Crowd calls for encore of short film festival

THE FIRST edition of the Anglesea Short Film Festival was coming to an end and organiser Ev Wuchatsch was giving her closing address.

She asked the packed house of 180 at Anglesea Memorial Hall if they would like the new event to return next year.

“There was overwhelming yelling out [of] ‘Yes’ from parents and kids,” the Anglesea Movie Club president said.

“I think the parents were so complimentary because it gave their kids something to do. They were creative and mucking around and having lots of fun.”

After assigning a task to make a three-minute film that had to somehow incorporate ‘mango’, the judges shaved down the entries to six junior and six senior finalists.

Two Anglesea winners emerged at the showing on February 16.

 

Hugo Stickland, 11, took out the junior category (aged up to 13) with ‘Dan the man’ and 14-year-old Keaton Fawcett claimed the senior title (aged 14-18) with ‘How to cut a mango’.

The former took home $500 while the latter received $1,500 for his winning entry.

Wuchatsch explained Stickland’s comedic take was a nod to Glenn Robbin’s Aussie outback TV character Russell Coight of the 2000s.

“He found the mango in the bush and it was supposed to cure snake bites so he pretended he was bitten by a snake and rubbed mango on it,” she said of Stickland’s film.

“It was very funny.”

Meanwhile, Fawcett’s was about artificial intelligence.

“He had two actors and everything they did, they said ‘Oh I don’t know, just ask AI,” Wuchatsch said.

“At the end, it had a big message ‘Stop letting yourself go, AI cannot replace social interaction’ … it was really clever.”

 

Before the event, Wuchatsch flagged the possibility of an adult category being introduced in the future.

But she said organisers would likely just keep it as a children’s competition due to hall capacity.

“It’s nice to engage a different end of Anglesea because at our movie club the average age is probably 70.”

The movie club is sponsoring a film-making course leading up to next year’s festival and seeking participants.

For more information, email [email protected]