FEATURED EVENT SHOWCASE
VIEW FESTIVAL PROGRAM
A Few Less Men
A destination wedding in Australia goes horribly wrong when Luke gets drunk and falls off a cliff. The accident-prone boys, David, Tom and Graham suddenly find themselves transporting their friends corpse back to London, where his grieving Aunt is already planning the funeral. When their private jet crash lands in the bush, the boys must…
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Bad Girls
Amy Anderson is a bad girl. An adopted only-child, her relationship with her parents is at breaking point. Interned in the familys new designer house in the country, Amy attempts suicide but is saved at the last moment by Chloe, the Andersons new cleaner. Seeing a role model for their troubled daughter, Amys parents encourage…
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Berlin Syndrome
From Australian director Cate Shortland (Lore, Somersault, The Secret Life of Us), this gripping thriller tells the story of photographer Claire (Therese Palmer). Alone and adrift in Berlin, she meets charismatic local Andi and there is an instant attraction between them. But what begins as a passionate romance takes a sinister turn when Clare wakes…
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BMX Bandits
An absolute dead-set Aussie classic. Here is a film that combined the fun of riding BMX bikes fast with the excitement of committing crimes gnarly and doing something for the local kids. This is the film that introduced fans to Nicole Kidman in what is widely considered her finest role as a trolly collector and…
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Breakfast with the Stars – Roy Billing
Official Vision Splendid Festival Patron and much loved actor from Jack Irish, The Dish, Underbelly (…and the list goes on), join Roy Billing OAM for Breakfast with the Stars. He’s such a great bloke to meet and engage with this special setting.
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Breakfast With the Stars with Director, Megan Riakos
Join us for Breakfast with the Stars with the talented Megan Riakos, writer and director of the new Australian thriller set in the vineyards “Crushed” (which you can also see Friday 30 June @ 2.30pm in Winton Shire Hall)
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Breakfast With the Stars with Edwina Exton
Edwina Exton, writer of new Aussie comedy drama romance, Spin Out.
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Breakfast With the Stars with Joe Weatherstone
Joe Weatherstone, producer of Killing Ground, starring Aaron Pedersen as you’ve never seen him!
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Breakfast With the Stars with Madeline Kennedy
Actress Madeline Kennedy of the new film “Thicker Than Water”, including acting debut by singer/songwriter, Pete Murray.
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Breakfast With the Stars with Margaret Pomeranz and Sally Aitken
Margaret Pomeranz and Sally Aitken, Director of David Stratton: A Cinematic Life.
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Breakfast With the Stars with Trish Lake & Megan Raikos
Megan Raikos writer/director of new Australian mystery thriller set in the grapevines, “Crush”
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Crushed
Ellia, a young woman returns home to her family vineyard after her father dies in a freak accident on the winery. Ellia finds her mother and uncle fiercely hostile after her long absence and her younger sister Harriett attempting to hold together the family business with the help of their brother. A police investigation reveals…
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Dance Academy
The feature film based on the incredibly successful two-time Emmy nominated Australian TV series, Dance Academy, that saw a group of teenagers through the ups-and-downs of elite dance training at the National Academy of Dance. Picking up eighteen months after the television series finale, the much-loved characters have moved on from the Academy and are…
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David Stratton: A Cinematic Life
For most people, movies are entertainment. For one man, they’re a way of life. A superb homage to the story of the Australian Film Industry and its history as told through the life and loves of our favourite film critic, David Stratton. This is an affectionate and at times moving treatment of Strattons passion for…
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Don’t Tell
A film that delves into the true story of one woman’s legal case that broke the silence on child sex abuse in Queensland. Based on true events that changed the law. Based on lawyer Stephen Roche’s book ‘Don’t Tell’ is the story of a survivor, Lyndal (Sara West), a young woman sexually abused as an…
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Early Winter
David, a man in his forties, lives a predictable life with his wife Maya and their two children who seem to leave a mess wherever they go. To please his wife with the latest gadgets, he works solitary shift work, days and nights, as a janitor in a retirement home sitting patiently and comforting the…
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FREE Kids Club
Kids can get hands on and create in this immersive kids club with the team from Heads Up Film Services. Daily – 9.30 – 10.30 am (except Monday and Friday are 2.30pm), open-air Royal Theatre Throughout the week of the festival, special activities for the juniors will be made, including “G” and “PG” rated films.…
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FREE Kids Club
Throughout the week of the festival, special activities for the juniors will be made, including “G” rated films and hands on creative activities and Kids Club at the Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival . It’s Queensland school holidays, so there will also be kids activities at the library, community centre and nearby at the Australian Age…
