Canberra is well represented in Flickerfest 2023 - Best of Australian Shorts.
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Four of the nine films in the 32nd edition of Flickerfest were made in the ACT or have strong Canberra links.
Although he now lives in Sydney, writer-director-producer Greg Moran was born in Canberra and grew up in Hughes.
His film White Lies is a comedy, inspired loosely by people he knows, about a single father (David Woodlandan) who makes up a story to get his daughter (Kyra Harlan) into a good (religious) school. The lies begin to escalate with unexpected results.
The cast includes another former Canberran, Ed Wightman, and some celebrity cameos including one by a very recognisable federal politician who, like Moran, went to St Joseph's College in Sydney.
Moran's own story is interesting and inspiring.
"I broke my neck playing rugby when I was 15," Moran, 55, says.
He spent five months in hospital and was left with no movement below his shoulders but didn't let this stop him from completing school.
"Then I went to Sydney University and got an arts degree - part of that was English and I got into short story writing and short filmmaking."
Moran made his first film, Begging for It, in 1998 and as well as making films he has been a painter, managed a winery, worked as a counsellor and comedian and helped develop and produce the children's TV show Spit It Out. Now he is undertaking a masters degree in producing at the Australian Film Television and Radio School.
Writer-director-producer Prajdnik Awasthi was awarded Special Mention of the Jury for Best Australian Animation for Marionettes (and the virtue of a lotus flower), a digitally animated film made in Canberra.
"It's the story of a mother and daughter trapped in a cyclic world of suffering," Awasthi says.
Awasthi drew on stories his mother told about his Nepalese grandmother who was a child bride.
"I never got to see my grandmother - she was mentally and physically abused by my grandfather."
The terrible situation had a harsh impact on his mother as well.
Awasthi, a graphic designer as well as a filmmaker, says Marionettes is about the domination of women in a patriarchal society. The mother and daughter are represented by marionettes, complete with strings, signifying their lowly position in a world controlled by men.
While the idea for the film came from his mother's stories, Awasthi spent a long time working on the script.
"I wanted to do something unique with it, find my own voice with it."
What resulted he describes as "a visual poem" more than a conventional narrative, making use of the lotus flower as a symbol of purity.
"No matter how dark and murky the water you grow in is, eventually you bloom."
Awasthi, 30, came to Australia in 2016 to undertake a masters degree in digital art at the Australian National University and has made several films here.
Marionettes (and the virtue of a lotus flower) is his first film drawing on his Nepalese heritage.
"Most of my work is abstract - I take inspiration from poems and paintings
The other Canberra-linked films are Callum Flynn's drama The Pleasure of Meeting Someone, about a young man dealing with loss, which was shot in Lyneham and Clear Range, and Phoebe Wolfe's The Overthrow, about two young women on a skate to Canberra for climate change.