The Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) and the Sherman Centre for Culture and Ideas (SCCI) have announced the winners of the THE FUTURE OF FASHION Short Film Pitch Competition.
The competition is an initiative of SCCI in partnership with AFTRS, as part of SCCI’s inaugural Fashion Hub event series which will take place in Sydney in April 2018.
SCCI’s aim is to elevate fashion and architecture to a more prominent place alongside other mediums of creative expression by providing a vibrant platform for the exchange of challenging ideas within the broader context of culture. Fashion Hub 2018 will include leading international speakers, mini literary and film festivals, and talks, panels and workshops open to the public. The winning film may, at the discretion of SCCI and its partners, be screened at Hub events at SCCI’s event space in Paddington, or at partner venues, including the Powerhouse Museum, UTS and AFTRS.
Second and third year Bachelor of Arts: Screen and Masters AFTRS students were invited to pitch for production funding of $6,000 for a 1-2 minute film on the topic ‘the future of fashion’.
Students were required to form themselves into production teams of a minimum of three crew members and were invited to interpret the topic creatively in any way they saw fit, and in any genre: drama, experimental, documentary /mockumentary, comedy, sci-fi, animation etc.
The judging panel, led by Emile Sherman, Managing Director of See-Saw Films and Oscar-winning producer (The King’s Speech, Lion, Shame, Top of the Lake), with Neil Peplow, CEO, AFTRS, and Dr Gene Sherman, AM, founder and director of SCCI, deliberated on five shortlisted pitches and decided to reward two prizes to the following teams and projects:
WINNER | $6000 + AFTRS facilities & equipment
Who’s a Fly Bird?
Bianca Tomchin (BA Y3 2017) and Mat Harvey (BA Y3 2017)
Bianca and Mat’s pitch document explains that Who’s a Fly Bird? will reflect how fashion continues to look back to nature as a continual source of unique inspiration.
“We believe fashion has the potential to inspire a more sustainable future in the textile industry; hence, we would like to portray this through three different vignettes of birds, or people dressed interpretively as birds,” Bianca and Mat wrote.
ADDITIONAL PRIZE | $4000 + AFTRS facilities & equipment
The Future of Fashion is Queer in VR
Jack Atherton (BA Y3 2017), Rowan Yeomans (BA Y2 2017) and Andre Shannon (BA Y3 2017)
Jack, Rowan and Andre’s Virtual Reality project will look at fashion’s changing landscape and its move away from gender rules. Their pitch document says: “How can we ensure fashion evolves with new identities without erasing the past, and how can film play a part in this? For a man to wear a dress in a fashion show is the height of chic but, in real life, this can present a choice between life and death. Our film is about queer folk working with designers to represent the real fashion of our times.”