True life stories

Filmmaker Kylie Eddy could never be accused of not putting her heart and soul into her work.

She has just finished her first feature film, This Kiss, about a lesbian returning to the country town where she grew up to confront her childhood. The film is based on an experience the filmmaker had with her own best friend.

Eddy’s most recent short film, Three Months At Sea, has been selected for screening at the Flickerfest Short Film Festival, which commences Friday 5 January at the Bondi Pavilion.

In the 13-minute film, Eddy returns to the days before she came out as a lesbian and the events of the break-up of her last relationship with a man.

Making this film was pretty confronting, she says. This was a period which was a big part of my life. It was a time when I realised I had feelings for the same sex, then had a very scary experience with a butch woman who scared me back into the closet and into the arms of this particular guy.

The film looks at the final breaths of the relationship and, because of where it is set, you see into what their relationship was and how they have to go their separate ways.

Three Months At Sea, starring Damien Walshe-Howling and Kristen Hilton, is based on Eddy’s experience with her Canadian boyfriend. The couple had met while travelling, and then he moved to Australia to be with her, but within three months the relationship was over.

On the day the crate with all his belongings arrived from Canada the pair went to the customs wharf to send it straight back, with the boyfriend following days later.

The images of that day have always stayed with me, and that experience tops and tails the film, Eddy recalls. Sometimes, you just have to look at the life you shared together and confront what that means. But enough time has passed now to tell it.

In keeping with her motto that the truth of her own life is stranger than fiction, another of Eddy’s short films is Coming Out At Work Is Hard To Do, based on her own experience of dancing at Mardi Gras and ending up on the cover of a trashy magazine. The film screened at last year’s Mardi Gras Film Festival.

I think I am working out my own life through my films, she laughs. I am not sure if it is cheaper than therapy as filmmaking is so expensive, but it is certainly interesting.

Flickerfest opens Friday 5 January at Bondi Pavilion. Program details and prices are at the Flickerfest website.