A Werri Beach artist, filmmaker and activist will have the world premiere of his latest documentary at the Sydney Film Festival in June.
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George Gittoes' White Light, which explores gun violence in America, is screening as part of the Documentary Australia Foundation Award program. Ten documentaries are in the running for $10,000 cash.
Gittoes, his partner Helen Rose and small crew spent 18-months living among gang warfare in the southside of Chicago, "a suburb with worse gun violence statistics than any active war zone of the last two decades".
"Fifty years on Martin Luther King's dream hasn't happened," he said.
"What we're hoping to do is create a moratorium to gun deaths and have the community itself work towards that goal [of zero gun deaths] ... then maybe everyone can say 'it's time for the cycle of violence to end'."
Meantime, former St Joseph's student Drew Bailey has co-produced the romantic comedy Standing Up For Sunny starring RJ Mitte (Breaking Bad) which will also have its debut at the festival.
Bailey said a large group of students from Wollongong High School of the Performing Arts were extras in the film.
It tells the story of an isolated guy with cerebral palsy who is railroaded into helping a shy comedian, and finds love and acceptance through stand-up comedy.
The 66th Sydney Film Festival runs from June 5 to 16 and will present 307 films from over 55 countries including 33 world premieres, bringing together hundreds of international and local stories.
There are 112 feature films, including prize-winners from other festivals around the world; and 79 documentaries tackling crucial contemporary issues, from established and upcoming documentarians.
The program also includes two retrospectives on influential women directors: Viva Varda: A Retrospective of Agnès Varda and in Essential Australian Women Directors - 10 Trailblazers Selected by David Stratton.
FREE Festival Talks at the Festival Hub also create a space for audiences, filmmakers and industry professionals to progress a dialogue about the important topics and issues of the year, addressed in Festival films.
For further details and the full program, visit: www.sff.org.au