On Wednesday, 19th November, two entire Year 10 classes headed off from the College to the Queen’s Film Theatre for a wonderful morning of film watching and reviewing. This treat, which allowed us all to become film critics for the day, was available thanks to Declan Gault of 10C and Thomas Purdy of 10E. Declan and Thomas are both members of the Cinemagic Cinefocus Jury Panel and they, along with their entire classes, were offered the opportunity to participate in an “Animated Antics” event as a thank you for their insightful work on this panel.

The event was introduced to us by Sean Boyle, the Project and Fundraising Coordinator, who is also an old boy of St Malachy’s (he left here in 2005). Sean helpfully explored the different film genres for us, and then he explained how we would be scoring each film for its story, characters, camera and sound, animation and special effects and, finally, our overall enjoyment (out of a maximum score of 5 for each aspect). In the company of pupils from Lagan College and St Ciaran’s, we then watched fourteen short films which had been made in France, Russia, Holland, Denmark, Czech Republic, Canada, USA and UK. Sean also chaired the lively discussion which followed our viewing.

Finally, after much debate about the positive and negative aspects of each film, the short American film, “The Dam Keeper”, was declared the overall winner by the majority of pupils. It was the tale of a young pig with an important job to do, whose new (and only) friend changes everything in his life.

Our thanks to Mr McBride for giving us permission to attend the event; to Sean Boyle, Claire Shaw and all other members of the Cinemagic Team for hosting such an interesting and engaging event; to Miss Huey and Mrs McCann for organising our trip, and to Declan Gault and Thomas Purdy for making it possible for us to be there.