Cockatoo Island Film Festival battles to recover reputation after disastrous opening as 7 Boxes wins
A Paraguayan feature film has won the inaugural Golden Feather Award at the Cockatoo Island Film Festival, marking the end of the festival’s troubled first year.
7 Boxes, directed by Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schembori, was described by the festival’s jury as ‘rollicking and compelling’.
The awards cap off a festival which began in a PR disaster as around 200 festival-goers were turned away from the gates on opening night’s screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master.
The festival’s Facebook page was hit with complaints from visitors and participating film-makers about overselling tickets, bad signage and confusing programming. Over the rest of the weekend there were further complaints from festival goers over films being screened at the wrong time.
Nobody from the festival was available to comment to Mumbrella today. So far it has not issued a formal apology to visitors on its Facebook page, although it has responded to individual comments thanking people for their feedback and acknowledging “certain areas were challenging”. A spokesman could not comment on claims that some criticisms by visitors were deleted from its Facebook page.
7 Boxes was awarded the Golden Feather Award from a selection of 15 in competition films from 15 countries by a jury comprised of Australian cinematographer Don McAlpine, Matchbox Pictures’ Helen Bowden, actor Alex Dimitriades and director Peter Andikidis.
McAlpine said: “It was exciting, very intriguing and had a certain quality of what we suspect Central America is like.”
In the documentary category, This Ain’t California, a look at skateboarding in East Germany won for director Marten Persiel.
The special jury prize for artistic vision went to Breathing, directed by Austria’s Karl Markovics, about a institutionalised boy seeking out his mother.
The best short film was awarded to A Silent Night, written and directed by Bec Kingma and produced by Lucy Hayes.
Ella Bancroft won the NSW Mining $20,000 Young Indigenous Documentary Fellowship. The fellowship will help Bancroft produce a documentary that captures her view as a Indigenous Australian while Jo Anne Brechin was named Young Film-maker of the Year. Her film This Dog’s Life was presented in the short film category, Parental Guidance Recommended.
What a wonderful 5 days of movies, presentations and music on this extraordinary island in the middle of our harbour.
The organisers are to be congratulated for their vision to create and event like this – the ferry service from King St. Wharf as terrific – a few minutes wait and a quick ride across our beautiful harbour.
An extraordinarily rich mix of films, not just features, but documentaries and shorts.
Some lovely food was on offer and the staff everywhere were so helpful and friendly.
Our family are really looking forward to next year.
Congratulations!
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I loved the festival. Thought it was great! So much character. Hopefully it comes back next year bigger and better.
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At least you managed to get in Jack
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Sounds like some astroturfing by Jack. Tip, Jack: when astroturfing, make it sound genuine.
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