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SA short film bound for US festival

South Australian emerging director Sean Lahiff hopes more international success for his short film Smashed will drive his career to the next level.

Jun 16, 2017, updated Jun 16, 2017
Emerging director Sean Lahiff.

Emerging director Sean Lahiff.

After success at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, Smashed has just screened at the Sydney Film Festival and is heading for Palm Springs International ShortFest in California later this month.

But Lahiff won’t be on a plane to the US for the festival. He’s too busy working, editing a new sci-fi thriller with David Arquette called The Wheel.

“I’m also getting ready to start editing the new Wolf Creek series for Stan and Screentime, which is due to start shooting early in July,” he says from an editing studio in Adelaide.

“I’m looking at a number of other new projects at present.”

Lahiff, one of the first Bachelor (Creative Arts) graduates at Flinders University, has worked on a range of film projects, from Aussie cult horror to Hollywood blockbusters, including The Hunger Games, The Great Gatsby, Gravity, Wolf Creek 2 and The Darkness.

He also edited the new feature film Jungle, which will open the 2017 Melbourne International Film Festival in August for its world premiere. Starring Daniel Radcliffe, the film is directed by Wolf Creek director Greg McLean and set in the depths of the Amazon jungles.

Smashed is described as a coming-of-age story told from the perspective of adolescent males.

The low-budget film scooped the pool at the SA Screen Awards this year, taking five local awards – Best Short (for Michael Clarkin), Best Directing (Sean Lahiff), Best Cinematography (Maxx Corkindale), Best Editing (Sean Lahiff) and Best Sound Design (Andrew Graue).

Clarkin, Lahiff and scriptwriter Dave Haddin were also behind Too Dark, a companion piece to Smashed, which took out two awards in 2016 (Best Performance and Best Sound Design).

Other Flinders graduates were among the winners at this year’s 19th annual SA Screen Awards, including Kirsty Stark for Walter (Best Comedy), which was a runner-up at the 2016 St Kilda Film Festival.

Stark produced the ABC iView web series Goober, which was a finalist for Best Web Series, won this year by Alex Keay for Almost Midnight (Keay was also named Best Emerging Producer; Almost Midnight featured direction by Stephen Banham from Flinders). Writer-director Banham won Best Screenplay for Heaps Good Hostel at the 2016 SA Screen Awards.

The Independent Spirit Award was won by Stephanie Jaclyn, another emerging writer-director and Flinders graduate, in recognition of her web series called Freemales, a six-episode rom-com series made by young women for young women. This award caps a stellar start to the year for Jaclyn, who recently won an inaugural Helpmann Fellowship to develop her skills and network in London.

“Across all nominations there was a diverse range of funded and grassroot filmmakers stamping their mark on the industry,” said Gail Kovatseff, director of awards organiser Media Resource Centre.

“For the first time in nearly a decade the Best Feature Film category was populated entirely by no-budget and crowdfunded feature-makers, highlighting the arrival of a new generation of self-motivated, independent filmmakers.”

Kovatseff said filmmakers such as Sean Lahiff, with “vast experience in features in craft roles”, had made major step forward as lead creatives in award-winning shorts.

“The awards recognised both the changing nature of the industry and the growing breadth of filmmaking in SA, with filmmakers taking up national opportunities while continuing to work locally.”

A scene from ‘The Elderly Gentleman’, voted Best Non-Narrative for Flinders graduate Paul Froza.

Among the new faces on the podium were recent Flinders graduate Paul Froza, who won Best Non-Narrative for The Elderly Gentleman; producer-director-writer Emily McCallan for Best Documentary Komorebi; producer James Whitrow and director-writer Ben Cluse for Best Drama Postcards from Nowhere, and Adam Lemmy for Best Music Video with In Your Fire (Wasted Wanderers).  The Flinders University Best Feature Award was won by Nima Raoofi for Charlotte.

Taking home two awards on the night last month was yet another Flinders graduate, Jeremy Nicholas, who won the Carclew Young Filmmaker of the Year Award and Best Screenplay for Variation On A Theme of Violence.

Producer Richard Chataway and director-writer Michael Cusack won Best Animation for Afterall. The pair won the same category in 2013 for Sleight of Hand. 

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