Press release from Canberra Short Film Festival
After another successful year for the Canberra Short Film Festival, which was held at Dendy Cinemas from the 16th – 18th September, the winners have been announced. Sunday 18th September – the final night of the festival – saw the presentation of awards and the screening of the winning films for 2011.
Director Arash Ketabchi won the professionally judged prize for ‘SOLO’ in the National Schools competition, while Alex Wu took home the People’s Choice award for ‘Compass’ in the same category.
Director Madeleine Parry and Producer Daniel Joyce – who accepted the award on the night – won the professionally judged Grass-Roots category for their controversial documentary ‘Murder Mouth’, and filmmaker Julius Telmer – director of ‘Restare Uniti’ – won the People’s Choice award.
Amongst an array of outstanding films selected in the Emerging category, it was Director James Khehtie who came out victorious. His film ‘The Telegram Man’ took home both the winning trophy for the category and the People’s Choice award.
And finally, the Practising category for the festival saw Jason Wingrove take the trophy for ‘Moving Day’, and Damien Power win the People’s Choice award for the emotion-charged 'Peekaboo’.
Overall, this year’s festival judges Yoram Gross, Andrew Urban and Rob Shaw-Velzen seemed to be extremely impressed with the standard of filmmaking that was on show.
The festival weekend also had special screenings of work by well know industry professionals, including Academy award winning animation ‘The Lost Thing’, directed by Andrew Ruhemann and Australian author and illustrator Shaun Tan on Opening Night. Then on Sunday two episodes of animation legend and CSFF judge Yoram Gross’ latest creation ‘Professor Filutek’ was showcased for the excited final-night audience.
A Q & A workshop between festival judges Yoram Gross and Andrew Urban also took place on the Final Night before the screening of the winning films.
The response generated by the audience was great and it worked as the perfect introduction to Gross’ ‘Professor Filutek’ animation shown later in the evening.
Festival Director Anna Koprowska is already anticipating another successful year in 2012 after the fantastic support that was generated for this year.