It’s the beautiful Bangalow Film Festival
With the Bangalow Film Festival almost on our doorstep, Seven managed to have a sit-down with Program Director, Christian Pazzaglia to find out just how excited he is about the upcoming event.
How have things been travelling as far as the organisation goes?
Smooth in a way – we know more or less what we’re doing, being in the same location over the last five years. Yes, so, yeah, no major issues. Yes, and hopefully without any cyclones, floods, earthquakes.
It’s been five years. Have there been things, post-festivals, that you’ve changed, or thought, we’ll do that better?
Actually yes – there’s always quite a lot of fine-tuning going on. For example, there are a number of things that we have trialled. We were doing a 9pm show on Friday-night screenings, and we were trying to do rave culture films that are very much music-driven programming – but it was just too late, even on a Friday night! So we’re not going to do that anymore. There are always, kind of bits and pieces that we always do, like things for families, right? Families and kids, that’s always there.
You know, we’re very, kind of family driven. We like to work with the local school. We like to have big educational programs. We get over 150 students, coming from nine schools in the region, and we work with the Department of Education. It’s great. I love doing that.
Why do you think it’s important that communities support film festivals in general, and that this community support this film festival?
You know, it is this film festival – I always felt it’s a little bit different, because we, from the get-go, we kept it really open, you know, as in, we don’t say, ‘you can’t submit things to us’, right? That’s one thing. We always make sure to have some opportunities, and some money to commission work, so we always want to work with local artists, anyone. People reach out to us all the time, so thinking about, you know, as long as it’s screen-based, we really like to do that. This year it is Home of the Blizzard – A Film Concert For Antartica.
What do you personally love? What’s your favourite thing about this festival?
To be honest with you, I think we have a really nice program this year. In there, kind of what stands out for me is one of my passions, I guess, I’m really pleased that we can do the Bad Boy Bubby reunion. With the screening then Q&A with Rolf de Heer and Nicholas Hope. They haven’t seen each other in a long time. It feels so special.
And then, this year we launched the Green Frame Nature Documentary Award, a new initiative at the festival, celebrating cinema that connects us to the natural world. We’ve been wanting to do this – it has been in the making for a couple of years at least. The region is just perfect for it. Yes, there’s nowhere else in Australia where this kind of environmental nature film, and the issues that come with it, are front and centre. I’m proud of that. It will be an ongoing event and it is a beautiful way to put Bangalow on the map.
I know this is the hard question, which film are you really looking forward to seeing?
Life illuminated – about Marine biologist Dr Edie Widder, who has spent her life chasing the ocean’s secret light – bioluminescence. It, kind of blew me away. I think it’s fantastic, I think it’s beautifully shot, I think it’s inspiring for anyone, because of the story of Dr Edie Widder – we can learn so much from it, because she was ostracised for being a female scientist, and she ended up building her own submarines. It’s gorgeous. I love underwater films. It’s beautiful.
That’s for sure one. And then, the closing film, Gaucho Gaucho – a timeless, visually stunning, romantic tribute to one of the last communities of traditional cowboys and cowgirls. It’s the latest film from the directors of the Truffle Hunters.
What are the festival highlights?
The festival is lots of fun, you know. Opening night and closing night – just so much fun.
Also, we want the audience to become the protagonist, so we have the whistling competition on the opening night – we have, best dress-up cowboy night, we have lots of filmmakers coming. There are some really fun activations, because, you know for Shelf Life, a documentary about cheese, we are building a cheese shop and for Trifole we’re having a truffle tasting experience.
This festival is nowhere else in Australia. And one of the reasons why we can do it, is the location – I mean it costs us a mint to turn this building into a cinema. But then we can do these things. We can build a cheese shop! This is the reason why we do fundraising, because we want to have it in this beautiful venue. It’s wonderful.
Bangalow Film Festival 2026 will be held at Bangalow A&I Hall from 11-21 June, for more info go to www.bangalowfilmfestival.com.au.
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