The 22nd installment of Tropfest took place last weekend in one of the biggest festival weekends ever.
The winning film Bamboozled was directed and also starred West Australian Matt Hardie – who took the honours for both best film and best actor; also being a finalist for the 2014 February Tropfest. Hardie won a new Toyota Corolla Levin ZR car, $10,000 in prize money and a Nikon D800 with lenses. In addition to those prizes, he also won a week-long trip to Los Angeles with scheduled meeting with LA’s top film executives – courtesy of the Australian Screen Association and the Motion Picture Association .
Hardie was quoted in SMH as saying, “I feel ecstatic. I’m losing my mind.”
The Tropfest Signature Item (TSI) for this years Tropfest was – CHANGE.
Hardie’s Bamboozled embraced this theme with a comedic story about love, sex-change and revenge. However, the film has courted controversy with many Twitter commentators labeling it as ‘Transphobic’. Hardie sees his film as a comment on the obsession society has with reality television.
He told Inside Film:
“I’m not homophobic and I don’t think the movie is homophobic or transphobic. People are completely missing the point. The main character decides to sleep with the transgender person because he loves that person for who they are. But it’s not even a transgender character… it’s someone playing a trick on him. It’s more a comment on media and the extremes to which reality TV could go… It’s satirising”.
You be the judge, here is the film in it’s entirety.
Next year’s Tropfest Signature Item was also announced for both the main festival.
For Tropfest the TSI is– ‘MIRROR’
And for TropJnr it’s– ‘FLY’
So, it’s time to start thinking about how to incorporate next years TSI’s into your script.
For more info check: http://tropfest.com/au/tsi/
