Emerging young filmmakers from across the country are getting creative at the Port Shorts Film Festival.
This year, the festival returns to showcase the newest young talent within short film, micro-documentaries and music videos. Acclaimed ‘The Castle’ and ‘Underbelly’ actor Stephen Curry has signed on as a judge, mentor, and ambassador of the festival.
“Last year was our first year with the Port Shorts Festival, and it was a great experience,” Stephen says. “This year we’ll have groups of school students come through with specific interests in production, performance, and the arts… We’re shooting a little opening scene that I’m going to be in, that has a specific piece of action that’s going on.”
“We’re going to have a look at scripting, storyboarding, troubleshooting, all that sort of stuff,” he continues. “Then when we get there on the day, our entire focus is getting these groups of students having shot their inclusion to our piece, while also getting them involved and teaching them at the same time. I’ve always been interested in the creative arts and filmmaking and performance myself, and a lot of the time when you go to see people talk that’s what often just happens – people talk at you. [But] you can’t expect kids to get the best out of a whole day when all they’ve been doing is sitting down and being talked at. I’m just a big believer in getting up, experiencing it, and getting your hands dirty.”
Stephen CurryMentoring is a major part of the festival, which Stephen believes is an invaluable tool to introduce the next generation of filmmakers to the screen. “The good thing is that we’ve got all of these people with different skill-sets who are going to encourage each of these groups on the day to realise their potential. I am so amazed at the talent that has already been uncovered by this festival. There are two brothers from Cairns: Ollie and Sebastian Marsden, they’re the Marsden brothers – and last year they [both] won awards. Ollie won Young Filmmaker award for his film, and Sebastian won the Micro Doco award. They’re just these young guys with brilliant creative minds, with a real skill for storytelling, and for structure. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that these two guys are going to be really well-known filmmakers of the future. And to see these guys at their age – they're both teenagers – to see this raw talent, and innate talent… is really exciting.” The Port Shorts Film Festival is a fantastic pedestal for emerging filmmakers. Last year, Open Winner Natalie van den Dungen had her film ‘Finding New Girl’ shown in over 50 festivals around the world.
“It was an absolutely world-class short film,” Stephen says. “I think it’s great, there is such a breadth of experience from people like Natalie to the Marsden brothers, who are young up and coming people who have never made anything before.”
Stephen says the recent boom of technological advancement has meant that anyone can make films now. “It’s not a prohibited thing where you need a lot of financial support for… All the parameters evaporate, because all you really need is an idea. Go past any billboard, you’ve got this incredible image of something that was shot on a smartphone. We have these things in our pockets that we can actually, quite literally, make films with now. They’re not phones anymore, I find it so exciting. Technology gets poo-pood a fair bit, and there’s many reasons to do that – someone’s probably just been run over by a bus looking for a Pokémon right as we speak – but there are so many incredible possibilities that it opens up, and the festival is a great celebration of that.”
The Port Shorts Film Festival plays at Port Douglas Outdoor Cinema 28-29 October.
