The Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival is an Australian film festival held annually in

Winton, Queensland Winton is a town and Suburbs and localities (Australia), locality in the Shire of Winton in Central West Queensland, Australia. It is northwest of Longreach, Queensland, Longreach. The main industries of the area are sheep and cattle raising. Th ...

. With the event being held in

Central West Queensland Central West Queensland is a remote region in the Australian state of Queensland which covers 396,650.2 km2. The region lies to the north of South West Queensland and south of the Gulf Country. It has a population of approximately 12,387 peo ...

, which has provided the setting of film and television productions such as '' The Proposition'', '' Gone'', '' Mystery Road'', '' Goldstone'', '' Texas Rising'' and '' Total Control'', The Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival is promoted as Australia's only

outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a n ...

film festival. A proposal for a film festival in Winton akin to the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

was first put forward by local publican Clive Kitchen who saw the film industry as being beneficial to Winton's economy. The idea received support from Winton Shire mayor

Butch Lenton Graham Thomas "Butch" Lenton (1956 – 1 October 2017) was an Australian councillor and community advocate.Bond, Nicole; Tatham, Harriet; Varley, Russell (9 October 2018Mayor Butch Lenton remembered by Winton community ''ABC News''. Retrieved 27 ...

, Screen Australia's Gina Black and ''Mystery Road'' producer

David Jowsey David Jowsey is an Australian film producer, co-founder of Bunya Productions. He is known for producing many films made by Indigenous Australian filmmakers. Bunya Productions' co-owners are Indigenous filmmaker Ivan Sen, and Jowsey's wife Gree ...

. Festival director, filmmaker and academic Greg Dolgopolov was appointed the inaugural festival creative director. With Lenton as the founding chairperson, The Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival was established as an incorporated not-for-profit organisation with the objectives of boosting cultural tourism, encouraging film production and investment and offering a curriculum for film students. Lenton died in 2017. Plans for the inaugural festival were announced to the public in Winton in September 2013 following the Queensland premiere of ''Mystery Road'' which was mostly filmed in the area. Commencing on 27 June 2014 with a screening of ''

The Slim Dusty Movie ''The Slim Dusty Movie'' is a 1984 Australian feature film directed by Rob Stewart and starring Slim Dusty, Joy McKean, Jon Blake and Mary Charleston. The film The film dramatises the early life and career of Australian country music singer ...

'', The Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival was held for the first time over ten days, featuring 50 Australian films, many of them screened in the Royal Open Air Theatre which is one of two surviving open air theatres in Australia. Since the first festival in 2014, The Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival has been held each year, usually during the winter school holidays in late June and early July. In 2015, daytime screenings of films were relocated to the Winton Shire hall following a fire just days before the festival which destroyed the Waltzing Matilda Centre where movies were scheduled to be shown in the Sarah Riley Theatre. With fears the fire could discourage people from attending the festival, Australian actor

Michael Caton Michael Caton (born 21 July 1943) is an Australian television, film and stage actor, comedian and television host, best known for playing Uncle Harry in the Australian television series ''The Sullivans'', Darryl Kerrigan in 1997's low-budget hi ...

issued a plea for people to continue with their planned journey to Winton. Although it was postponed until later in the year, the festival went ahead in 2020 despite the

COVID-19 pandemic in Queensland The COVID-19 pandemic in Queensland, Australia is part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). Timeline 2020 On 29 January 2020, Queensland was th ...

and is believed to have been the only film festival held in Australia that year. The 2021 event also proceeded despite the closure of state borders at short notice due to COVID-19 clusters forming in several states. With the festival's success combined with the amount of productions shot in the area, there have been proposals to establish permanent

filmmaking Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, casti ...

facilities in the town.

Winton's Walk of Fame

Each year, the festival honours a person involved with the

Australian film industry The cinema of Australia had its beginnings with the 1906 production of '' The Story of the Kelly Gang'', arguably the world's first feature film. Since then, Australian crews have produced many films, a number of which have received internat ...

by revealing their name on a star on Winton's Walk of Fame located in Elderslie Street. As of 2022, seven people have been inducted onto the Walk of Fame -

Roy Billing Roy Harwood Billing (born 1947) is a New Zealand television actor, now based on Waiheke Island, New Zealand. He was brought up in Ruawai, Northland, New Zealand. Billing spent almost three decades living and working in Australia. He became wid ...

Ivan Sen Ivan Sen (born 1972) is an Indigenous Australian filmmaker. He is a director, screenwriter and cinematographer, as well as an editor, composer and sound designer. He is co-founder and director of Bunya Productions. Early life Ivan Sen was born ...

Margaret Pomeranz Margaret Pomeranz (born 14 July 1944) is an Australian film critic, writer, producer and television personality. Early life Pomeranz was born Margeret Anne Jones-Owen on 14 July 1944 in Waverley, a suburb of Sydney. She was educated at the P ...

Steve Le Marquand Steve Le Marquand (born 26 December 1967) is an Australian-born actor, known both locally and internationally for his film and stage work. Personal life Born in Perth, Western Australia in 1967, his family moved to Sydney when he was quite yo ...

David Gulpilil David Dhalatnghu Gulpilil (1 July 1953 – 29 November 2021), known professionally as David Gulpilil and posthumously (at his family's request, to avoid naming the dead) as David Dalaithngu for three days, was an Indigenous Australian actor ...

and

Leah Purcell Leah Maree Purcell (born 14 August 1970) is an Aboriginal Australian stage and film actress, playwright, film director, and novelist. She made her film debut in 1999, appearing in Paul Fenech's ''Somewhere in the Darkness'', which led to role ...

References

Film festivals in Australia {{Film-festival-stub