Sue Armstrong went from Country Womens Association event to chance meeting with a filmmaker, to subject of a documentary film at a major festival to starting her own film festival. 

Now she wants to make Gilgandra’s upcoming Film Festival an annual event. “There was one film made about Gilgandra and we wanted to show it, so we decided that we may as well show three short films and make it a film festival,” Sue Armstrong told the Western Plains App. 



“We have managed to raise money and get support. It's being run by volunteers most of whom are Country Womens Association members. If it goes really well we hope that it will be the inaugural festival and we can do this every year. 

The festival will be held in Gilgandra on April 22, and Sue is hoping that up to 250 people will attend.   

There will be three films showing at the event. The third film showing is about two Ukrainian refugees who crossed the border into Poland last year, the second film is a documentary about transgender actress Georgie Stone, opening film will be about Sue herself by Sydney filmmaker Simon Target. 

ABOVE: Sue and Brian Armstrong. Image: Gilgandra Film Festival. 

Armstrong met filmmaker Target through a CWA event she organised in 2018. Target was impressed when he met her, taking a great interest in the Armstrong’s lives in remote NSW country. He went to move in with Sue and her husband Brain at the foothills of the Warrumbungles National Park to make a documentary film about their lives. 

“He absolutely loved the area and just loved the Gilgandra shire” Armstrong told the Western Plains App. 

His film titled “Warrawong – The Windy Place on a Hill” captures the aesthetic and fragility of life on the 4000-acre cattle and sheep station. 

A film about transgender actress Georgia Stone will also feature at the festival. Image: Gilgandra Film Festival. 

Target told the Western Plains App “I met Sue and Brian at CWA dinner in Sydney. It was just coming out of the drought. There were so many farmers literally taking their own lives and I wanted to get the full story of what life was like and how people were trying to survive in harsh conditions. The wind blows 24 hours a day, they had a drought, a mouse plague, the isolation of covid to deal with. You can see the weather moving across the sky out there, there is nothing like it.” 

“It’s 80 kilometres to get a coffee, 150 kilometres to see a doctor and when we showed this film at a festival in Poland, it had Sue and Brian saying they really didn’t mind traveling that far. The Polish audience just started laughing out loud because they couldn’t believe that people would choose to live in such a place” 

Target said he had a strong sense of the rich natural heritage of the area.  

“These lands have existed for millions of years and it made me think more about how we are all just such a blip in the landscape.”