Tropfest, the world’s largest short film festival, today announced that it will take a series of short film screenings to South Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe in 2014, paving the way for further expansion plans in the coming years.
Tropfest Managing Director, Michael Laverty, will visit Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg and Pretoria this month, as a guest of the The Australian High Commission in Pretoria, to present a series of short film screenings to South African audiences. The film program will comprise highlights from former Tropfest Australia winners and finalists between the years 2005 and December 2013. Tropfest films will also be screened at events in Kenya and Zimbabwe this month.
Tropfest, which had humble beginnings in a local café in Sydney two decades ago, has grown to become the world’s largest short film festival, with competitions now held in Australia, South East Asia, New Zealand and the Middle East.
Tropfest is committed to fostering filmmaking talent at an international level and offers a ground-breaking opportunity for filmmakers to showcase their skills in front of the largest live audience a short film can get.
Festival organisers hope to establish an African version of the competition in the future:
“The massive expansion of Tropfest around the globe conveys a worldwide appetite for fresh storytelling voices. It is so exciting to have Tropfest travel to Africa. We know that there is an enormous community of storytellers in this region, and we hope to one day establish a local platform for these filmmakers - with a global audience to share their stories with”, said Tropfest Founder and Director, John Polson.
Australia’s High Commissioner to South Africa, HE Mr Graeme Wilson, added: “I am proud that Australia is supporting this important cultural exchange in the film sector, and hope that Tropfest will be well received by South African audiences. This festival forms part of a larger program of cultural and sporting events planned to coincide with this year’s 20th anniversary of democracy celebrations, which will showcase the strong and diverse Australia-South Africa relationship to the broader public.”
For more information about Tropfest’s global events, head to www.tropfest.com/au
Tropfest
Tropfest is Australia’s most prestigious short film festival and one of its most iconic cultural events. It is also the largest short film festival in the world. Founded in 1993 by film director John Polson as a small screening for family and friends at Sydney’s Tropicana Café, the festival now attracts a national event audience of around 150,000 people. The event is hosted in Sydney with a live national broadcast on SBS 2. The short film competition is unique in that every film must be made specifically for Tropfest, will premiere at Tropfest Australia and include the Tropfest Signature Item (TSI), which changes each year. 16 Finalists are selected from an average 650 entries. Tropfest has expanded internationally to now include new competitions and festivals in North America, (New York), the Middle East, New Zealand and South East Asia.
JOHN POLSON – Founder/Director, Tropfest
John Polson is an award-winning actor and director, as well as the founder and director of the World’s Largest Short Film Festival, Tropfest. John is the creative force behind Tropfest’s success and global expansion, from its humble beginnings as a screening of one of his own short films at Sydney’s Tropicana Cafe in 1993.
Tropfest in Australia attracts a live audience of around 150,000 people on a single night, as well as hundreds of thousands more via a simultaneous television broadcast. Tropfest has been held in New York, Berlin, London, Bangkok, Beijing, Aspen with plans to enter many other countries. First and foremost, though, John’s passion lies behind the camera as a film director.
Creating his first short film AN EVENING WITH HERMAN in the early 1980s, John has since garnered worldwide attention with feature films such as SIAM SUNSET (starring Linus Roache), which won awards at numerous film festivals around the world (including the Cannes International Film Festival). He also directed the US feature films SWIMFAN (starring Jesse Bradford, Erica Christensen) and HIDE AND SEEK (starring Robert De Niro, Dakota Fanning), both of which opened at Number 1 at the US box office. John’s latest feature film TENDERNESS, in which he directed Russell Crowe and Laura Dern, was released in 2009.
Today, in addition to his feature film work, John flexes his creative muscle on the small screen as a producer and director on shows such as FRINGE, THE MENTALIST, ELEMENTARY, THE GOOD WIFE and FLASH FORWARD. John is currently developing a number of projects as both director and producer in the US and Australia.