The power of the people was explored in Launceston on Sunday as the Breath of Fresh Air film festival wrapped up with a discussion on community-driven change.
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Taking inspiration from award-winning documentary In the Shadow of the Hill, the forum examined the concept of community with the help of a panel comprising Get Up's Louise Morris, Big Hart's Scott Rankin, City of Launceston's Wendy Newton and BOFA festival director Owen Tilbury.
Panel moderator and University of Technology Sydney associate professor Gillian Leahy said the term community did not necessarily refer to a geographic cluster of people, but rather a group of individuals connected by interests, ideas or situations.
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“The premise of the whole discussion was that democracy is in some ways broken and that people don't have faith in the big political parties,” Ms Leahy said.
“Rather than depending on government to fix this or fix that, the solution is really to work with whatever the community is that wants to work with you, and get them together in a way where you are listening to them.
“It’s very important to find out what they want and then to try and get that process happening rather than to come there and say ‘I’m going to save you all, I'm going to do this’.”
The discussion marked one of the final sessions in this year’s festival, which has already been touted a success by organisers.
Mr Tilbury said he was delighted with the festival's fourth instalment, noting the wet weekend had provided premium film-watching weather.
“We've achieved our budget which is great, we've grown every year since it started and we will grow again this year so that's terrific,” Mr Tilbury said.
“About 40 per cent of our films were sell outs which is a sign that we have got films that people really want to queue up for, we were knocking people back in many regards.”
