Griffith film alumni shine on the international stage

2016 Griffith Film School graduates Shannen Tunnicliffe and Lachlan Morton, and film student Claire Randell’s documentary Wolfe has been selected for the International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen.

Wolfe, which recently won a Crystal BearattheBerlin International Film Festival,explores a young man’s journey through adolescence with undiagnosed schizophrenia. Randell, the director-producer made the film with Tunnicliffe, producer and Morton, cinematographer and animator.

For more thanfive decades, Oberhausen has become one of the world’s most respected film events – a place where filmmakers and artists ranging from Roman Polanski to Cate Shortland, from George Lucas to Pipilotti Rist have presented their first films. It is one of the most exclusive festivals in the world.

Griffith Film School graduate Benjamin Zaugg, along with Daley Pearson who also studied at GFS, have won an International Emmy Award in the Kids: Digital category for Doodles at MIPTV in Cannes, France.

Doodles transforms the drawings from Australian children submitted online into animated stories.Benjamin, a 2007 film honours graduate, was executive producer and director and Daley the animator.

View the trailer here. View Zaugg’s graduate film here.

Griffith Film School Acting Director Professor Trish FitzSimons congratulated the film graduates, saying their success was testimony to the calibre of talent nurtured at Griffith.

“We are so very proud of what our students and graduates are producing,” she said.

“When I was at film school at AFTRS in Sydney, Oberhausn was THE film festival focused on shorts that we all aspired to. My films never made that cut and neither before has any work of GFS students, so this is special.

“Wehavehad the pleasure of having our graduates win Emmy’s before, but not often. This too is a great achievement, and we offer respect to the work of our alumni.”