Fàilte, gu dearbh! Welcome, indeed!

I was born and grew up in Wreck Cove, one of a string of little fishing villages that made up the North Shore - a place that connected to other such villages to form St. Ann's Bay. It was along these strings of little communities that I learned to love story and song, music and dance, nature and neighbours. This is the true centre of the universe as far as my heart is concerned, and so I welcome you to enjoy the pristine beauty and generous hospitality of our communities.

This is our third year for our Gaelic film festival, and each year we try new things and adapt to new opportunities.  This year, we had the great pleasure of assisting our friends in Port Hawkesbury to host a Gaelic film day in May.  We were able to provide the Gaelic films and lots of knowledge sharing about our approaches over the prior two years. We hope Gaelic screenings will continue to happen throughout the year in Gaelic communities around the island.

Last year, our festival hosted a "Make a Gaelic Film" workshop, and the participation, enjoyment, and positive feedback were tremendous. Everyone was pretty exhausted by the end of the two days of filming. Last year also saw the introduction of new filmmakers into our community. Esteemed acting coach Micahel Caruna, and accomplished Director Scott Eldgride came to our festival and they were absolutely mesmerized by the people and the place.  Both Scott and Michael are eager to come back and help us develop our filmmaking talents to an even greater extent. Hopefully, we can find some funding to bring them back for workshops in-between festivals.

The idea to create a Gaelic language film festival in Cape Breton has been with me since my first weekend immersion class with Angus MacLeod at the Gaelic College in St. Ann's Bay. I immediately realized that achieving Gaelic fluency would require some entertaining learning materials in between classes, and so I naively resolved to create them. In that moment, the seeds for creating Canada's first Gaelic language film and the first Gaelic film festival were delivered to me. Indeed, it would be many months before I would see the first harvest of my energies and passion-Faire Chaluim MhicLeoid. Like twins, the two ideas arrived at once, and I was not prepared for, nor fully aware of, the journey that would be required to develop these two delicate gifts. I have discovered that all worthwhile journeys begin with deficiency - for a journey that you know how to meet is no journey at all.

Our Gaelic film festival is a celebration of storytelling in all its unique and beautiful forms-story, poetry, song, and dance presented through spoken word, musical instruments, and film. Under all of these forms of story lies our language, and without the rhythm and nuance of our language, the stories would lose vitality.

Over the past two years, the greatest struggle in presenting the film festival is certainly the search for excellent films depiciting excellent stories told in Gaelic.  Combing through hours of Gaelic language material usually nets out one or two gems.  Creating new Gaelic films here is another source of Gaelic language materials, but this approach involves certain challenge in that we have few fluent Gaelic speaking actors and no formal funding. So, each year, I search high and low for films and I lead the development of one or two grassroots projects. 

After year one, it dawned on me that we need to be harvesting the wonderful stories about the places and people from which we come.  Luckily, the North Shore Gaelic Cultural Centre is coming to life this year, and there are several people researching our community, its people, the places, the worklife, and the natural and supernatural environment that enveloped the lives of our people.  I am extremely optimistic that the research going on today will provide many threads of stories that will make for great filmmaking in the coming years.

So, this year, we are going to offer a scriptwriting workshop with one of Cape Breton's most accomplished writers, Sheldon Currie; we will watch a couple of new films, and we will revisit a few of our favourite films of years past. As always, we will celebrate our good fortune with music, food, drink, and friends at the ceilidhs that are becoming the hallmark of our festival.

I thank everyone for the energy, effort, vision, and confidence they continue to place in this festival. This festival is blessed by the thinking expressed so eloquently by Willis Whitney, "Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can."

To our sponsors, I thank you for your contributions and your trust. Finally, to everyone who takes time to attend the events, I thank you. I believe that it is in these moments of joining together to celebrate our language and culture that we glimpse the infinite possibilities for its future.

Le meas,