ONLINE CONTENT|| Urban Action Film Forum - Independent Filmmaking in Australia

Just letting you know that last year’s event URBAN ACTION FILM FORUM is available online to watch. We had a great turnout last year and some insightful advice and comments from our guest speakers can be watched via these links.

1.     Guest Speaker – Antony Szeto

2.     Guest Speaker – Craig Anderson

3.     Guest Speaker – Ali Kadhim

4.     Guest Speaker – Warren Coulton

5.     Guest Speaker –Igor Breakenback

6.     Urban Action Film Forum Snippet Teaser

About MARIA TRAN, still editing projects (Quest for Jackie Chan etc..) and currently working on TV documentary “Once Upon a Time in Cabramatta” due for SBS in 2012.

The follow up event will be DIGITAL SERIES - FILM CLUB, and will be an explosion of short films/ teasers/ trailers that highlight some of the guerrilla work coming out of Western Sydney. 

MEDIA RELEASE | July 2011

Join the Digital Series Club

Are you a actor, writer, filmmaker or other content creator? Want to score that shot to make it to the big screen? Come and connect to the new Western Sydney initiative, Digital Series.

In recent years, Western Sydney has been experiencing an upsurge of digital content makers, where for the big screen or the tube, west is the best place to get connected.  Digital Series is a new web of media creator people, ideas and resources that enable young people from culturally dives to creative projects, host a series of workshops and meetings in the Western Sydney Area, which would serve to both motivate and to inspire.

Digital Series will be launching on the 30 July, 7pm at Fairfield School of Arts, 19 Harris St, Fairfield.

The highlight of the night features a selection of 10+ locally made short films being screened.  In addition, 10 free community-based workshops will be revealed on topics of acting, scriptwriting, directing and visual arts.

Guests will hear first hand from  the makers of these films, their experiences and upcoming local and international productions.

This event celebrates a daring, bold and innovative film project that is fuel by lots of passion and vision, scoop on how to interact and support as well as invaluable networking opportunities.

Digital Series will be held at Fairfield School of Arts, 19 Harris St, Fairfield on Saturday, 30^th July at 7pm. Spaces for this event is strictly limited so to be sure not to miss out, please RSVP to Maria on 0433 803 449 or email maria.tran85@gmail.com .

Digital Series has been proudly supported by Community First Step (CFS), Fairfield City Council, and Powerhouse Youth Theatre.

NEW INITIATIVE: Digital Series presents FILM CLUB

I can't sit still and quite excited about this new little initiative that myself, and my band of merry die-hard filmmaker pals (*shall launch their names soon) are spending our Saturday afternoons and nights. Think of a group of indie filmmakers, loads of passion, inquisition and "action" mode attitudes, getting together, eating popcorn and drinking soda and spoiling ourselves with some old shool hidden gem film delights. So far, we've seen Woo Ping's True Legends, David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, John Landis's An American Werewolf in London to name a few. Shout out to Community First Step (CFS), especially Ranna Peera for lending us the space for our weekly meetings and we can't wait to launch our initiative on the 30 July at the Powerhouse Youth Theatre.

In the meantime, if you are from Western Sydney, got films that you want expose + have a 30 sec pitch on yourself and want to be featured at the FILM CLUB SHOWDOWN Event, email maria.tran85@gmail.com asap! Our closing date is in a couple of days, 15th Friday, 2011.

FILM CLUB - Session #1

I'm very proud of the organic turnout of FILM CLUB #1 - Brainstorming Session. We had a turnout of 16 people of all levels of film, performing arts and graphics design background attend this intimate yet productive planning session.

Half were new to the little space of "The Shed" (some got lost), but the 2.5 hours came across with some serious introductions and a lot of inspiring visions of the development of Western Sydney and storytelling from culturally diverse.

Most was intrigued to have a "Film Club" a weekly place to connect, share projects on both from a hobbyist and also a competitive perspective. A few reported back with their independent year long project such as Adrian Castro's impressive short film "Django", which later was screened during night. Dragon Vision Production head director, Quan Tran spoke about is collaboration with Poohead Productions, Vinh Nguyen, on a recent documentation of a local Buddhist community event.

Stephanie In, a local emerging illustrator and comics designer expressed her visions wanting to develop herself as an artist via collaboration with other peoples projects. Thug Ng, a 2nd year film student, expressed her frustrations and censorship throughout her training of making "mainstream" content, which she feels does not represent her voice. We were later joined by Youtuber Tuan Le Dang (emerging youtuber and CCD worker), David Vo, Sam Gosper and the crew from Team 9Lives.

MY BACKGROUND
With the inception of an initiative of my very own FILM CLUB, I've started to believe in the film spirit once more post Rumble Pictures. For those who didn't know the story of Fairfield and it's film forte, it started bubbling in 2003 with the head crews of Rumble Pictures, Team 9Lives and Trinity Productions. These teams would battle it out year after year at the local shortcuts film festival held at the Fairfield School of Arts, dishing out action and the comedy genre. Ebbs and flows occurred during my years with Rumble, seeing the success and completion of "Maximum Choppage: Round 2" and "Downtown Rumble" and my long employment at Information & Cultural Exhange (ICE) as the Youth Digital Cultures coordinator. Now, I'm wrapping up with ICE soon, and will be making the transition to SBS commissioned program "Once Upon A Time In Cabramatta", a 1.7 mil epic TV production that is due to air in 2012. In the meantime, the "Quest for Jackie Chan!" is still on, the first shoot with Immi Ho Anh Mai is around the corner (4th June) and I'm so proud to have a team of uniquely skilled and dedicated team of multimedia & filmmakers, whom I believe, will be the future creative leaders. 

GET TOGETHER: Film Club #2 Meet Up

Last Saturday was another session of Film Club #2 and we had in attendance Marie Setiawan, Laurent Boitex, Quan Tran, Thuy Ng, Adrian Castro and myself. Another fully charged get together of gungho and learn on the fly filmmakers who want to eventually see their stories on the big screen. This week, Marie continued her focus on the essence of human drama. Drama film genres are perhaps one of the hardest to market internationally, but its deeper level of character development and inter-tangle of emotional conflict has its appeal.

Marie took us through some script breakdowns, and also a big run through on scene and character objectives, goals and actions. We watched the intro to Quentin Tarrintino's "Reservoir Dogs" in regards to the competency vs social hierarchy of characters. The final exercise of the night got me some dibs in directing a short scene from "The Full Monty".

Anyhow, I'll be plugged in most Saturday nights from 6-9pm with this group for the next few months. Shout out to Marie Setiawan for her great work.