The Perfect Light Film Festival returned to Sturt Park this year after being held in the Broken Hill Civic Centre for the last two years. The festival, brainchild of Australian acting legend Steve Bastoni, is in its sixth year, and was a huge success.
Military band Kapooka kicked off proceedings for the night, and had the crowd in the palm of their hands as they performed covers of popular songs from the likes of Bon Jovi, Bruno Mars and many more.
Following their performance, movies created by local schools were shown, including the catchy Kindness is a Muscle music video, along with a couple of spooky submissions – one titled Haunted Classroom and another Ghostly Cleans.
During the intermission, local legend Shelita Buffet entertained the crowd, and even gave some prizes away to those in the crowd who volunteered to get involved with her performance.
The finalists for this year’s festival were an eclectic bunch, with something for everybody. From animation to music videos, to live action short films that tackled hard hitting issues.
First prize went to Dice’n with Death which followed the story of a distraught family who were pleading with the public for their missing robo-vac. Along with press conferences and news bytes about the runaway Roomba, it followed its treacherous journey.
“The one about the vacuum cleaner was well executed and had great heart. It was almost absurd, but it was still great fun. The analogy had a serious element too, which was if you abuse people, they will run away and seek a better life,” said judge Terry Sorio.
“It was an original thought, as well, I have never looked at a robo-vac and thought about any of that, you know,” added fellow judge Heidi May.
Second prize went to The Petrification of Dee Wallace, a production from four university students from Melbourne who made the long journey to Broken Hill for the festival.
The coming-of-age film is a mixture of live action and animation and follows the story of anxiety ridden Dee Wallace who is approached by bubbly fellow student, Charlie Weston, to co-create a comic book.
“It just comes from my own high school experience,” said writer and director of the short, Nick Mansur.
“I just wanted to make a film about being a creative, anxious student in high school and having trouble making friends. So, I really wanted to make a film about two creative people being becoming friends,”
The prize was the perfect antidote to the gruelling 10 hour drive from Melbourne to Broken Hill said the film’s producer, Douglas Bicker.
“It (the road trip) strengthened our friendship quite a lot. All going loopy in the car together,” he laughed.
Third place was a local entry titled Fixing Chairs by Jason King. The film followed two veterans living out their days sharing beers and fixing chairs together. The film takes a bittersweet twist when one of the men passes away, and his daughter takes his place.
“We met Jason a long time ago and knew he was quite a successful filmmaker in town. For this particular film, we had a few things written down and we took it to Jason to see what he thought, and he liked the idea. And now we are here tonight,” said stars Randall Dart and Brad McLachlan.
Loneliness, an animated short film by Brandon Pai won the Emerging Filmmaker Award, beating out Isabella Metsios’ quirky food documentary Mum’s Bolognese which saw her heading to various restaurants to try different versions of the pasta dish to find out why it meant so much to her.
