Two US oilmen land by helicopter on a Sligo beach, and are met by loud protesters, an even louder journalist and a mayor who gives them a gold key as they hand him an envelope.
In that envelope is a cheque for a local children's hospital. Their mission is to secure a piece of coastal land close to waters rich in oil before their rivals from Norway beat them to it. They are also anxious to ensure that their friendly lawyer, employed to negotiate for them, doesn't find out that a separation terminal has to be built in the area.
If the plot has a particular resonance on the west coast of Ireland, with developments on the Corrib gas field off Mayo proving controversial at every stage, the makers of the film say it is "sheer coincidence". Roger Barton-Smith, a Sligo actor, has performed in and produced Black Velvet, a 27 minute "short" which had its Irish première at the Galway Film Fleadh some weeks ago.
"Make a difference"
"I was looking at my baby niece three years ago and wondering what the world would be like when she was 21, and that's what got me started," Barton-Smith says. He had a chat in London with two friends, Simon Cathcart and Adam Green, who shared a desire to make a film on a subject that they all felt passionately about. "We wanted something full of conflict, something very controversial that could allow us to make a difference,"Barton-Smith says.
They struck oil, metaphorically, and set up Coney Island Films - named after the island in Sligo Bay. Cathcart then spent a month researching the oil industry. This research included investigating alternatives, such as renewable energy, and the attempts by mineral companies to "create another monopoly" in this area. He found that Shell Oil's current profit for 2001 was over $1.5 million an hour, whereas it spent under $25 million annually on its renewable energy programme.
Barton-Smith recognised that this was not a subject for which he could easily find sponsorship. "I'm not a tree hugger, but I do feel that film is one way of transmitting an environmental message. And I felt that if I was going to do this at all, without undue influence, I'd have no option but to finance most of it myself."
However, he was lucky. After September 11th, the advertising industry took a nose-dive, and he was able to tempt a group of very talented people from London who were temporarily short of work go come over to Sligo."I promised them I'd pay for their flight, accommodation, food and the bar bill, and got marvellous support for this locally." The crew included Colin Corby on camera, who has worked with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick, and Bobby Dillon as focus puller, who has worked for Steven Spielberg. Support came from U2 in the form of permission to use its song, A Beautiful Day, for the final scene.
Spectacular scenery
After 18 months of pre-production work, the film was shot in four days, drawing on the spectacular scenery of Ben Bulben, Lough Gill, Sligo Bay and environs. The Mayo village of Bonniconlon was the location for the pub-cum-shop-cum-funeral parlour where most of the drama unfolds.
The film has echoes of David Puttnam's Local Hero. Yet whereas there was an engaging innocence about that film's young US executive - dispatched to a Scottish coastal village where an oil refinery is due to be built - there is nothing very charming about the two businessmen in this drama.
The film-makers don't let their Irish hosts off lightly though, reminding them of how dependent they are on the fuel resource, and how they don't care where most of their consumer items come from, or how they are made.
Roger Barton-Smith is delighted at the reception for the film in Galway, although it didn't win an award at the fleadh. "But Sligo, and Bonniconlon, won," he says. The "short" has been accepted for two more festivals, one in Hawaii and one in London, in September. Any profits from the film will be donated to environmental charities, he says, and he hopes that Sligo will be the backdrop for another project - a romantic drama with a budget of £150,000 sterling, to be shot next year.
"Thin Places"
In neighbouring Mayo, work was afoot recently on a very different artistic project. "The Thin Places", as it is entitled, is part of a "Spirit of Place/Spirit of Design" programme based at the Catholic University of Washington DC. Led by Travis Price, a US architect and lecturer from Maryland, the project involved adding two sculptures to the existing Tír Sáile Sculpture Trail.
Price and a team of students travelled to Mayo to construct two sculptures which they had been developing in design form for some months. The support group included two members of the National Geographic Society: Mr Bart Lewis, editor of the National Geographic Traveller magazine and Richard McWalters, manager of exhibits at the society's Explorers Hall.
The project's title derives from the early Celts who believed in "thin places" - geographical locations where only a thin divide is experienced between past, present and future. The theme of the programme for students was a strong sense of environmental sensitivity. Previous locations include fragile and sensitive areas such as Machu Picchu in Peru, Kathmandu in Nepal and the Yukon in Canada, and the ventures have resulted in prestigious awards from the American Institute of Architects.
The two Belmullet sites for the art works were carefully selected - the Doonamoe Blow Hole and Annagh Head. Apart from the area's dramatic beauty, it was felt that the programme would fit in perfectly with the Tír Sáile trail, developed by Mayo County Council. As a bonus for the area, the National Geographic Traveller magazine has commissioned a special feature on north Mayo.