Tropfest 2016 at Centennial Park in Sydney, Australia. Photo: Christopher Pearce/ Getty Images.The world’s largest short film festival, Tropfest, returned to Sydney’s Centennial Parklands yesterday despite being cancelled last year due to financial negligence.
More than 90,000 short-film enthusiasts gathered at Sydney’s Centennial Parklands on Valentine’s Day to enjoy and celebrate the comeback event which has become a centrepiece of Sydney summer activities over the past two decades.
LA duo Spencer Susser and Daniel Cloud-Campos beat 16 finalists to win the festival’s infamous pineapple trophy.
The pair’s stop-frame animation Shiny created with real clothing that they animated to move like people was voted the best of the festival by judges including Mel Gibson, Simon Baker and Rebecca Gibney.
Its message was about how people are obsessed with material things and how this can get in the way of everything else in life.
The festival returned this year thanks to a crowd-funding campaign which raised money to alleviate some of the festival’s “six figure” debt – the reason it was cancelled just weeks before its scheduled date in 2015.
At the time, Tropfest founder and director John Polson said the company “contracted to raise the funding and administer the Tropfest event is unable to move forward for financial reasons”.
Polson said it was “hard to avoid concluding there has been a terrible and irresponsible mismanagement of Tropfest funds”.
Here are some photos from the event.
Festival-goers walk through Sydney’s Centennial Parklands to get to the event.
The entry.
People bring picnic rugs, drinks and nibblies to enjoy the afternoon in the sun.
The area fills up very quickly.
Everyone was very excited by the entrance of Simon Baker, the star of Hollywood TV series “The Mentalist”.
A balmy summer event made for the perfect setting of the festival’s comeback event.
And it begins!
Despite a little rain, the show goes on.
No one is too worried.
And the winner is… Spencer Susser!
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