MICHELLE Devlin, the Docs Ireland's Chief Executive, announced at the Omniplex Patrick Kielty/Karl Frampton event that the festival had reached its pre-pandemic audience levels of over 1,000 people participating in events on every day of the six-day festival. It is a credit to her team that this is the second festival that the organisation has run in a year.

The power of having amateur documentary short films included was highlighted in 'Reel Border Shorts', a series of four films commissioned by the Reel Borders Project of Vrije University Brussels in conjunction with the Nerve Centre Derry.  The non-professional filmmakers explored personal stories filmed in Donegal and Derry.

Triang Times, the first to be shown, follows Pat, a pub owner who has lived and worked in Pettigo on the Donegal-Fermanagh border for forty years, and his friend William, a seventh-generation Protestant farmer. Pat speaks of the band he used to be in called The Triang that played all over Donegal and the border area. They used to practise in the local Orange hall and when they realised the Parish Priest had a PA system they asked if they could used the parish hall for practise in return for a concert. They borrowed the PA for about a year to use in their concerts.

Pat and William spoke of the border in people's minds; making the most of the best prices both sides of the border; smuggling in the area and a common attitude towards the 'Water

Rats', customs officials on both sides of the border; a friend who used to say a decade of the Rosary when getting on a bus to go across the border into the North.

The second film, 'Connecting Borders' by Gemma Gfeller, gives a different generations perspective on the border. Born just before the peace, she thought that among other things the border meant to her the end of something and the beginning of something else. But really borders do not exist, she muses – Earth does not have them.

In 'Derry, the Oak Grove', directed by Molly Phillips, we hear about the importance of myths, of Saint Colmcille and even Christianity itself, which she believes will become a myth.

At the QFT we were shown two extracts of 'Secret Army', the documentary film currently bring made by BBCNI and due out in the autumn. The historical significance is immediately clear as well as the painstaking work the filmmakers have  done in order to authenticate footage and identify any editing that may have originally been done. When aired it will doubtless bring back memories for some and retraumatise others. The complexity of our intergenerational trauma and the proximity of all of us does not make this easy viewing, but the multi-threaded narrative of our shared history will benefit from the film when it is aired. 

Later that same evening we were treated to Patrick Kielty and Karl Frampton, not in the ring but in a couple of comfy armchairs. The interesting format was a series of extracts  from their own documentaries with a conversation in between – Karl with 'Men in Crisis' and Patrick with '100 Years of the Union'. There was a discussion around whether you can watch a film and change your mind about being involved in paramilitarism. Like many people, Patrick hopes to shield the next generation from being further traumatised, a task made more difficult by intergenerational trauma and the things we pass on to different generations even if we never speak about our own experiences.

On a lighter note, we found out out Patrick's eldest son believes the sun always shines in Dundrum, just like in LA, and Patrick always felt homesick watching Karl's fights in the States. He spoke of Mo Mowlam asking if she could bring Billy Hutchinson as her date to one of his stand-up gigs, which she did, and Karl raised a laugh when told us that when people comment on his interview style and say he's a good listener, it's because he doesn't have enough interview questions. When Karl  told Patrick  how commendably he has dealt with the killing of his dad, Patrick replied that life is for living.

Artcetera in Rosemary Street  and Platform Arts in Connswater Shopping Centre are both showing exhibitions by recent graduates from Belfast School of Art. The next Late Night Art is Thursday, July 6. Meanwhile, the full Féile programme will be announced this Thursday at 1pm at St Mary's University College, where we'll see what else – apart from Mark Almond – the festival has in store for us.