So, after a lovely lunch with friends, I met Clare in the city on a 35 degree evening and hunkered down on the grass with a bottle of chardy and a packet of chips to watch the famous short film festival. Not quite the photo opportunity I'd hoped for but definitely fun and a wonderful way to spend a balmy Sydney Sunday night.
There was the 'red carpet' with the Tropfest founder John Polson enjoying the limelight. I was there a little too early to catch Elijah Woods and Toni Collette.
The crowds found their niche!
Nope, not a dirty camera lens. Not seagulls or birds coming in to roost.
These are Australian Fruit Bats coming into the Botanical Gardens for a feed of figs as dusk falls.
Big aren't they? About the size of a small cat with a huge wingspan!
And we're underway with 16 short films from across Australia.⁃Abe Forsythe has landed first prize at Tropfest 2010 for his film Shock - his entry inspired by the live-on-air lie detector scandal involving disgraced and generally disliked-to-the-point-of-hatred radio presenter, Kyle Sandilands.
If you're interested, you can watch the other finalists here . . sorry, I couldn't find the whole movie in embedded text.http://tropfest.ninemsn.com.au/
And a little music from Whitley who played a short set at intermission. It's a short film in itself and I really like the song.
Thanks to DuprocessAustralia and Steve Baker on You Tube:
27 comments:
Great photos Baino! I've heard about the bats in the Botanical Gardens,never seen them, looks amazing...and John Polson, who would have thought. I did a double take at the photo. I've placed him in a time-warp as an actor when he was aged in his early twenties to thirties, then lost track of him.Good to see him again via your blog! Looks like a fun night.
Even though I've seen lots ...I still think bats are creepy ..the festival would have been great though!!
Looks like a great time was had... but those bats are just SCARY!
Sounds like a wonderful evening! I loooooove that bats-overhead photo, but the flying fruitbat portrait is just amazing. I love bats, and used to sit outside for hours when I was a little girl, just watching the weird way they flew, eating night bugs.
35C... at night? :(
glad it went well...
I think the bats are beautiful :)
and I love the fun of Tropfest.
My beautiful hound in his youth played a roll in a Tropfest short film.
x Ribbon :)
Sounds like a fabulous evening, bats or no bats.
Looks like you had a great time. Nice pictures though.
BTW, the bats look really scary!
Have a good day!:)
The fruit bats are amazing. A shame we never saw any when we were down under. I can certainly appreciate their yen for figs.
sounds like a lot of fun actually...bats, nice...i was once in a cave full of them...that was a little scary...
What a fun evening.
We have a huge colony of Mexian Free Tailed Bats here in Austin. They roost under the Ann Richards Congress Avenue Bridge, and going down to watch them fly at sunset is a required activity each summer. Huge clouds of them come out.
Bats are definitely cool! And I followed your link; that's an interesting line-up of short films. Looks like you had plenty to keep you occupied.
Looks like lots of fun, though I am not at all sure about those bats.
What is balmy? ;)
Hugs from the ever frozen GM!
Sweet. I'd love to come to one of those things.
And those bats rock.
Your photo of that fruit bat is INCREDIBLE!
Wish I had wings, imagine all the bat-in-the-sky stories I could share!
I wonder why they call those flying giant-mouse-things with leathery wings "bats"... it's nothing at all like what they are!
I found your blog through Eternally Distracted. Great pictures. How did you manage to photograph at night thouse bats? It's an amazing shot.
the fruit bats are pretty awesome. We have a couple at our zoo. Great video!
Loved the red carpet photo and the bats. We don't have anything like that in California. Well, we have a red carpet in Hollywood but our bats are these itty bitty things.
As cold as it has been here all winter, that looks like a wonderful time to me, minus the bats, of course. I don't like birds. You can imagine what bats do to me!
Gorgeous bats! And a fun venue for film!
Amazing bat pic!! We get loads of bats everyday over our place. They eat the seeds from the palm trees, then they shit all over the place. Very disgusting. Bat shit is very huge and hard to clean up!
I'd love to go to Tropfest!
SO cool! I wish I could have been there!
Nice way to spend a balmy summer's night. Outside! Your bat photo is great. We thought it fitting the night we saw Nick Cave play Homeback in the Domain as bats circled above.
Yup, the bat wins!
cool bat shots
could you get some vid of them?
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