UPDATE: Our film has been shortlisted! It will be screened this Friday Night at the Senate Rose Gardens as part of the Enlighten Festival! Woo-hoo!

Last year, about this time, my artistic collaborator Marina and I attended the screening of the 12 finalists in the Lights, Canberra, Action! short film festival. We thought that next year we’ll make a film and enter*. Well ‘next year’ is now ‘this year’ and the film festival is on again.

Essentially filmmakers have the better part of a week to write, direct and produce a film of no more than 7 minutes duration. All shooting and production must occur within that time. There’s a theme (this year’s was ‘Swings & Roundabouts’). Another twist is the inclusion in the film of items or places provided, scavenger hunt style … I’ve included this list below.

So, true to our intentions … we made a little film together under our arty-collaborative umbrella 2 Tens & A Tomato. The film is titled “This Too Shall Pass” and runs for 6m44s. It’s presented in black and white and is a boy meets girl story about passing through a dreamy world of isolation and longing to find intimacy and hope in a roundabout way. Music was produced and performed by the wonderful Charles Sage (Hessien and The Rothko Chapel) solo project y0t0. His moody atmospherics work so beautifully with the film.

Anyways … here it is. Would love to hear what you think about it. We’re kinda a little proud of it and reckon it turned out alright considering we had next to no idea what we were doing.

*We also thought “how hard can it be?” … the answer as it turns out is “quite hard really” 😉

List of Items (see if you can spot them all in our film)

  1. A swing in a park
  2. A road roundabout
  3. A set of scales (for weighing)
  4. ‘On the Road Again’ sculpture by Ann Ross at Lyons Shops
  5. A ferris wheel
  6. The Mandalay Bus (in Braddon)
  7. The gold tiles outside the ACT Legislative Assembly
  8. An underpass
  9. The Chess Pit (Garema Place)
  10. The High Court (exterior)

An eclectic set of items and sites as you can see.

Lights, Camera, Action! is part of the Canberra 2015 Enlighten Festival and sponsored by artsACT.

Links