The 72 Project: using filmmaking to empower networks and foster creative collaboration

The 72 research project concerns the design of a methology for shooting and editing a feature-length movie in seventy-two hours and then screening it to a local audience. The process has been completed twice, once at the Galway Film Fleadh in 2008, and again in the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2010.
The project is currently being prepared for a third time, in Derry/Londonderry in 2013, as part of the City of Culture celebrations in collaboration with producer Margo Harkin and the actor Stephen Rea.

The value of the 72 project doesn’t lie solely in the finished feature film, but also in the process of making it transparently with involvement from the local filmmaking community. Faced with the colossal task of producing a feature film in three days, it is inconceivable that any one person could complete the task alone. It requires a large team all focused upon one collective achievement, a concept that doesn’t necessarily chime with the solitary language of ‘independent’ or ‘d.i.y. filmmaking’. The resulting effect from the 72 project is a legacy of collaboration, of new creative partnerships being established, and of empowerment that such a feat can be achieved collectively.
A paper on the 72 project was presented at the MeCCSA Conference Spaces & Places of Culture 9-11 January 2013