MOFA Director Jae Morrison Wins Best Short Film at Avalon Film Festival

Jae Morrison, with a passion for storytelling and finding innovative ways to bring ideas to life, has created a film that sits at the intersection of history and technology. The film celebrates a little known story that is part of the history of the Avalon area: The Elephants of Avalon Beach.

Combining archival photography and footage with new material shot specifically for the film, Morrison employed various cutting edge tools to seamlessly bring all these elements together, crafted over a number of joy-filled, sleepless weeks. The result is a film that seems like an impossible marriage of worlds.

Performing the vocals himself, Jae collaborated with multifaceted artist / producer / audio engineer Aubrie Mitchell to re-record Roxy Music’s ‘Avalon’ for the film, which has also been released on Spotify.

Jae said, “I was volunteering at the Avalon Beach Surf Club, when one of the local legends mentioned that circus elephants used to graze on the sand dunes. I thought he was joking, til I Googled it, then I thought Google was mis-informationing me, so I met with the Avalon Beach Historical Society, and Geoff Searl was kind enough to produce three photos of the real elephants. And the rest is… history?”

Llew Griffiths, EP at MOFA, said, “Not many conversations at a surf club start with elephants and result in a film being made. I am really impressed with the way Jae has taken that inspiration and very cleverly brought it to life. Seeing how he has used different technologies and film making techniques to realise this story and share it with the community has been incredible to see.”

Ben Welsh, renowned creative leader, author, former DDB Australia CCO and Avalon Film Festival creator said, “Jae’s film embodies pretty much everything we want the Avalon Film Festival to be about - a local story by a local storyteller, and one that celebrates Avalon’s past, present and, via AI, its future.”