money. The entries range from comical documentary style to social realist drama shorts.
The response to the competition has been "overwhelming", says Dr Stephen Brennan of the Digital Hub Development Agency - the number of entrants to the competition, which aims to highlight and explore attitudes to alcohol, well exceeded the organisers' expectations.
The entries are being judged by Meas chief executive officer Fionnuala Sheehan along with Brennan, Cóilín O Scolaí of Journeyman Productions and director of TG4's Ros na Rún, Alicia McGivern, senior education officer of the Irish Film Institute, and Nicky Gogan, founder of Darklight Film Festival and president of the Wildlight Film Channel.
The Dare2bDrinkaware Digital Film competition will give up- and-coming film-makers a chance to showcase their work, says Brennan.
"We hope the competition will serve as a platform for new Irish film-makers. There are numerous digital media and animation companies located there. This is a chance for students to make a strong impression on key figures in the film and digital media industries," he says.
"We are hoping that the new film competition will give students an opportunity to creatively explore these issues and to give their own take on students' attitudes to alcohol," he says.
Winning films will be selected for their creativity and originality and for the insight they offer into the topic of young people and alcohol.
The best editing, cinematography, narrative and creative interpretations of the brief will all be awarded as well as the best film category. As part of the ongoing Meas drinkaware.ie campaign, the new film competition deliberately targeted teams of young people at third-level who were over 18. The films had to be made specifically for the competition. The resulting films are expected to explore the relationship between Irish culture and drinking through film.
"Meas focuses on challenging excessive drinking and promoting personal responsibility in relation to alcohol," says Sheehan.
By encouraging people to question their behaviour around alcohol, "we feel we will start eroding that [ social] permission and if there's strong enforcement of the law in tandem with what we are doing, then you have something very powerful".
Sheehan says Meas, which was set up in 2002 by the alcohol manufacturers, distributors and trade associations in Ireland as an independent not-for-profit company, continues to tackle attitudes around excess drinking with its "heavyweight communications campaign" entitled drinkaware.ie, which was launched last September.
Part of this is its Had Enough advertisements, which appear on TV, radio, outdoor advertising, press and digital sites, featuring a variety of individuals, such as a taxi driver, a nurse in A&E and a young girl, who turn to the camera as the voice-over declares: "I've had enough."
Both the Irish Nurses Organisation and the Irish Taxi Federation support the drinkaware.ie campaign, citing the high incidence of drunkenness their members encounter in their work, according to MEAS.
Although it is "early days", Sheehan says the organisation's advertising campaign "is tackling that very big issue of culturally ingrained attitudes and behaviours". She also says that "we have seen a bit of a shift out of the red area into the green areas", referring to recent figures.
"We look at what people regard as normal behaviour. Some is quite shocking, but we have seen a bit of a shift out of the red area into the green area," she says. "What was regarded as the norm last year has moved into the green.
"What we are recognising and what the Had Enough campaign is tackling is the very big issue of the culturally ingrained attitude and behaviour around excess drinking in Ireland and the social permission that we give in Ireland to drunken behaviour. It's far better in other countries, such as in Italy, it's very different," says Sheehan.