Waggafest entries dominated by our community's kids

7 September 2015

For immediate release

Waggafest entries dominated by our community’s kids

Wagga’s already the City of Good Sports, but what about our great shorts?

The majority of this year’s Wagga Waggafest Short Film Festival Entries have come from local filmmakers – with more than half from under 18s.

Judges Peter Cox, Sonya Gee and Lex Marinos now have the difficult task of going over all the entries, including what’s set to be a hotly contested Young Filmmaker category.

Cox was one half of the Backyard Ashes project, Gee is an ABC Open producer for the Riverina, and former Wagga resident Marinos is a renowned actor and director.

They will be assessing the entries on a range of factors, including their “Wagga-ness” and relevance to this year’s theme “the best is yet to come”.

“It’s really encouraging to see so many entries from our community’s youth,” Mayor of the City of Wagga Wagga Councillor Rod Kendall said.

“This year’s theme is all about the future and going by the great films these kids have made, our future is in safe hands.”

There are more than $6000 in prizes up for grabs this year, including the $2500 Hume Bank Best Overall Film award.

Waggafest veterans Sheraden Robins and Klutch Kable have returned to the competition for the fourth straight year, having won best animation in 2012 and 2013 and the overall prize in 2014.

The pair’s winning entry from last year, A Wagga Wagga Winter Tale, has since taken out prizes at film festivals around the country and was even screened in Melbourne’s Federation Square.

“Waggafest has been sharing our community’s stories with the world for the past five years,” Cr Kendall said.

“So far in 2015, Council has held its first Winter School animation workshop and provided the opportunity for our kids to create the posters for Waggafest, now we’ll get to see who the lucky winners are.”

The 2015 Wagga Waggafest Short Film Competition Special Awards Screening Night will be held next month at the Civic Theatre. Visit wagga.nsw.gov.au/waggafest to keep update or follow #waggafest on social media.

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Contact Josh Lang 6926 9190/0437 385 892 or media@wagga.nsw.gov.au or follow us on Twitter - @WaggaCouncil