The annual awards night held by the Film Critics Circle of Australia (FCCA) has always been a very enjoyable and relaxed event, but this year was exceptional. Tina Kaufman has been a stalwart of the FCCA for a loong time, with a memory which stretches back to Mad Max and prawn cocktails.
A terrific audience, made up of critics, other people from the media and many representatives from the industry mixed with a smattering of sponsors, thoroughly enjoyed the nicely timed awards presentation, conducted with professional aplomb by host and FCCA President, ABC local radio’s Rod Quinn, who did a terrific job of both moving things along and keeping the good-natured crowd in check. Making a virtue out of necessity, he threw a number of blatant plugs for main sponsor Foxtel into his spiel in such a way as to highly amuse his audience while not offending the sponsor. There were no time restrictions on acceptance speeches (“we can’t afford an orchestra to play you off the stage,” explained Awards Manager Adrienne McKibbins, when thanking the sponsors she had managed to entice to support the evening despite, as she said, it being “really hard to ask people to give money to critics”) but no-one outstayed their welcome on stage and both presenters and recipients were brief and often funny.
