General News
1 May, 2024
Film festival to screen again
The second annual Gilgandra Film Festival is set to take place on Saturday, May 25.
The second annual Gilgandra Film Festival is set to take place on Saturday, May 25. The 2024 festival will feature one local documentary, one national, and one international. Alongside these films will be a newly introduced screening of local young director’s films. Artistic director Simon Target said of the event: “Documentaries are a special genre in filmmaking… [and] local stories make the best inspiration.” His short film ‘Warrawong: The Wind Still Blows’ will be a continuation of the 2023 documentary ‘Warrawong: The Windy Place on the Hill’, a documentary that explored “the notion of what life on a farm is like in modern Australia”.
Mr Target also directed the feature ‘Kozok: Alone across Australia’ following Polish photographer and adventurer Michael Kozok as he walks solo across Australia. It will be included in the film festival as a special test screening; this will be the first time the documentary is shown to the public. From Iranian director Marjan Khosravi comes ‘The Dream of a Horse’, the story of Shahnaz, the oldest daughter of a nomadic family who live in the Iranian mountains. Mr Target believes the Gilgandra screening of Ms Khosravi’s documentary will be a national first. “[It is] an extraordinary perspective,” he said.
The 2024 festival will also feature the introduction of a young director’s segment, ‘Early Harvest Films’, where children from local primary schools compete to direct and produce documentary films. The best are to be presented at the festival.
Mr Target commented on last year’s festival, “When we piloted last year’s event, we thought we just had a bit of fun. Nobody expected it to be so successful.” Film festival director Sue Armstrong said “We want [the film festival] to be a fantastic community event. [We have] the opportunity to see international as well as local documentaries presented to the community that you’d usually have to go to Sydney for.”
She continued to say that the film festival committee loved planning and pulling off the event last year. “It was an absolute joy to see the reactions last year… to have another fun community event would be a great achievement,” she said.
Tickets to the event are now available.
