Pupils from Cantref Primary School, Abergavenny, won an esteemed award for their short film about child miners last week.
The film ‘Mary and the Miners’ won the Best Animation award in the 2010 First Light movie awards.
The animation is based on the real life stories of child miners in the 19th Century. It is set in 1841 looks at ten year old coal miner Mary Watkins and her friend family who also work in the mine.
The film was made by 46 children from the school aged ten and 11, with some help from professional film makers.
The awards ceremony was hosted by Dick and Dom at the Odeon on Leicester Square in London and the children collected the award from actors Tamsin Grieg and Toby Jones.
The ‘Best Animation’ category was judged by internationally renowned film industry experts: producer/director Rob Minkoff, production designer Terry Ackland-Snow and director John Landis.
Head Teacher of Cantref Primary School, Cathi Bolster, said:
“The children worked extremely hard on the film.
“The project began when the children started to work with a parent who was a film maker on short animation projects. Martha Stephens, a Higher Level Teaching Assistant at Cantref, then took over the project enabling many of our children to be involved in film making.
“The children learned so much and enjoyed themselves so we applied for a grant to make two films – ‘Mary and the Miners’ and another film, ‘Welcome to Wales’, about a boy from Lithuania and how he settled into our school.
“We were lucky enough to get £16k to pay for both films to be made with the help of professional film makers.
“The pupils here came up with all story lines themselves. Flycatcher Films, a local company, worked with children over 12 sessions making cut-outs and plasticine models plus storyboards and learning directing skills. We’re very fortunate to have a gym at the school, and we blacked out windows and turned it into a film studio.
“The children wrote a song, recorded it and Flycatcher films used it as a score.
“Everyone involved should be very proud of their achievements.”
Andy Keep, Director of Lifelong Learning and Leisure at Monmouthshire County Council, said:
“The film necessarily faced fierce competition but I couldn’t imagine a better animation than the one produced by Cantref.
“Any national award will be hard earned and this is a fantastic achievement.”