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FREE Kids Club
Throughout the week of the festival, special activities for the juniors will be made, including “G” rated films and hands on creative activities and Kids Club at the Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival . It’s Queensland school holidays, so there will also be kids activities at the library, community centre and nearby at the Australian Age…
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FREE Kids Club
Throughout the week of the festival, special activities for the juniors will be made, including “G” rated films and hands on creative activities and Kids Club at the Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival . It’s Queensland school holidays, so there will also be kids activities at the library, community centre and nearby at the Australian Age…
Read More
FREE Kids Club
Throughout the week of the festival, special activities for the juniors will be made, including “G” rated films and hands on creative activities and Kids Club at the Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival . It’s Queensland school holidays, so there will also be kids activities at the library, community centre and nearby at the Australian Age…
Read More
FREE Kids Club
Throughout the week of the festival, special activities for the juniors will be made, including “G” rated films and hands on creative activities and Kids Club at the Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival . It’s Queensland school holidays, so there will also be kids activities at the library, community centre and nearby at the Australian Age…
Read More
FREE Kids Club
Throughout the week of the festival, special activities for the juniors will be made, including “G” rated films and hands on creative activities and Kids Club at the Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival . It’s Queensland school holidays, so there will also be kids activities at the library, community centre and nearby at the Australian Age…
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Free Masterclass – Inside the Writer’s Room
Screenwriter Elise McCredie ( Nowhere Boys, Sunshine, Jack Irish) will blow open the secret door of the writers’ room. Bring along your TV drama ideas and watch how ideas get interrogated, dissected and reformed within the hothouse of a mocked up writers’ room. If you want to know how to get inside a writers’ room…
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FREE Writers Lab with Edwina Exton
Join Edwina Exton, the writer of new Aussie comedy drama romance film “Spin Out” – a tribute to the Australian B&S! On Saturday 24 June and Sunday 25 June, in this two part Writers Lab, discover the ins and outs of developing TV series concepts (the differences between film & TV writing, structuring a TV…
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FREE Writers Lab with Edwina Exton
join Edwina Exton, the writer of new Aussie comedy drama romance film “Spin Out” – a tribute to the Australian B&S!
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Goldstone
The remarkable Aaron Pedersen (Mystery Road) reprises his role as the troubled Indigenous detective Jay Swan. On the trail of a missing person, Jay finds himself in the small mining town of Goldstone. What seems like a simple ‘light duties’ investigation opens into a web of crime and corruption. This is a taut, complex and…
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Hotel Coolgardie
At a remote pub, on a dusty highway between Australias most isolated city and its largest gold pit, the arrival every three months of a new pair of foreign backpackers to work the bar is a keenly anticipated event. Fresh off the plane and attracted by the idea of an authentic outback experience, Finnish travellers…
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Hounds of Love
It is Christmastime 1987 in sun-baked Perth suburbia where nothing much seems to happen other than the outwardly normal Evelyn and John White (Emma Booth, Stephen Curry) cruising their neighbourhood in search of a new victim to capture, torture and murder before enjoying a mid-afternoon nap. What will happen when they pick up runaway teenager…
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Jasper Jones
Adapted from Craig Silvey’s bestselling novel and featuring a stellar cast including Toni Collette, Hugo Weaving, Levi Miller, Angourie Rice, Dan Wyllie and Aaron McGrath, Jasper Jones is the story of Charlie Bucktin, a bookish boy of 14 living in a small rural town. In the dead of night during the scorching summer Charlie is…
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Killing Ground
An idyllic bend in the river in the middle of the bush proves an inhospitable place for a romantic holiday retreat in a pulse-racing thriller that is reminiscent of Deliverance, Funny Games and Wolf Creek. A young couple head off for a romantic New Year’s break at a remote riverside spot. They are disappointed to…
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Lion
The film that has re-written all the records and thrust debut director Garth Davis into the spotlight with global box office receipts making this film both a standout critically and commercially. As Leigh Paatsch writes, It has been way too long since Australian cinema found a true story the world needed to hear, and then…
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Love Serenade
Two sisters will do anything to hook the right man. In the desolate outback town of Sunray there’s little to do but fish or listen to the local radio station. Dimity, an introverted, unassuming waitress at a Chinese restaurant with hardly any customers, has never been in a relationship. Her sister, Vicki-Ann, a raucous hairdresser,…
