Film’s showing more sweet than bitter

BITTERSWEET Libation, a short fashion film set in Ballarat, was the only Australian student production showcased in the twelfth A Shaded View on Fashion Film Festival.

Set in locations such as the Oz Tenpin Bowling Centre, the North Britain Hotel and retro office space above Sturt Street, the film was one of six international student productions shown. It stars musician, Freya Josephine Hollick and Melbourne fashionista, Shona Grant.

Greyge Gardens, an independent collective of RMIT fashion graduates, produced the piece as an alternative way of sharing their collections off-runway.

The team includes local sustainable designer Jordyn Smith.

“The film shows how four very disparate collections can be woven together to create some kind of strange hyperreality narrative. It’s alternate universes in each one,” she said.

“We’ve been able to share these unique Ballarat spots that normally wouldn’t be broadly exposed.

“We were looking to expand the reach of Ballarat’s arts community… through local production with an international outlook.”

The ASVOF event is the only official fashion film festival, shown in Paris following Fashion Week. In 2020, it ran digitally due to COVID-19.

“It was our ultimate goal to see if we could get into it, and we did. It’s very exclusive and massive designers judged it… so it’s a testament to the film crew we had,” Smith said.

“It’s an opportunity to hopefully find an employment outcome or collaborative work. Who knows who’s watching?”

Bittersweet Libation is viewable on the FNL Network. It was a finalist in the 2020 Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Film Awards, and has been selected for the UK Fashion Festival.