Would we have had this years Mystery Road without Ivan Sen’s ’98 short Vanish? Or Robert Connolly’s million dollar success The Turning without his ’97 short Rust Bucket?
The fact is short films are the backbone of the film industry and the beginning of amazing careers for some of the world’s greatest auteurs.
Here, Cinema Australia takes a look at the four shorts the Australian Film Institute deems the years best.
Words: Matthew Eeles
WOODY
Directed by: Stuart Bowen
Stuart Bowen’s Woody is a work of outstanding determination, collaboration and artistry. Bowen and his dedicated team manage to extract so much emotion out of the drawing mannequin used to portray it’s protagonist that Hollywood talent agents will be excused for feeling threatened. He’s much more convincing than your Brad Pitts and Will Smiths.
Woody occupies his time dreaming of becoming a pianist. The fact he has paddles for hands makes this desire impossible… or does it?
Dark, moody, gothic and an obvious tribute to Tim Burton (check out the name of Woody’s piano), Woody deserves every accolade it receives and is a great example of what can be achieved by crowd funding a project.
Director Stuart Bowen told Cinema Australia: Getting nominated for an AACTA award was such a great validation of the efforts of everyone involved in making the film. We had crowd-funding investors come on board to help fund the film & Screen NSW through the Emerging Film Makers Fund. We took this on as a great responsibility to make the best film we could – and to be acknowledged by the AACTAs, which is the highest accolade for film in Australia – its brilliant!’
Cinema Australia 