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Mary and Max
A wonderful animated film by the master storyteller, Adam Elliott. This is a tale of friendship between two unlikely penpals: plump, myopic eight-year old little Mary (voiced by Toni Collette) growing up in suburban Melbourne and fortysomething Max Horovitz (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an obese, friendless New York man with Aspergers syndrome. Lonely and unloved, Mary…
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Masterclass – Legend of Ben Hall Director of Photography
Peter Szilveszter is a creative filmmaker who has taken his passion for storytelling and has applied it to many different aspects of filmmaking throughout his career. More recently Peter worked as the Director of Photography on Australian feature film “The Legend of Ben Hall” (2016) and is now emerging as one of Australia’s newest and…
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Masterclass with producer Bill Leimbach
Film Producers are responsible for supervising, managing and coordinating all aspects of production from beginning to end – financial and creative responsibilities, physical production, distribution and marketing. In our MasterClass, over three mornings, Producer Bill Leimbach will present the skills and knowledge needed to take on these tasks. This is for budding producers, as well…
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Masterclass with producer Bill Leimbach
Film Producers are responsible for supervising, managing and coordinating all aspects of production from beginning to end – financial and creative responsibilities, physical production, distribution and marketing. In our MasterClass, over three mornings, Producer Bill Leimbach will present the skills and knowledge needed to take on these tasks. This is for budding producers, as well…
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Masterclass with producer Bill Leimbach
Film Producers are responsible for supervising, managing and coordinating all aspects of production from beginning to end – financial and creative responsibilities, physical production, distribution and marketing. In our MasterClass, over three mornings, Producer Bill Leimbach will present the skills and knowledge needed to take on these tasks. This is for budding producers, as well…
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Muriel’s Wedding
Muriel is one of Australia’s best loved characters. Overweight and plain, she is the butt of her friend’s jokes yet desperate for their acceptance. Growing up in a tacky coastal resort town hasn’t offered her many options as she resorts to petty crime to maintain appearances. Muriel’s domineering father regularly belittles her and destroying her…
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My Pet Dinosaur
“Can we keep it?” That question is a lot harder to answer when the found pet in question is a dinosaur growing at an exponential rate. In an experiment gone wrong, Jake accidentally makes a new, very unusual pet and the already troubled town is plunged deeper into chaos. Jakes friends and new girl Abbie…
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Napoleon
Take a wild journey into the Australian Outback with one of the animal kingdoms greatest ever explorers – golden retriever pup and all-round adventurer Napoleon. Tired of his day-to-day existence as a modest house pet, Napoleon wants to become a wild dog of the land. So he sets out in a basket tethered to helium…
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No Worries
Young Matilda is a gutsy Australian country kid whose world shatters when the rural recession forces her parents from their land. Many local farmers have already gone bust, but her parents are just about holding on – until the Federal Government drops the wool price. A severe dust storm kills a lot of their stock.…
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Official Closing Party
Exchange stories, celebrate among friends and listen to live music for the last 9th and final night of the 2017 Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival.
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Official Opening Night
Join us on the “red carpet” – Winton style – for the Vision Splendid Official Opening in the open-air historic Royal Theatre with special guests and screening of a magnificent film (to be announced). Dress is strictly outback – black tie, jeans, warm bushman’s jacket (ugg boots optional 😉 )
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One Night The Moon
Set in the 1930s Australian Outback, starring singer Paul Kelly as a farmer newly settled in the area. He is the father of a girl, Emily (Memphis Kelly, his real life daughter), who disappears in the outback. This is a film about a young, white girl who got lost in the outback and died due…
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Opening Night Party
Following the Official Opening and screening, follow us next door to the famous North Gregory Hotel where you’ll have a chance to mingle, rub shoulders with film industry representatives and enjoy award winning live entertainment.
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Opening Night Premiere
Join us on the “red carpet” Winton Style, for the Official Opening Night Premiere under the stars in the Royal Theatre. Dress is strictly outback (Black Tie, jeans, bushman’s warm jacket – ugg boots optional 😉
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Qantas Short Film Competition
Join us under the stars for the screening of the Qantas Short Film Competition to see the finalists in the competition for “Women of the Outback”, and enjoy award winning short films from Griffith Film School and the University of New South Wales.
