intouch Magazine
- Jun 3

Celebrating 33 years of Flickerfest!

Celebrating 33 years in 2024, Flickerfest remains Australia’s leading Academy® Qualifying and BAFTA Recognised short film festival, ensuring that we continue to present A-list short film programmes recognised amongst the best in the world with films hand-picked from the festival’s record 3,400 entries!

Flickerfest, Australia’s largest Short Film Festival is excited to be returning on its National Tour to the Civic Playhouse Theatre in Newcastle Saturday 15th June showcasing the Best Of Australian Shorts and Short Laughs Comedy programme highlights, all handpicked from our recent Bondi festival competitions. The short films screening are all entertaining, inspiring, award-winning, and fresh from their premieres in competition at Flickerfest Bondi, giving Newcastle Flickerfest audiences a window into the hottest contemporary shorts from at home and across the world today.

Meet the filmmakers and the festival team and enjoy a festive atmosphere with a complimentary drink between sessions.

On Saturday 15th June, 6.30pm admire the incredible short film talent that exists in our emerging Australian industry with a host of Australian stories honoring our unique identity and culture in the Best of Australian Shorts programme.

Don't miss two stunning Newcastle highlights fresh from Flickerfest, the moving What's In A Name, winner of The Spectrum Award For Best Direction at Flickerfest 2024, about an African Australian couple, who whilst taking part in a documentary discover fractures from another history, directed by Kalu Oji who lived his formative years in Lambton and attended North Lambton Primary School and Lambton High School. Plus, the heartwarming short Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge based on an adaptation of the popular children's book by Mem Fox, produced by local talent Caleb Irwin, who grew up in North Lambton, attended St Phillips Waratah and graduated from Newcastle University.

Aussie highlights also include the premiere Cold Water, starring industry legend Bruce Spence, who delivers an electrifying performance as a man for whom the past cannot be divorced from the present, Ashes, written and directed by Georgina Haigh (The Sapphires, Back to the Rafters), who stars alongside comedy masters Michael Caton and Michala Banas; and the winner of the Panasonic Award for Best Australian Short Film (Oscar® Qualifying), Yeah The Boys Equal parts larrikin, brutal, and tender, this choreographic short film scored by The Avalanches is an observation of Australian masculine identity and our nation’s relationship with drinking culture.

At 9pm catch the delightful Short Laughs Comedy and discover a clever off-kilter selection of funny shorts from across the world. Highlights include the delightful UK short Linda by comedian Joe Lycett, about a woman whose tall tales and colorful life seem too good to be true. From Australia, laugh-out-loud at Room For One More and the fun outback tale The Bank Manager, a delightfully entertaining short based on the true events of a 1932 bank heist in Cloncurry; starring Gyton Grantly (Underbelly), enjoy the highly humorous NZ film Good Luck where its hilarious introduction to life for newborns is mandatory viewing.