By Tate Papworth
Ghosts, goblins, laughs and Sunshine will light up the silver screen during the eighth annual Sunshine Short Film Festival.
This year the festival will immediately follow the Sunshine Business Association’s Halloween street party in Hampshire Road – a perfect tie-in to this year’s theme, comedy with a scary twist.
Festival co-ordinator Steve Pereira said there was a particular emphasis on local stories in this year’s entries.
“When this began eight years ago, we started off in collaboration with Sunshine Business Association to try and get people to tell positive stories about living in Sunshine and to get people excited about living in the western region,” he said.
“At that time there was a lot of negative publicity about the area and people didn’t really want to claim that they lived here. We wanted to change the story and narrative and we thought the best way to do that was to get people sharing their stories of what it’s actually like living here.”
Almost a decade old, the festival has grown in popularity each year.
“This year we’re really, really excited,” Mr Pereira said. “We had over 70 entries, which is a record for us, but what’s particularly exciting is that we had a record number of entries from locals.
“We got Vietnamese ghosts, Korean goblins and Sudanese heroes, the diversity of the area is shown throughout the entries.”
Mr Pereira said he expected an enthusiastic turnout, particularly off the back of the Halloween street party.
“We’re really happy to be partnering with the Sunshine Business Association to bring this to the street.
“We know Halloween is happening, it’s inevitable, but we want to put a local spin on it.”
The films will be screened at Village Cinemas from 6pm on Thursday, October 31.
