Lights, camera, action for Emerald film festival
Emerald is set to host a film festival in 2025 to showcase the local talent and storytelling in the region.
The film festival is an outcome of an innovative collaborative project between CQUniversity and the Outback Exploratorium.
Funded by the Queensland Government’s Communities Innovation Fund, the project titled Tell Me Your Story will bring film-making, journalism and storytelling resources to the heart of the Central Highlands.
CQU co-lead, Senior Lecturer and Head of Theatre Dr Linda Lorenza will work to help facilitate opportunities for locals to create and share their stories through short films.
Dr Lorenza will draw from her experience delivering interactive applied theatre programs with young people in regional communities.
She has previously facilitated TikTok's directed by young people in the No Dramas project in Rockhampton, and creative short films developed by Bachelor of Theatre students in Mackay.
“Short form video is a unique and popular communication tool that young people continue to evolve,” Dr Lorenza said.
“I am enthralled by the storytelling and creative social communication ideas I see developed by my students and young people in regional Queensland.”
Fellow co-lead, social psychologist and rural access researcher Associate Professor Olav Muurlink will bring an alternative perspective to the project.
“I’m interested in the community-building aspects of the project, looking at changes in how community structures have occurred as a result of the digitalisation of media and socialisation - you know the shift from the bachelor and spinster balls to Snapchat,” he said.
“Communities are changing, and we think it is critical to capture the changes.”
Outback Exploratorium Executive Officer Samantha Elsden emphasised the importance of the collaboration with CQU in getting a diverse range of views and narratives that represent the community.
“The film festival will be a wonderful way of celebrating and remembering what Emerald is and was, and also showing the creativity and character that is bottled up in the Central Highlands,” Ms Elsden said.
“We are particularly keen to also involve seniors in this process, because they are the storehouse of knowledge of what Emerald and the region is and was.”
The Tell Me Your Story project will be officially launched on Thursday, 13 June.
Hosted by Outback Exploratorium's Discovery Space (OXP) in Emerald, the event is open to the public.
