With its natural beauty, temperate climate, budding infrastructure and population of highly trained film professionals, why shouldn’t Noosa have a film industry and film festival to rival any in the world?
Aiming to make it happen, the Sunny Coast Showdown teamed with Rolls Royce, Noosa Waterfront Restaurant, Saturate, Hot 91, In Noosa and Sunshine Coast Screen Collective for a cocktail party last Saturday to raise funds and attract patrons for locally produced films.
Sunny Coast Showdown, co-founded by Powderfinger’s Jon Coghill and US Survivor producer Dan Munday, is a not-for-profit talent and idea incubator where successful applicants receive funding, support and mentoring to develop and produce their projects.
It aims to give local screenwriters, filmmakers and crew an opportunity to produce and deliver great projects and showcase them at a community festival event.
Jon Coghill told guests at the event at Noosa Waterfront Restaurant how, as a 10-year-old boy growing up in Nambour, he was “smashing out“ Phil Collins on his drums one day when there was a knock on the window from a passerby.
Expecting to be told to keep the noise down he was elated when the man shouted out, “Yeah, you rock“.
That feeling drawn from creative expression is what he wants to nurture in others with Sunny Coast Showdown, an organisation about five years in the making which began with an idea for it he shared with friend Dan Munday, a fellow Sunshine Coast boy, who grew up at Yandina, and Dan backed it.
“We can do that,“ Dan told him.
There’s been a local product in Noosa for a while and Sunshine Coast Screen Collective has been working to bring industry professionals together, Dan said.
But with most professionals who live locally travelling across the world for their work in film and television, Sunny Coast Showdown aims to nurture ideas, create work in the area and build up crew needed for a local industry.
Thinking big, the organisation expects to gain a reputation to produce multimillion dollar films to be made locally with benefits to flow across the community.
“If we’re on the map, we have an industry,“ Dan said.
“We can do that through independent film and television.“
Last year Sunny Coast Showdown provided funding of $5000 per project and mentoring for six projects chosen from 110 submissions with one film featured at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival.
This year they aim to provide more funding and are calling for submissions for film and TV project ideas with the works expected to be delivered by the end of May.
The cocktail event including auction raised funds for the projects and the group are calling for more funds, sponsors, patrons and participants.
For more information, visit sunnycoastshowdown.com.au
