Portable Film Festival

Film the Future – The Finalists!

We offered you, film type people, the chance to be one of State of Design Festival's great new finds for 2009 – to delve deep into your filmmaking crystal ball, past the retro futurist calculator watches, digital speedometers and inevitable Tron remakes to the pure illustrative essence of future times as a celebration of State of Design's 2009 mantra: Sampling the Future.

So the future has indeed been filmed, finished and flung cinematically in our general direction in a variety of amazing imagery and ideas.

A program of selects from the competition will be broadcast in Federation Square, Melbourne, during July 15^th – 25^th, on rotation on the big screen several times each day, with some of the winning films highlighted at State of Design events, and the overall winner given additional kudos through being featured on Cool Hunting, who attracts 250,000 daily readers...

There will also be a regional screening at LaTrobe University Visual Arts Centre, Bendigo, on Friday 24^th July at 6pm, featuring selected highlights from the program – keep an eye on the blog or email us for details.

And we're pleased to announce that our judges, Ewan McEoin, Artistic Director of the State of Design Festival, and respected Melbourne designer Jeremy Wortsman, have made their decision, and that our Film the Future winner is Takafumi Tsuchiya's Apoptosis!

Apoptosis will also feature through on the hugely influential Cool Hunting design and culture blog, which attracts 250,000 readers on its daily feed.

Jeremy had this to say about the film:

"The first thing that grabbed me was the excellent use of soundtrack - Apoptosis used sound as an integral part of the piece, especially in engaging the viewer in the first moments, setting the visual foundation for the formal experimentation that occurred throughout the piece.

To that end, the idea was simple, yet very effective. The source video seemed carefully chosen to yield the most fruitful results in the kaleidoscopic meanderings of the work, and in the end, it left me being able to view these ubiquitous scenes of nature and everyday life in a new light, which is definitely a challenging feat to accomplish in a short film."

Remember to check out the State of Design Festival website to keep up to date with all the festival goings-on for the month of July!

And a big thank you to everyone who contributed to State of Design Festival and Portable Film Festival's Film the Future Competition – you can see all of the finalists right here: