The inaugural 2025 Tamar Valley Film Festival was held on Saturday 31 May at the brand new School of the Arts located in Invermay, Launceston. The event came about due to noticing a lack of screening opportunities for Northern Tassie filmmakers, and was subsequently created to provide a platform to showcase our creative talents.
This particular event was organised in quite a short time frame, with only 6 weeks from the initial decision to put on the festival, up until the event date. Within a week, the website domain & emails were setup, the business name registered, venue was confirmed, and tech equipment was confirmed. Social media pages were created and call-outs where then placed for sponsors (as there was literally no time to even consider applying for a grant), and for films to be submitted. The first film submission came in within a week, and would slowly continue to grow until submissions were closed at the end of April.
We were extremely grateful to have had two wonderful sponsors – Abe’s Audio in Devonport, and Duff TV in Hobart – whom helped make our first event a success!!
Leading up to the event date, we had minimal media coverage – although we did have a lovely short interview with ABC Radio one morning. (Post event we had a great write-up in the Hobart newspaper, The Mercury – which you can read about on the next post). All our advertising was therefore mostly on social media (Facebook & Instagram), plus a couple of billboards around Launceston the week of the event.
On the night, we had a total of 11 short films to screen – 6 from Northern TAS and 5 from Southern TAS. Local performer / filmmaker, Michael Ballard was our MC, and we had approximately 80 in attendance including filmmakers, sponsors, and VIPs, as well as the general public. Despite it being somewhat cold on the night, and having some minor tech issues, the event went rather well, and feedback received was overwhelmingly positive.
The success of this event had shown there is a need here for supporting our talent, and we can’t wait now to bring you the 2026 Festival – this time hopefully with more films, and some workshops as well!
