I have just this minute walked through the door after enjoying the opening night festivities of this years Gold Coast Film Festival. This year included a red carpet welcoming, a screening of Wes Andersen’s latest comedy The Grand Budapest Hotel and even a complementary glass of bubbly before the screening.
While I most probably won’t get a review out for the film until Monday evening at the earliest because of a rather irksome presentation (That I have yet to really make a start on) being due at the start of next week, no number of assignments are going to stop me from taking a few minutes to enthuse why all South-East Queenslanders should take advantage of what is available on their doorstep over the next ten days.
Supanova This Weekend, Multiple Anime Screenings the Next!
This weekend, the Gold Coast is set to play host to the first Supanova: Pop Culture Expo of the year just across the road from where the Gold Coast Film Festival is being held. While to be honest there aren’t that many anime guests at the expo this year, they will be playing host to Veronica Taylor and Eric Stuart who voiced Ash and Brock / James in the Pokemon English dub as well as the three major anime publishers for the country, the cosplay championships and many stalls that stock the latest English and imported anime goods. Plenty to spend a day or two going through!
Then after you have had a whole week to recuperate, you can attend the Gold Coast Film Festival on the 12th April 2014 for screenings of Bayonetta: Bloody Fate, Anime Mirai and Road to Ninja: Naruto the Movie. This can then be followed up the day after with their screening of The Monkey King 3D (Da Nao Tian Gong).
This is definitely the fortnight for anime fans in Queensland!
Because of The REELLIFE Seminars / Panels / Workshops on Offer
Conveniently held on both weekends of the festival, the Gold Coast Film Festival and nearby Academy of Design will be playing host to a number of free seminars throughout the event. These seminars will have a focus on different aspects of the film industry with some big names in attendance. For example, at 10AM this Saturday they have the Producer of Saving Mr Banks (My personal favourite film of 2014 so far), Ian Collie, holding a seminar on the “ever-changing role of the producer in the shifting climate of Australian film and television” while on the 12th April they are calling in Pozible co-founder Alan Crabbe and director Aaron Wilson to discuss crowdfunding before the première of Mr. Wilson’s new film Canopy.
They are free, they can provide a budding film director / producer / anything with even more inspiration and they are bound to be interesting at the very least.
The Range of Films Available
While they may not have been able to best last years feat for the anime fan in terms of acquiring the world première of Makoto Shinkai’s The Garden of Words… it is hard to deny that they have a fantastic range of films for all audiences ranging from animated features to English live-action to international live-action subtitled into English. As someone who has never really covered film until this year, I have found ten films I intend on going to see during the event, and possibly even more!
Please check out the reviews for all of them when they go live… however I would hate to see someone left bitterly disappointed that they ended up skipping the film when they had the opportunity to go see it.
and who knows…. the more popular the festival might mean the more we see done next year. Anime fans experienced what should have been nearly impossible last year… maybe we could see something like that again!
