OVER 100 people attended last month’s inaugural Backyard Cinema film festival in Warragul’s Civic Park, with this year’s success making a return next year likely.
Backyard Cinema invited filmmakers connected with Gippsland and aged between 18 and 25 to submit films for the festival.
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Organisers Ele Mason-Sakkas and Sarah Guganovic told The Warragul Citizen the event was a success.
“It’s been a success, I think,” Ms Mason-Sakkas said.
“You never really know how the first one’s going to go and it’s all over now and it was impressive.”
“Everyone seemed to enjoy it heaps, so it was really good,” Ms Guganovic added.
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A good response means a return next year is likely.
“I think it’ll definitely happen again,” Ms Mason-Sakkas said.
“I think it’s had a good response and everyone’s been really supportive of it.”
Watch the full interview with Ele Mason-Sakkas and Sarah Guganovic below:
Bethany Hamburg of Yarragon won best film of the night for her work Warriors.
Ms Hamburg said she had not expected to win the award.
“I was excited just to get in so yeah, really excited,” Ms Hamburg said.
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“I think [the event is] pretty important because it really is hard to make it in the media industry, so just meeting some filmmakers, getting my name out there a little bit and winning this is really exciting.”
Ms Hamburg said Gippsland is a good area to make a film.
“The natural surroundings are absolutely beautiful obviously,”
“A lot of people are actually quite artistic… so they’re really good to work with too.
“I think it’s really an up-and-coming thing in the area.”
Ashley Gaylard won second place for his film Last Train, which can be watched here. Ms Hamburg’s film will be uploaded at a later date.
Watch the full interview with Bethany Hamburg below:
Previous coverage:
Sound and vision: Backyard Cinema film festival coming to Civic Park.
Gippsland musical duo Harry and Hayley and Sale’s Talana Daff performed at the event.
Ms Daff said the event was an opportunity for local artists to improve their exposure.
“Oh it was fabulous,” Ms Daff said.
“It’s just a brilliant opportunity to get a whole lot of people out here on the grass and get everyone together in the community and it’s fabulous playing in front of a lot of people.”
“It’s really nice to have people come up to me afterwards and say I did really well.”
Watch the full interview with Talana Daff below:
The event received funding through Regional Arts Victoria and RAV and Wellington Shire Regional Arts Development Officer Deb Milligan said before the screening the event had had a good response in the region.
“We’re showing 10 films tonight, so eight of them were entrants into the competition which is really great,” Ms Milligan said.
“It was a short timeline and it’s notoriously difficult to get people to enter short films and it’s been fantastic, so that’s a great response.”
Ms Milligan and RAV Education and Families Manager Emily Atkins mentored Ms Mason-Sakkas and Ms Guganovic while they organised the event.
“It’s been fantastic working with them; they are young, smart, fabulous future creative leaders,” Ms Milligan said.
Watch the full interviews with Emily Atkins and Deb Milligan below:
Ms Hamburg film was great- didn’t understand one of the other movies on the night, the one at Drouin station but liked its setting