Sidekick’s Richard Cawthorne wins an AACTA

Glitz and glam ascended to The Sydney Opera House on Tuesday night for the new Australian Academy of Cinema, Television and the Arts annual awards run by the AFI (Australian Film Institute)

When I moved to Melbourne in August 2009 to set up Viocorp‘s Victorian office, we nearly rented a space in the AFI headquarters. I got to spend a bit of time with Damian, Jen and the AFI team and they’ve done a really good job in repositioning the AFI, and in particular the launch of The Australian Academy.

I went to the launch party last year at Sydney which was a great night out.

So when the awards came out, I was thrilled to see my co-star in Sidekick, Richard Cawthorne get nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a TV drama. If you saw his performance in Killing Time, you’ll know why. Utterly engaging and riveting performance.

In Sidekick, Richard also played the antagonist, though not quite to such extremes. Alas Sidekick isn’t available online yet as its still doing the festival circuit. It won a Bronze at the ACS Victoria & Tasmania Cinematography Awards for Best Photography for our DOP Bruce Phillips

Here’s Rich picking up his trophy.

And giving a media interview

And you can see the full list of winners here. Great to see Snowtown do so well. Spotted this great quote on Twitter describing Snowtown:
#Snowtown is either the best worst film I’ve ever seen or the worst best. Fantastic film, horrible subject. Well deserved #AACTA win.