Asia Pacific Screen Awards Looking for New Home

The Asia Pacific Screen Awards, the annual Asian film prize ceremony that has been held in Brisbane, will have to find a new venue before this year’s event in November.

The Brisbane City Council and its offshoot Brisbane Marketing have notified the organizers that they will not be able to fund the event in the next financial year, which runs July to June, due to the impact of the coronavirus on the city’s finances. That means limbo for the 14th edition, which had been scheduled for Nov. 26, 2020 at the Brisbane Conventions & Exhibitions Centre.

The event has been held since 2007 and is currently organized in partnership with UNESCO and FIAPF-International Federation of Film Producers Associations. The early editions were held in Gold Coast, also in Queensland. It moved to Brisbane in 2012, and from 2013 became an initiative of Brisbane City Council.

The APSAs involve a core award ceremony, but have expanded to include a forum and a growing academy body made up of key personnel from past winning films. The Motion Picture Association has also partnered with the event to create $100,000 of bursaries which go toward projects being hatched by APSA Academy members. The bursaries are announced at the red carpet event.

While Brisbane is not unique in feeling the financial impact of the coronavirus, and recent stay-at-home measures, defunding the APSAs represents a U-turn from the city’s promises as recently as last year.

Brisbane lord mayor Adrian Schrinner then committed to locking in the APSAs for the long-term. “We want Brisbane to continue to have a growing and thriving film industry, but to have these international awards right here in Brisbane is something incredibly important for our city,” he said in November 2019. “Major events such as the Asia Pacific Screen Awards contribute $150 million into Brisbane’s economy and create thousands of local jobs for Queenslanders.”

APSA uses a UNESCO definition of Asia, which stretches from the Asia-Pacific to the Mediterranean and includes much of the Middle East and Central Asia. The logistics of the APSA week events do not involve large numbers of screenings or audiences to be held in Brisbane, but they do involve several dozen overseas prize nominees and jury members to travel from overseas.

Last year the best film winner was Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite,” which had debuted at Cannes and went on to win best picture at the Oscars.ENDS