Sydney’s Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace has signed on to become the official Sydney venue joining 150 cinemas in 150 cities across four continents (Europe, North, South, America and Australia) when it hosts the 11th Annual Manhattan Short Film Festival on Sunday September 28th at 7pm.
Manhattan Short started back in 1997 when Festival Director Nicholas Mason, who heralds from Sydney, Australia, projected a handful of films onto a screen mounted on the side of a truck on a downtown Manhattan street. It later moved to Union Square Park, where it relied on celebrity judges such as Susan Sarandon, Roger Corman, Eric Stoltz, Laura Linney, Tim Robbins to name a few. After the Festival screened in Union Square Park on September 23rd 2001 unforeseen events due to 9/11 led Mason to decide to expand the Festival and hand the judging over to the audience.
“There were a lot of TV crews surrounding the park that year, as Union Square was a press center for international TV crews covering ground zero. They turned their cameras onto the Festival and began making a story out of it that picked up media coverage in different parts of the world.
“The following year we began receiving films from so many more countries than we had in the past. When I sat back and viewed all the shorts entered the year following 9/11, they mirrored what was happening in the world and how people were feeling throughout the world. I wanted to find a way for people around the world to not only see these films, but to participate in it as well. In 2004 we invited seven cities in seven US states to participate and the event just grew from there,” said Festival Director Nicholas Mason.
Manhattan Short accepts 12 short films (14 min and under). These same 12 films are sent to each cinema. Audiences are handed a voting card upon entry to each cinema and asked to vote for the one film they feel should win. Votes are then sent directly through to Manhattan Short headquarters where the winner is announced after the last screening in NYC, also Sunday, September 28th.
For filmmakers wishing to enter and represent Australia in this year’s event, the deadline for entries is July 31st. Entry forms can be found on the Festival’s website at www.ManhattanShort.com. Manhattan short has plans to expand into Asia in 2009, Africa in 2010 and then it will even approach Ice Stations in the South Pole in 2011 as it continues its mission to unite the world via twelve short films in the world.
[Release by Manhattan Short]