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Red Dog: True Blue
When eleven year old Mick is shipped off to his grandfather’s cattle station in the remote Pilbara region, he prepares himself for a life of dull hardship, but instead finds myth, adventure and a friendship with a scrappy, one-of-a-kind dog that will change his life forever. The film is a pure-bred progenitor of its 2011…
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Right Here: The Go-Betweens
Having shot several of their music videos, ridiculously in demand director Kriv Stenders tells the story on the seminal Queensland band, The Go Betweens claiming that this is his dream project. Formed in 1977 by Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, The Go-Betweens went on to become a hugely influential Australian music presence, enjoying huge chart…
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Rough Stuff
They call them Rovers – aimless wanderers living on the fringes of society in the vast Australian outback, looking to escape their pasts and start anew. Buzz has been to damn near every corner of the continent searching for the legendary Strays Gold – a haul that will keep him in parts and petrol for…
Read More Saturday Breakfast With the Stars with actress/writer Maya Stange and actress Sara West
Saturday Breakfast with the Stars with actress/writer Maya Stange and actress of “Don’t Tell” Sara West
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Spin Out
In a small, close-knit Australian country town, best mates Billy (Xavier Samuel) and Lucy (Morgan Griffin) form a formidable Ute driving team. But after Billy takes a car stunt too far, Lucy decides to move to the city, leaving Billy in a spin. Amid the mayhem of the town’s annual “Bachelors and Spinsters” party, Billy…
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The Cheaters
Paula Marsh decides to end her career as a thief after falling in love with Lee Travers, son of a wealthy businessman. This crime drama is one of the first Australian films to be directed by women: Isabel, Paulette and Phyllis McDonagh. The silent film will be brought to life with the musical accompaniment of…
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The Legend of Ben Hall
Ben Hall is drawn back into bushranging by the reappearance of his old friend John Gilbert. Reforming the gang, they soon become the most wanted men in Australian history. After two years on the road, bushranger Ben Hall considers surrendering to the law when his old friend John Gilbert entices him back into the game.…
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The Legend of Dogwoman
Something is rotten in the town of Jindarup. Harry Bowman, the old Dog Man, has gone missing. Margaret, the legendary Dogwoman, returns to her old home town to find out whats happened to her friend and mentor. Rumours abound. Most people believe that hes been killed by a wild beast, possibly the supposedly extinct thylacine.…
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The Well
On a remote outback farm, Hester (Pamela Rabe) takes on as home-help an emotionally unstable waif, Katherine (Miranda Otto) to help her. She responds well to Hesters kindness, but their blossoming relationship hits trouble when a car accident forces them to dump a body down the well. And then all sorts of complex and sublimely…
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Thicker Than Water
Fresh off the press, Thicker than Water will enjoy its world premiere. It is the story of Ludmiller, a young woman who struggles to maintain the unity of her family when their eldest brother, D (singer/songwriter, Pete Murray in his acting debut) a recovering drug addict, returns from rehab. Upon his surprise arrival home, her…
Read More VIRTUAL REALITY
WINTON SHIRE HALL 1.00 – 2.00pm and 4.30pm- 5.00pm Join Benjamin Richards, Director of Innovation, Cutting Edge as he shares his Virtual Reality insights. In traditional filmmaking the lines between production and post-production are pretty clear, a VFX Supervisor from post gets involved at the script stage when there are VFX elements in the story.…
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Virtual Reality (VR)
WINTON SHIRE HALL 1.00pm and 4.30pm Join Benjamin Richards, Director of Innovation, Cutting Edge as he shares his Virtual Reality insights. In traditional filmmaking the lines between production and post-production are pretty clear, a VFX Supervisor from post gets involved at the script stage when there are VFX elements in the story. In VR, every…
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What If It Works
Adrian, an irrepressibly chirpy tech nerd, has OCD. Grace, a beautiful street artist, has multiple personality disorder. It’s a love story that seems impossible. But what if it works? Based on her own family, director Romi Trower says, “if you enjoy films that walk the comedy/drama tightrope, then this is a film for you. I…
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Festival Opens in
Welcome to Vision Splendid Film Festival
The Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival is inspired by the Sundance Film Festival. It is an incorporated, non-profit organisation developed by the passion and drive of the Winton community and brought to you thanks to our visionary partners.
This iconic town in the heart of the Australian outback is the birthplace of QANTAS. Its reputation as “Hollywood in the Outback” is emerging with several major film productions including Nick Cave’s Proposition and Ivan Sen’s Mystery Road being filmed here.
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