IT'S lights, camera and action in Chagford, as the town's film festival is one of three community enterprise projects in the South West to be offered good cause money from the Big Lottery Fund (BIG).

A grant of just over £23,500 has been made available to Chagford Film Festival to enable organisers to build on their successful community film festival, which launched last year.

The money is from BIG's Village SOS scheme, which aims to help country communities that may be struggling with issues such as isolation and the closure of local amenities, through supporting them to run community enterprises.

The funding will enable the group to expand the festival and make it more enterprising, by recruiting volunteers, promoting it to a wider audience through workshops, events and exhibitions, and designing and producing new programme.

Tickets for the workshops and events will help to generate an income to help sustain the festival in future years.

Sara Squire, project manager of Chagford Film Festival, said: 'We feel honoured to be awarded this funding.

'Eight volunteers launched the festival in 2011 in this already vibrant artistic community, hoping it would be a success and lead to greater things.

'Our vision is to extend our film programme, activities, events, workshops, exhibitions, marketing and publicity during the festival and throughout the year.

'Our central project will be The Mary Whyddon projection — a commission to Chagford Filmmaking Group which is based on a local tale set in the 1600s.

'Mary Whyddon was shot on her wedding day coming out of Chagford Church and to this day nobody knows who shot her.

'She is said to haunt The Three Crowns, her family home, and is buried at the church. We will be projecting the story on to both venues.'

The inaugural festival last year has a varied programme of events, attracting Oscar-winning film producer Gareth Unwin to the grand finale.

Gareth was on hand to discuss his smash-hit film 'The King's Speech', which won the Best Picture Oscar in 2011.

The week also saw the world premiere of the film 'The Long Walk to Freedom', multiple film screenings and workshops with filmmakers.

Mark Cotton, head of the South West region for BIG, said: 'We are delighted to announce funding for these three important community enterprise projects today.

'I would urge community groups who have ideas or plans for communities enterprises that will help them to breathe new life into their area to visit http://www.villagesos.org.uk">www.villagesos.org.uk and see how we can help make those dreams a reality.'

Through Village SOS, grants of between £10,000 and £50,000 are available to help rural communities with less than 3,000 people develop plans for enterprising projects that will answer a local need or improve services for local people.

Projects can range from community-run shops and pubs, to energy or transport schemes, craft or food projects.