Festival director Owen Tilbury and program director Helen Tilbury made the call to “rebrand and revamp” the festival to feel fresh, youthful, and rejuvenated. 

“BOFA has been around since 2010, and we had a pause last year to ensure we had the best calibre of projection,” Mr Tilbury said.

“What we wanted to do was not just relaunch in exactly the same way as previous years, but to refresh and revitalise and come out of the box.”

Mr Tilbury said it was for that reason that BOFA approached four young designers to redesign the brand and logo.

“We’re just delighted with what they’ve done, there’s so much talent in this local area,” he said.

The Foundry design students Isaac Cini, Joseph Bunton, Cat Kerr, and Lucas Grenda were tasked with redesigning the festival logo, program, and website.

Mr Cini said he was at work when he was approached about taking on the challenge.

“I was at work at the Trevallyn Grocer, and then Steve Lucius from S.Group [and BOFA’s branding leader] came in,” he said. “We started chatting, then he asked if I’d be interested in taking on a client – the BOFA film festival.”

Mr Cini said from there, Mr Bunton, Ms Kerr, and Mr Grenda came on board.

“It was pretty great. We had met Steve a couple of times before, and he knew our work,” he said.

Mr Bunton said it was “really good” to have the experience of working with such an important event before going into the industry.

Mr Tilbury said the festival had also sourced volunteers from Launceston College and TasTafe.

Grade 12 students from Launceston College Jack McCarthy, Tyson Purton, and Ashlyn Dalzell were all aiming for a career in tourism, and were excited to have the opportunity to work closely with the festival over the coming months.

“We’re all members of Launceston College, and we’re studying tourism,” Jack said.

“As part of our work placement, our teacher spoke to [Mr Tilbury] and got us to do the festival.

“Tyson, Ashlyn and I are doing the festival directly, but the rest of the class have been involved with the Day in the Kingsway.”

Ashlyn said it had been “really cool” to experience BOFA from behind the scenes.

“I want to get into events and event management, so it’s showing me a little bit of what I would need to do in that role,” she said.

“Just having those connections with people already, it’s cool that we get to have a leg up.”

Though they may be unable to head along to watch films themselves, the students encouraged everyone to head along to the festival.

“There’s a very large mix of films, so it really caters to everyone’s tastes,” Jack said. “Everyone should come.”

Ms Tilbury said two of her favorite films on the list for this year both feature very strong women, and she was proud that about 30 per cent of this year’s films featured women playing strong roles.

“One is a biopic about Jane Goodall,” she said.

Jane is a US documentary about Jane Goodall, a young British woman who was chosen to undertake research on chimpanzees in Tanzania. 

The film was directed by Brett Morgen, and drew from 140 hours of rediscovered 16 millimetre film found in the National Geographic archive.

“On the other side of the spectrum, we’ve got a film called Food Fighter which looks at an amazing woman called Ronni Kahn, who will be coming to BOFA.”

Food Fighter followed Ronni Kahn, founder of OzHarvest, as she drew attention to food wastage in Australia and around the world.

The documentary was directed by Dan Goldberg, and will be presented in partnership with the Human Rights and Arts Film Festival.

“We’ve got some sad films, but then we’ve got some romance films. Then, we’ve got some with deadpan humour,” she said.

“But being a film festival too, we like to be on the edge.”

Mr Tilbury said this year, BOFA would have a much wider range of films from around the globe, and would boast 30 films from 13 different countries.

He said this is the best program in BOFA’s eight year history.

“We think we’ve put together a program which has a balance to it which I think we’d never quite achieved before,” he said.

“We’ve got big films [such as Let the Sunshine In] that have big names such as Gerard Depardieu and Juliette Binoche, and then our more quirky films which has always been our signature.

Some of the films include award-winners from some of the world’s greatest film festivals, such as Cannes, Sundance, Berlin, Venice, and London.

“And then, we’ve got our six different categories, from Call of the Wild to Documentaries which should appeal to pretty much everyone,” he said.

The other four categories are Features, Our Stories, Eat Drink Live, and Disruptive.

“Our move this year to Village Cinemas, with its DCP projection, has given us access to a much wider range of films from around the world – we really have been able to pick the best of the best.

“We invite Tasmania, and Australia, to visit the Breath of Fresh Air film festival."

The festival will run from May 17 to 20 at Launceston’s Village Cinema, with bookings available from March 23.

Tickets can be purchased online at villagecinemas.com.au/cinemas/launceston, by phone on 1300 555 400, or in person.

Tickets cost $17.50, or $16.50 for concession. 

The festival precinct will run through to the Kingsway, where on May 20, A Day on the Kingsway will take place.

TasTafe will run free sessions on topical issues and filmmaking during the course of the festival.

Sessions will include That’s Not Me: The Making of a Low Budget Australian Success Story, Fighters for Food, Firestick Cultivation, Chris Haywood: An Actors Life, and From Concept to Screen: Writing and Directing Indigo Lake.

The full program can be viewed online at www.breath-of-fresh-air.com.au

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