The 2012 Gold Coast Film Festival, presented by Australia Fair Shopping Centre has drawn to a close with another year of stellar results. Attendance numbers continued their upwards spike from the last three years with the festival boasting attendance of over 8,000, making it the biggest festival in its 10 year history.
Event highlights this year included the:-
- Red carpet gala opening and sell out Australian premiere of Australian/Finnish/German coproduction Iron Sky. The film was partially shot on the Gold Coast and after opening night the film went on to sell out the second session and 50% of an encore third session on only 24hours of sales.
- Near sell out screenings of Joss Wheedon’s The Cabin in the Woods, A Deeper Shade of Blue, The Professional Idiot, Kicking Off the White Shoes and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2.
- Australian premiere of anime film Bleach the Movie: Hell Verse, and other Bleach focused anime sessions with international festival guests, principle voice actor Masakazu Morita and director Noryiuki Abe.
- Free secondary schools film seminars day including international special guest speaker, sci-fi author Alan Dean Foster.
- The 2012 Audience Award for Queensland Showcase films was won by The Professional Idiot. Nick McLean made his directorial debut, delighting audiences with the hilarious comedy. Produced by Kris Maric and Craig Kockinski (Savages Crossing) the movie stars Simon Gray and Robert Reitano.
The major Audience Award prize is full registration to the Professional Certificate of Executive Screen Production from the Sir Zelman Cowen Centre at Victoria University. The course was developed in co-operation with the Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA). The prize also includes return airfares from the Gold Coast to Sydney, and six night’s accommodation over the course weekends.
“The audience award was very close this year with only one vote between The Professional Idiot and Kicking Off The White Shoes. This is a testament to how well supported the local films are in the GCFF,” said Festival Director, Casey Marshall Siemer.
Ms Marshall Siemer said one of the biggest highlights of the festival was seeing how much fun the fans had at the Harry Potter screening which was introduced by Supanova guests James and Oliver Phelps.
“Fans came in costume and really got into the spirit of the event by yelling out their favourite lines at the screen, cheering for the characters and having a great time celebrating the Harry Potter culture. We will definitely do another fan screening of this nature in 2013,” she said
“I would certainly feel confident attributing our spike in attendance to the support and interest from Supanova and Supanova fans. It has been my aim from the beginning to encourage people to see this week in April as “QPOW: Queensland Pop Culture Week. A week where people come to the Gold Coast for a week to attend pop culture events like Supanova and the GCFF.”
The GCFF will be back in 2013 running April 18-28 and will again coincide with the Gold Coast Supanova expo, April 20-21, due to its three year cultural partnership between the GCFF and Supanova Pop Culture Industries. This partnership is exclusive to the Gold Coast Film Festival and no other film festival in Australia will be afforded the same alignment. The 2013 film festival program will include Australian premieres, pop culture films, encore event fan screenings, seminars, master classes, a film related pop culture art exhibition, a program of new release anime films and much more.
The GCFF will also host a handful of special event screenings throughout the year and enthusiasts are encouraged to follow the event on Facebook or Twitter or via its newsletter to be notified of when these events happen.