Cockatoo Island Film Festival future ‘bleak’
The future of the Cockatoo Island Film Festival tonight looked uncertain with the event’s Twitter account revealing that a meeting is in progress that threatens a “bleak” outcome.
The tweet states: “Harbour Trust meeting in progress — mood very bleak. Looks like Film Festival may be a victim of the ‘curse of Cockatoo Island.’
Cockatoo Island was also the location of the ill-fated World’s Funniest Island comedy festival which ran in 2009 before being cancelled in 2010
The news follows the PR disaster of the film festival’s opening night.
The festival had problems with before the opening night’s film, The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson began screening. The festival had oversold it’s first night with 200 festival-goers turned away from the gates.
The Sydney Harbour Federation Trust has a remit to open up the Harbour and its islands to the public.
The festival’s Facebook page was hit with complaints from both visitors and participating film-makers. There were further complaints about confusing programming, films being screened at the wrong time and bad signage.
9pm update: A few minutes later, the @CockatooFest account tweeted:
“Harbour Trust has stalled its decision on Film Festival … We are left hanging. Don’t know how Festival can go on.”
Both of the above tweets have since been deleted.
Sentiment from the festival’s Facebook fans was positive this morning however when the festival first voiced its concern the meeting:
Just sell the whole bloody island to Packer and let him turn it into a casino-hotel for God’s sake. Problem solved. Okay, what’s next?
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