Celebration of screen lights up Queenscliff Town Hall

A NEAR full house packed the Queenscliff Town Hall last Friday for the opening of the township’s annual celebration of all things film and screen.

The Queenscliff Film Festival, which ran through the weekend, this year featured a program of “uplifting” films that covered what committee chair Rose Ott described as “life, death and everything in between”.

To mark the opening, the community gathered over wine and canapes to hear from the festival’s guest speaker, award-winning Australian actor Kat Stewart – known for her leading roles in productions such as Five Bedrooms, Offspring and Underbelly – in conversation with author and former actor Alisa Piper.

The duo discussed a broad range of topics from Bairnsdale, where Stewart grew up, to navigating the entertainment industry and finding the humanity in characters, particularly those who may at first appear unsympathetic, before joining the audience in viewing a screening of My Melbourne.

The Indo-Australian film, in which Stewart also features, brought together emerging Indian filmmakers with local talent in Melbourne for an anthology of four stories tackling race, gender, sexuality and disability.

The weekend followed with screenings of My Favourite Cake – an Iranian film Ott said had a “big impact” on the festival’s organising committee, Spanish drama The Teacher Who Promised the Sea, Swedish documentary The Last Journey, and Thai box office sensation How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies.

“We hope our audience always leaves enlightened by the films that we choose and appreciate the risks that some of the filmmakers take to bring us these wonderful films,” Ott said.