Young people’s films to be played at Bendigo Sustainability Festival

BENDIGO Sustainability Festival is coming up, and for the first time in its history the event will feature several short films created by young people aged between twelve and twenty-five interested in sustainability and conservation.

Filmmaker, Leonie Van Eyk, was commissioned by Bendigo Sustainability Festival to help the group with their works, from pre-concept to realisation.

“As I see it, they are the future and so their messages are really crucial and are important to all of our learnings,” she said.

Van Eyk and a few others helped mentor the group throughout the process.

“We can educate and give as much information are we can, but ultimately it’s coming from them and their voices of concern,” she said.

“I think the project was a really vital process for some of these young people to take their ideas and put them into a format that they hadn’t necessarily done before.

“They all had something different to say.”

Mia Moon made her film about bees and their crucial place in the future of humanity.

“We all wanted to make a film that would spread awareness and educate people in the environment around us about things that we could change, or things that we felt very passionately about,” she said.

“The current bee crisis is damaging our world around us. I discovered that, if one day the bees do end up going extinct, the human race will go extinct within four years of that.”

With the support offered, Moon said she was grateful for the chance to make a film she felt was impactful.

“It’s definitely something I’d do again if I was given the opportunity,” she said.

“I really enjoyed just learning new aspects and it was a nice environment to make mistakes and learn from them and figure out how to navigate technology in that sense.”

Ben Dubuc-Timson’s film was about the part he played in helping look after the environment around where he grew up.

“I learnt that anything’s possible, you can do all you can to make the world a better place,” he said.

Will Smith made a film about peregrine falcons, where they nest, and how to help them.

He said he was thrilled that his film would be streamed at the festival.

“That would be a big leap for me,” he said. “I will just be sitting there in my room, looking up and saying to myself ‘how did I do that?’”

Bendigo Sustainability Group will soon be opening a short film competition for young people.

Smith, 11, said he encourages other kids to get involved.

“Put yourself out there, do something out of your comfort zone,” he said. “You may turn out to love it, you may turn out to hate it, but it’s the thought that counts.”

To see the short films, the Bendigo Sustainability Festival 2024 will be held on Sunday 17 March from 10am to 3.30pm at Garden for the Future in White Hills.