Great Southern Wins 6 Qantas Awards

Great Southern had a great night on the red carpet as the 2009 dongs were handed out recently.

We had 20 finalist nominations at the prestigious Qantas Film and Television awards and ended up winning six categories on the night, which was a wonderful moment for the company.

We were pretty spread out in terms of nominations - from best factual through to best feature film cinematography; from best light entertainment show through to best director – feature film.

So a pretty diverse crowd gathered, all with fingers crossed, but all realistic that the competition was pretty hot.

In the end we won the best ob doc category with RESCUE ONE – this is an important category as ob docs do so well on NZ TV – and NZ producers make them so well – so we were stoked to be top of the heap there.

The acceptance speech by producer Martin Cleave shall go down in history. Marty, we have the tape.

Next up was Paul Casserly – winning for best director in factual entertainment – the second year in a row b>EATING MEDIA LUNCH has won at the awards.

In the feature film category we were up against the uber sized DEAN SPANELY – with our modestly budgetted feature films. APRON STRINGS punched above its weight, winning Best Cinematography (Rewa Harre); Best Production Design (Johnny Hawkins) and best actor in a feature film (Scott Wills) and best actress in a feature film (Jennifer Ludlam).