EVERY YEAR the Cork Film Festival is praised or condemned on the basis of the feature films screened. It is sometimes forgotten that the main objective of the Festival is to furthcr an interest in the short film as an art form. This year the gcneral standard of the sixtyone short entrics was very high indeed but, as usual, thc features were the talking point and tended to overshadow the real purpose. Too much publicity is givcn to so-called" controversial" features and not enough to the main objective in which Cork succeeds so admirably.

A DICTIONARY definition of the noun" project" tells us it is a " scheme" or a "design." Spelt with a capital' P,' it becomes the name adopted by a group of young Dubliners to describe what is certainly a comprehensive scheme and one of ambitious and praiseworthy design. Project has had its ups and downs, its successes and disappointments, but now, three years after its inception, it remains one of the most stimulating and dynamic artistic forces in Irish life today. Its terms of reference cover the entire spectrum of the arts and its targets incorporate an imaginative and wide-ranging series of activities. In the long term, Project is not so much a programme but, very definitely, a way of life.

Peadar O'Donnell was born in Donegal, in 1893, and was educated locally and at St. Patrick's College, Dublin. He became a school teacher in Donegal but in 1918 gave up teaching to become organiser of the I.T. and G.W.U. He joined the I.R.A. and at the Truce was Ole. 1st Northern Division. He took the Republican side in the crisis of the Treaty and was elected to the Executive of the I.R.A. He was in the Four Courts when it was attacked on 28th June, 1922. He was in jail with Liam Mellowes when the latter with Rory O'Connor ,McKelvey and Barrett were executed on the morning of the 8th December.

PABLO PICASSO was born in Malaga in 1881. He came of an ancient family and his immediate relatives were priests, doctors, or were employed in business. His father was the only artistic member of the family; he was an artist who taught in the local art school and ran the local museum. Later in Picasso's childhood they spent four years in Corunna and finally settled in Barcelona when he was fourteen. His father was of course his first master and apparently he was a very precocious child, who took no interest in his school work at all and only thought about drawing. He asserts that he learnt absolutely nothing at school though this is clearly something of an exaggeration as he can certainly read and write. He was a student first in the School of Art in Barcelona and later in Madrid. But he seems to have learnt more from looking at pictures and reproductions, and from his father and friends than from the rather dry tuition at the Schools of Art.