Bohemia Village Voice

Thad & Sarah : win film-making award

Bohemian film-making duo The Golden Age scooped a ‘highly commended’ award at the recent Hastings 5-day Film Challenge for their film Looking Good, a St Leonards-based film noir featuring sock puppets [below].

The Golden Age team is Sarah Janes and Thaddeus Skews [pictured] and they won the best film award last year for their film For Biddenfew.

The overall winner this year was A Touch of Pink by Trevor Anderson – an amazingly slick production, featuring fabulous special effects that included blowing up the De La Warr pavilion.

Prizes also went to the films: The Secret Life of Milk (highly commended), Alice Turner in Pot Luck (best acting), Kuribagiwashi (best look), Checkbook Charlie (people’s choice – picked from a hat) and Poodle Flu (best laugh).

The competition, co-ordinated by Phil Smith is one of the highlights of the Coastal Currents arts festival and the Electric Palace Cinema’s concurrent Shot by The Sea film festival. Competitors have to pick the title and genre out of a hat, and script, shoot and edit a three-minute film in 5 days. Anyone can enter. Film-making experience is most definitely not required and Phil and his team even set up a special edit clinic at the university this year.

This year’s award ceremony was held at Venuu in George Street and it was packed with the film-making teams and paying film fans. A record 26 applicants returned films this year and the standard was higher than ever. There was an incredible mixture of styles and approaches on display and it was obvious some enormous effort was expended by all over the 5 tense days of the competition.

Further info: www.hastingsfilmchallenge.com