Melbourne artist/filmmaker Elka Kerkhofs’ film ‘Filled With Water’ has been short listed for the hotly contested jury-voted City of Melbourne Emerging Filmmaker Award for Best Australian Queer Short Film offering a cash prize of $2000 on the 15 of March at the 18e Melbourne Queer Film Festival 2008.
This year’s Oz Shorts judges are: Artist Colin Batrouney, General Manager Lisa Watts, Producer Michael McMahon, JOY FM Station Manager Stephen Hahn and Deputy Lord Mayor of the city of Melbourne Gary Singer.
At the same time on the other side of the world the popular lesbian animation film is one of 19 short listed finalists for the 2008 PlanetOut Short Movie Awards to win the coveted Members' Choice Award, sponsored by Scion!
Elka recently returned to Melbourne to undertake a one-year Masters course in animation at the Victorian College of the Arts Film and Television School, University of Melbourne to find that she is one of the nine finalists in the “Oz Shorts” Competition in Melbourne and one of 19 finalists for the 2008 PlanetOut Short Movie Awards in Miami, USA.
'Filled With Water' is a five-minute animation about a search for love on the other side of the television screen.
Kerkhofs says “This story is based on my personal experience of falling in love and breaking up because of the abuse of alcohol in the relationship. I believe that alcoholism is a serious problem in the lesbian and wider community. Within the lesbian community in particular it is not a commonly discussed issue. Although the film takes us on a journey to self-healing, it symbolizes the destruction of the relationship through alcoholism but through abstract visual language allows the viewer to arrive at his or her own interpretation.”
Last Year, 'Filled With Water' won the Best Production award at the My Queer Career film competition in Sydney and the Award for best Tertiary animation at The 2007 EnhanceTV ATOM Awards in Melbourne. The film has traveled to various festivals in America and Europe including New York, San Francisco, Berlin and Vienna amongst others. It now has a distributor in North America
This month the film is playing at ACMI as part of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival on the 8 and 15 of March and in Vienna on the 23 of March as part of the Tricky Women Animation Film Festival and in May at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. The film is still gaining popularity.
