A South African couple who left their native Cape Town where they worked in the film industry for Fermanagh have said the move was an easy one due to the beauty of the county.
Husband and wife duo George Brain and Gigi Potter left behind the life of creating sets for sci-fi films for the tranquility of the Erne county earlier this year.
Now operating a woodworking studio in Irvinestown, Gigi says the move has been a successful one so far.
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“We moved to Fermanagh because I have family here, my sister has been here for the last eleven years,” Gigi told MyFermanagh.
“My mum and dad, who have now passed on, both came to live in Kesh as well.
“So after the pandemic we decided we wanted to be closer to family and it was easy to move here because it’s so beautiful.
“George and I both worked in the film industry in Cape Town for many years, it’s where we met as well.
“We were doing a feature out in Namibia, we used to do a lot of location shoots in Southern Africa.
“George had always worked in film set construction and I had always worked in logistics and coordinating.”
The couple have now set up Woodmento, their craft business in which they build handcrafted wooden gift boxes, and say it’s a welcome change from the fast pace of life in the movie industry in Cape Town.
“We used to build a lot of sci-fi interiors, spaceships and that type of stuff. Being a carpenter George would have been quite skilled and sought after for those.
“There is obviously a growing film studio industry here now and we know some people who are involved in that, but what we do now is completely new.
“The boxes we make are a bit of a breakaway from the film industry. Being rural here we had to make that decision and see how we go.
“We had a big company in Cape Town where we employed about 10 people full-time, but we’re trying to stay a bit smaller now, that adds its own layer of stress.
“It’s been wonderful and it’s great to have family close by. We managed to find a really great workshop that’s really close to home.”
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