By Travis Johnson
Acclaimed Australian artist Lynette Wallworth has scooped up the inaugural Sydney UNESCO City of Film Award at the closing night of the Sydney Film Festival.
The City of Film Award is a $10,000 prize that will be awarded annually by Screen NSW to a leading New South Wales-based screen artist. Wallworth will also receive a desk at ‘Charlie’s’, a new hub for the Australian film-making community in Los Angeles, opened by Australians in Film, in partnership with Screen NSW, AFTRS and Screen Queensland. The work space is located in Charlie Chaplin’s former apartment, hence the name.
Wallworth’s most recent work, Collisions, is an immersive Virtual Reality project about an atomic test in outback South Australia in the 1950s. It has screened at the World Economic Forum, the Climate Action Summit in Washington DC, and at the UN in Vienna.
Speaking to Filmink before she headed to Utah for the Sundance Institute New Frontier/Jaunt VR Residency Program, Wallworth said of the film, “The way we receive it is more of an experience than anything else; so it’s more like we are experiencing it than watching a film.
“There will be areas that will naturally open up to VR more than others, and I think that narrative long form will be more of a challenge,” she continued. “But for documentary I think it’s a natural because it allows you to actually be there. You perceive it as an experience that you’re having, to locate it within the real seems to me a powerful combination. Say you take a camera tomorrow and take it to somewhere where there is some sort of world event and we watch it from our parallel screen… say when the tsunami happened, to put a camera there and to feel for a moment that you were there – that’s where I think the power of the medium is.”
On receiving the Award, Wallworth noted, “It’s a fantastically affirming sensation to receive this award in my home town, Sydney. I am especially grateful to be chosen for an award that recognises both innovation and impact. I hope to continue to make a global impact with my work and feel humbled and happy to be given this honour by Screen NSW.”
Wallworth will next work on a VR project that will be shot in the Amazon, while Collisions will be developed into a series.
