Press release from Artmedia
An independent Australian film Butterfly Crush, due to be released here next year, has just capped off a string of successes in the States by winning Best Feature Drama at the Indie Gathering Film Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. This follows the film winning a prestigious Award of Merit from The Accolade Competition earlier this year and official selection in festivals in four states.
Butterfly Crush is the story of two singing, dancing friends who become entangled with a mysterious Sydney cult, the Dreamguides. The cult leader, Star, is played by Australian actor Amelia Shankley, who won the ‘Accolade Award of Excellence for Best Supporting Actor’ for her role of the Dreamguides leader. Amelia was an award winning child actor in England before moving to live in Lismore, NSW. She won the Paris Film Festival Best Actress award for the feature film Dreamchild.
Butterfly Crush is striking a chord in America, where it last month won Best International Narrative Feature at the Anthem Film Festival in Las Vegas, which presents ‘the year’s best films about personal and civil liberty’. It also screened recently at the ‘Love Unlimited Film Festival’ in Portland, Oregon and the Ventura Film Festival in California.
Butterfly Crush is the first feature by Sydney-based writer-director Alan Clay and is adapted from his novel ‘Dance Sisters’. This is the debut feature for two of the leads in the film, 20 year old Sydney actors Hayley Fielding, who plays one of the singing duo, and Richard Adams, who plays the boyfriend.
Artmedia, the production company behind Butterfly Crush, is currently working on a new film written and directed by Alan Clay called True Believers, which is adapted from his novel ‘Believers in Love’. The story follows a father and daughter team of sand sculptors from Bondi Beach, to the Adelaide Fringe, finding love and discovering the magic in life.
True Believers will be shot in Sydney and Adelaide next year and auditions are currently being held around the country for an eight year old girl to star in the movie. More information on the auditions can be found at: www.artmedia.net.au.