Queensland film-makers headline film festival

SCINEMA regularly plays to tens of thousands of people across Australia, and in 2008 the program, which explores topics from climate change and human health to natural history also includes a number of films from Queensland film-makers.

Filmed over the four-month breeding season of the Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagle, Wild Tasmania, by former James Cook University student Jasper Montana, exposes the plight of the endangered bird and its perilous position in the middle of the logging and pulp mill debate currently raging in Tasmania.

“This is a very important issue,” says Mr Montana, the 23 year old co-director, camera-man and editor. “The film really shows what’s at stake for this magnificent creature.”

Mr Montana will present a special meet-the-film-maker session at QLD Museum Southbank to talk about the filming of Wild Tasmania at 3.30pm on Sunday 24 August.

One of the quirkier films among the Festival line-up comes from Grayson Cooke, a lecturer at Bundaberg’s Central Queensland University. I Use the Word State is a humorous short film featuring over 400 Ochrogarter Lunifer – processionary caterpillars – and the strangely appropriate words of Fredrich Nietzsche. 

Queensland company Viz Poets’ film Over My Dead Body is also in competition in the internationally competitive Film Festival. The Festival Jury, Chaired by Cosmos Magazine Editor Wilson Da Silva, will announce winning films at an awards ceremony at QLD Museum South Bank on Sunday 24 August. Produced by Vicki Guest and directed by Ian Walker, the film explores the market in recycled human bodies. Stripped down to its sellable parts, the recycled human body can be repackaged and sold for around $200,000. Skin and bone from the dead are part of a new resources boom.

SCINEMA (pronounced with a long ‘i’ to emphasise the science behind the cinema) is a partnership of the CSIRO and Cosmos Magazine, and aims to promote and raise the public level of science literacy.

The Festival screens at venues across Queensland including the Queensland Museum South Bank, Townsville’s Thurwingowa Library and the Townsville Festival, Maryborough Municipal Library and CQU’s Rockhampton, Bundaberg & Mackay campuses from August 16 – 24.

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