Vote for BAT EYES and BOOT in Your Film Festival Competition

I have some exciting news to spread about a Sydney filmmaker, Damien Power, whose films BAT EYES and BOOT are the semi-finalists in YouTube's first global film festival. He is a semi-finalist twice-over in the Your Film Festival Competition, which runs on Youtube until 13 July. Youtube users (registered or not) can watch all 50 films and vote for the ones they like once a day. The films are greats so I urge you to check them out - you can watch BAT EYES here and BOOT here - and vote Damien's way.

The ten films with the most votes will be named as finalists, and the filmmakers flown to this year’s Venice Film Festival for the announcement of the winner, who lands a $500k deal from Ridley Scott’s Scott Free production company. The Venice jury will be helmed by Michael Fassbender. Scott Free whittled down the 15,000 submissions from 160 countries to the 50 semi-finalists. Damien is one of three filmmakers with two films in competition.

BAT EYES and BOOT were produced by Bec Cubitt as part of The Voices Project, for Australian Theatre for Young People. The films were adapted from original theatrical monologues by Sydney-based playwrights Jessica Bellamy and Joanna Erskine, and were shot back-to-back in Sydney in December 2011 in just three days, using mostly the same crew for both shoots, and casts of young actors from the ATYP ranks. They were launched in March 2012 by Rose Byrne, who has just become an ATYP Ambassador, posted online and have so far been viewed over 60,000 times.

A lot of love went into our films and its exciting to see young Australian filmmakers with this fantastic opportunity. Help Damien and his team get to Venice. Again, to watch and vote for BAT EYES, click here, and for BOOT click here.