Winner of the Best Student Film trophy, Kristian Lang (right), with Jury Chairman Wilson da Silva of COSMOS.

Credit: Tina McCarthy

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BRISBANE: Science documentary filmmaking was celebrated in Brisbane this week as the 2008 SCINEMA Festival of Science Film came to a close, and the winners of the international competition component were announced.

“We were thrilled by the high calibre of films we had to choose from this year,” said Wilson da Silva, chairman of the SCINEMA Jury after announcing the winners of the 8th festival at a rooftop party at Queensland Museum in South Bank, held to mark the close of a successful National Science Week.

Scottish film The Colour of Sound took out Best Film trophy “for the engaging way it conveyed a whole tapestry of science,” fellow judge Anna Littleboy of the CSIRO told the crowd.

Local filmmaker Vickie Guest was on-hand to accept her award for organ-donation documentary "Over My Dead Body", and told Festival guests she was thrilled to have her film recognised.

Australia’s ABC TV took out three categories in the internationally competitive film festival, which received over 150 entries from 31 countries.

ABC TV takes the lead

Fillmmaker Richard Smith was named Best Director for his study of the journey of oil from its birth in the prehistoric past to its role in our greenhouse future, Crude, while Rory McGuinness took Best Cinematography for The Big Blue centred on the majestic blue whales, and producer/director Klaus Toft took the gong for Best Science Television for Thunderheads, a fast-paced and exciting documentary following a novel cloud-borne experiment.

The Jury noted that both The Big Blue and Thunderheads were among the final films produced by ABC TV’s Natural History Unit, a Melbourne-based powerhouse of documentary excellence which was disbanded by the national broadcaster earlier this year.

A young Victorian filmmaker, Kristian Lang, took Best Student Film for his 3rd grade class project Photosynthesis: How It Works.

Aside from Kristian’s age and aside from the film’s technical assurance, SCINEMA Festival Director Cris Kennedy announced to the party while presenting Kristian with his trophy, “the film got to the essence of successful science communication, which is to condense complex issues into a vehicle that explains science simply, and in a fun way.”

Kristian’s parents, who had flown with him from Melbourne, were on hand to watch the 10-year-old Ascot Vale Primary School student receive his first international film festival prize.