Western Sydney-based animator Jayce White was crowned the winner of the inaugural Shortstacks Short Film Prize for his stand-out animated film ‘Comeback’, the State Library of NSW announced tonight.
The darkly humorous black & white film won the praise of judges for its “creative innovation, exemplary technical skills, engagement with the audience and relevance to the Library’s signature collection item.”
In Jayce White’s ‘Comeback’, a rogue boomerang takes a grim turn, in reference to Don McPhedran’s 1959 photograph of boomerang makers in La Perouse.
The short film was selected by a panel of esteemed judges: Australian film icon Margaret Pomeranz AM, award-winning filmmaker Michael Caulfield, film and TV critic Jason Di Rosso, and Tropfest’s youngest finalist, Nick Ward.
Margaret Pomeranz declared ‘Comeback’ a “stand-out film” before presenting Jayce White with $15,000 prize money, following the screening of finalists at the State Library tonight.
The judges were unanimous in their decision to award a runner-up prize of $5,000 to a team of young filmmakers and AFTRS alumni — Nick Harriott, Nick Spellicy and Ryan Stubbs — for their dramatisation of Herbert Badham’s painting Domesticity (1959).
