Made in the West Film Festival has a lot to be grateful for. We feel so privileged to be surrounded by incredibly talented local filmmakers; it is a real joy to help share their stories on the big screen year after year.
The community of filmmakers that we celebrate are dedicated, creative and bold. For us, having hundreds of filmmakers in the cinema cheering for each other’s work is, without a doubt, the best part of the night (and a very large part of WHY we do what we do).
We think this year’s Official Selection films show exactly what Western Sydney is made of! We are always impressed by the ambitious, unique and heartfelt stories being made in the West. The cutting-edge vision of filmmakers in our local region fuels us to keep going!
We’re looking forward to screening the 21 finalist films one more time for your extended network of fans and friends across the country at the end of this week. Reserve tickets now for the Online Film Festival this Friday 10 December and settle in on the couch with your mates for a huge 3-hour marathon of short films and highlights from the red carpet. You will have 48 hours to watch the show!
Still Searchin’ Productions would like to thank the people who helped us make Made in the West 2021 the resounding success it was!
Many moving parts come into play on the night and we rely on the generous help, time and talent of our festival crew and contributors. This year, we worked with 25 contributors on the night - one of our biggest crews ever - to bring the festival to life, alongside the legendary team at Event Cinemas Liverpool who support our event.
HUGE THANKS to these rock stars for their help at this year’s film festival!
To Bridget, Elizabeth, Charu, Thomas, Nataly and Jumana our spectacular volunteers who assisted us all night long - whether at the doors with ticket check-in, allocating seating, assisting the SSP team or helping with the vote at the end of the night - we thank you all for your contribution to this year’s festival. We really appreciate your help!
We’d like to give a very special shout out to Bridget and Charu for joining our festival crew family now for five years - they’ve been with us since the old days at the Paddo RSL! Chances are if you have attended the festival in recent years, you were greeted by one of these awesome ladies. Thank you to you both for coming back year after year to help us stage a community event we can all be proud of.
To Victor Hawk and Laura Caldwell our red carpet photographers who spent the night snapping photos of our filmmakers throughout intermissions and in the cinemas. We can’t wait to release our gallery of photos online in the coming days! You can check out more of Victor’s work here and Laura’s work here.
To Tia Macgillivray our graphic designer extraordinaire - your design for this year’s Made in the West poster was so damn good! It was earth-shattering, it was dimension-shifting, and it transported us into the best festival we’ve ever hosted. Thank you for your incredible work. Y’all can check out more of Tia’s work here.
To Holly and Peter, our Red Carpet host and camera operator working with SSP crew Emily and Luke - we can’t wait to see this year’s Official Selection finalists shine on screen in our Festival Highlights. Thank you for capturing all the emotion and excitement of Western Sydney film’s biggest night of the year!
Check out Dr Holly’s work online here.
And we would be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge the ongoing commitment from Dr Holly - one of our first supporters! She has joined us on the red carpet for some years now - in fact, if you watch our first highlights reel waaaay back in 2014 you’ll see her wowing the crowd and chatting to our first gaggle of festival finalists (plus a few other familiar faces!).
To Sunil and Daniel, our Online Festival host and camera operator working with SSP crew Ross - thank you for capturing the night for our viewers at home. We’re looking forward to bringing the red carpet to our festival fans around the world this Friday! You can follow Sunil online here.
To Jessica our wonderful MC for the screening - our biggest thanks for the energy you brought to our bumper crowd in the cinema. You put everyone at ease and helped the house kick back and enjoy some of the best short films we’ve ever screened! Follow Jess online here.
To the team at Event Cinemas (Callie, Michael, Paul, Peter, Amy, as well as all your staff on the night who worked hard to help us put on a great night) thank you for ongoing support and encouragement of the filmmaking community in Western Sydney. We love our festival home and we love the support you show to the community here. We already want to come back to Event Cinemas for our 11th festival next year!
And last, but certainly not least, thanks to the entire crew contributors and friends at Still Searchin’ Productions including Holly and Adrian on the merch table, Casey and Jay supervising FOH, Luke assisting VIPs, Emily assistant producing the highlights, Hayden and Aaron up in the projection booth, and Nathalie coordinating our social media -- what a team! Thank you. We simply couldn't do all this without you.
Your ongoing commitment to Made in the West over the years has meant hundreds of local filmmakers now have a dedicated space to share their stories on the big screen here in the suburban heartland of Sydney and, this coming weekend, on a national and international stage as well.
We would also like to pay special tribute to the team at Burrow design studio for their work on our 10-year magazine, as well as two wonderful Western Sydney University students who joined Made in the West this year for a 12-week digital internship and contributed immensely to our 2021 festival campaign: Elissa and Natasha. We have loved working with you all - whether it was spreading the word about submissions, launching our new merchandise line, gathering the community online to network, or launching our 10-year magazine. Thank you for your hard work and dedication!
From Ross, Misty and Jay, we say thanks to you all for helping us pull off an amazing night for the Western Sydney film community -- our best yet.
Made in the West Film Festival is also incredibly grateful for the support offered by our Gold+ Screen sponsor WSU, all the festival judges and also our wonderful prize sponsors for making the night so special.
Made in the West Film Festival is made possible by the support offered by all our contributors and we can’t wait to return in 2022 with even more amazing people on our side.
We’ll be celebrating our 11th birthday next year and we have a feeling there's going to be some BIG NEWS coming your way soon… you'll just have to wait and see what great things we have in the works for Western Sydney.
And by the way, if you’re reading this and you think you’d like to work with us next year at Made in the West and contribute your time or talent to the event, get in touch and tell us what you think you can do to help! We’re always happy to hear from new collaborators.
Thanks a million everyone for another great year!
We’ll see you in 2022.