Zooming into young filmmaker awards
by
Emma Masters
UniSA
students and graduates featured prominently at the recent 2005 Zoom
Awards for young South Australian filmmakers.
The People’s Republic of Animation, a collective of young film and multimedia producers (many from UniSA), won Best Animation for their film Fritz Gets Rich, which was made for and screened at the Adelaide Film Festival earlier this year.
And recent UniSA journalism graduate, Mark Egan, won the $5,000 Young Filmmaker's Human Rights Award, for his film ABC, which looks at issues of human rights through the eyes of a child. Sverre Fredriksen, a current third year film and video production student, was short listed for the award.
As part of a final year course in his film and video production sub-major, Egan wrote, produced, edited and shot ABC with assistance from another UniSA student, Tom Liggins, and a friend, Fleur Puglisi.
“Although it took the four month period of last year's course to make the film, I'd been playing with the idea for about a year or so,” Egan said.
“It came from just thinking about kids' shows, such as Sesame Street, where the world is wonderful and fluffy, and then how, when you go back and watch them as an adult, everything is not as magical and perfect as you first thought.”
The film is a five minute montage that consists of the letters of the alphabet represented by everyday things, such as "A is for apple”, “B is for book”, “C is for camera”. The concept is then repeated, except this time the letters represent the harsher realities of the modern world.
“For the second time the images are a bit different, they're more warped and confronting,” Egan said.
“When F is for foot – what used to be a normal foot is replaced by an image of an Iraqi child who had their foot amputated.
“It's going from Sesame Street to the seven o'clock news, so to speak.”
Egan said the money he won has gone towards establishing himself in the Riverland town of Renmark where he is now the producer of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s morning radio show for the Riverland area.
“It’s been great and has helped me buy a car, pay my rental bond and purchase furniture. It really couldn’t have happened at a better time for me.”