Bangalow Film Festival to go ahead

BANGALOW Film Festival has been rescheduled to April 30 to May 4 after the original event was cancelled two days before Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred hit.

Festival director Christian Pazzaglia said it had been a crazy period, but he was happy to save around 75 per cent of the program.

“We couldn’t go the full length anymore budget-wise and due to availability windows but I guess this is the best possible outcome,” he said.

“We have lost some of the guests, which is a shame, but luckily Rolf de Heer is still coming. We will now open the festival with his movie The Tracker with an extended Q&A with him. Hopefully Gary Sweet is still coming – I’m just waiting on confirmation.”

The festival was originally going to open with the documentary Milano: The Inside Story of Italian Fashion, which will now be the closing night film, followed by a glamorous afterparty.

Kerry O’Brien will also introduce the Academy Award-winning documentary No Other Land, about a Palestinian activist and Israeli journalist who team up to document and protest the demolition of Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

With a three-day power outage in the lead-up to the planned festival in March, Pazzaglia said it had been difficult to communicate its cancellation.

“Then we really started to figure out who was available,” he said.

“Unfortunately, The New Boy writer and director Warwick Thornton is unable to make it because he’s shooting his new film, so that window closed for us.”

Pazzaglia said in the five years the festival has been running it has been cancelled three times – first due to COVID-19, then the 2022 floods, and most recently the cyclone.

“Calling it off two days before, the money was spent,” he said. “We’re not-for-profit so we certainly need support to survive.”

People who would like to donate can do so via the Australian Cultural Fund.

For more information, visit australianculturalfund.org.au