Festival to inspire creative artists
Jessie Tapara
Public relations editorial intern
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia
A student-made short film will be one of the first submitted for a creative arts festival Avondale College will host in March this year.
Time
“But where is my time for God?” Ray Moaga features in Josh Hamilton and Nick Lindsay’s short film Time. The two students plan to enter Time into a competition as part of a creative arts festival Avondale College will host in March this year.
Josh Hamilton and Nick Lindsay produced Time for their Studies in TV and Video Production class in semester one this past year. The film has already screened at Avondale and Josh and Nick have also received requests to screen it at youth rallies in Adelaide and in Melbourne.
Time depicts a day in the life of education and theology student Ray Moaga, who provides the narration. A stylised dramatic sequence in which dark figures lasso each of Ray’s limbs until all four are restricted intersperses this footage. The film concludes with the line, “But where is my time for God?”
Public relations officer Brenton Stacey encouraged Josh and Nick to enter Time into the filmmaking competition of the Manifest Creative Arts Festival. “Our judges will be looking at the medium and the message,” says Brenton, “and Time’s high production values and simple but powerful storytelling may just earn it high marks in both categories.”
Josh says Time fulfils two purposes. “Nick and I wanted to make a film not just to complete an assignment but also to share a little bit more of our faith.” Nick has already made 15 short films. “The first decent one was for my Dad’s chapel,” he says—Nick’s father is a high school principal. “That was in Year 8, so I’ve been sort of making them ever since, probably two or three a year.”
The Great Controversy
With an $800 cash prize on offer for the best film in the competition, Josh and Nick may also submit their second film, The Great Controversy, which is currently in production. “It portrays the conflict between good and evil and shows how Jesus has won,” says Nick. He and Josh shot one of the scenes—Lucifer’s rebellion—at 8.00 AM on a Sunday, inviting other Avondale students via Facebook to participate as extras. “The Great Controversy is going to be bigger and better [than Time],” says Josh.
Nick’s advice to aspiring filmmakers who also plan to enter the competition: “Whatever you do, make it meaningful.”
Manifest Creative Arts Festival
The Manifest Creative Arts Festival, coordinated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific through Adventist Media Network and Avondale, is the first of an annual festival celebrating and encouraging the production of creative arts for ministry. The focus this year is on filmmaking, song composing and writing.
The festival will launch at Avondale’s weekly Forum on Wednesday, March 23. It will include an academic lecture, at which Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church senior minister Dr Bruce Manners will present findings from a study of Hope Channel viewers, on Thursday and workshops, networking and a worship service on Friday. Dr Grenville Kent will speak at the service about the making of his short film, The Cross. The festival ends with a worship service, featuring Kay Rizzo, the author of more than 50 books, the launch of Adventist Media Network’s new DVD-based evangelistic series Beyond Search and an awards ceremony on Saturday.
SONscreen
The inspiration for the festival came from SONscreen, an annual film festival organised by the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America. SONscreen co-founder Stacia D Wright will attend Manifest and present two SONscreen Showcases.
“Too often we underestimate the importance of the arts, but these are integral to communicating our message of hope,” says Neale Schofield, the chief executive officer of Adventist Media Network. “ Creative artists need to be recognised and we need to create a space for them to flourish in the church.”
Visit www.artsmanifest.info/ for more information about the festival.