Film festival gains credits
FAR from being a cultural wasteland, the Gold Coast is rapidly gaining national credibility as a creative hub, thanks in part to its vibrant film industry.
The 17th Gold Coast Film Festival launches tonight at HOTA with the Australian premiere of 2040, an exploration of solutions to the planet’s modern-day problems from the creator of the globally successful That Sugar Film.
Festival director Lucy Fisher said the film festival had grown in stature every year and was now firmly on the calendar of the industry’s leading players.
“About a fifth of our 16,000 attendees now come from the industry itself,” she said.
“You only have to look at the world and Australian premieres that we’re featuring this year that we definitely wouldn’t have got four years ago.”
The festival will feature a dozen premieres over its 12-day program, including the closing night world premiere of Australian war film Escape and Evasion, partly filmed in Currumbin Valley.
It deals with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on a lone surviving soldier.
Another notable local connection is the indi film Locusts that resulted from filmmaker Heath Davis meeting local radiologist and secret screenwriter Angus Watts at a festival panel session three years ago.
“It’s wonderful to feature a film that comes from connecting creatives at an earlier festival,” Ms Fisher said. “That’s absolutely what we’re about.”
The Gold Coast Film Festival will feature 178 films, sessions and events, including the inaugural Screen Industry Gala Awards where Australian actress Sigrid Thornton will receive the Chauvel Award for her contribution to the industry.
There will also be the popular Women in Film lunch, a series of virtual reality experiences and, a la Hollywood, tours of Gold Coast movie locations hosted by a local actor.
“There’ll be four stops and many drive-bys, as well as video content of on-set stories and visits to known celebrity hot spots,” Ms Fisher said.
Another experience is the Blind Cinema live event where children describe the film only they can see to blindfolded adults.
“Sometimes there’s been a little bit of surprise that these types of ground-breaking events are happening on the Gold Coast,” Ms Fisher said.
The Gold Coast Film Festival runs April 3-14 at 14 locations from Coomera to Coolangatta.