Students from Gilgandra schools will bring their stories to life with the help of audio equipment awarded as part of the Gilgandra Film Festival.

Students from Gilgandra Primary, St Joseth's Catholic, Tooraweenah Primary Eumungerie Public made and the Gilgandra Library Tech Club made mini documentaires up to eight minutes long for last weekend's festival.

Around 200 people turned out on Sunday 25 May to watch documentaries from national and international filmmakers.

Each group will receive wireless clip-on microphones that connect to phones, which provide better sound quality for interviews. 

Artistic director Simon Target said the festival aims to encourage documentary film making among Gilgandra shire students.

"We went to the schools and said 'look, we're running this documentary festival and we'd love to have kids involved," Simon said.

"Some of them are made with a bit of help from parents, some of them made totally by the kids.

"There's a sort of unself-consciousness about the way they filmed, which if you're an old documentary maker like me is really inspiring."

The audience watched a highlight reel from the students' work, which also screened at the Primary School Students Documentaries the day before.

RIGHT TO LEFT: Festival artistic director Simon Target, festival director Sue Armstrong and Simon's wife Dr Beata Zatoska. PHOTO: Supplied

The festival also featured Simon's 'Warrawong : the wind still blows,' which followed festival director Sue Armstrong on her Warrawong farm after her husband Brian passed in 2023.

Sue, who has since sold the farm, was in the audience for the screening.

"Simon actually made this wonderful little film, picked all the bits out of it to show at the funeral," Sue said.

"And he's now done a little one, only a grand to show what it's like when a farmer dies and what the consequences are if his wife is left trying to do things on the farm.

"If I was 40 or 45, it'd be different, but I'm nearly 80.

"I can drive the tractor, but I wouldn't drive it before, so I've had to drive the tractor, learn to use the zero turn mower, learn to use all these different things, but do I really want to?

"So, this really is a bit of a closing chapter."

 The international pick, Marjan Khosravi's 'The Dream of a Horse,' featured Shahnaz, a teenager from a nomadic family in the Iranian mountains who wants to study, but who's father wants to marry her off.

Also from Simon was a test screening of 'Kozok : Alone across Australia,' which documented photographer-adventurer Michael Kozok and his unmotorised trek across across Australia.

The festival began in the 2023 after a chance meeting between Sue and Simon in 2018 at a Country Women's Association event.

 That led to Simon making a film about Sue and Brian's life as farmers in remote NSW.

“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 in 2023.

On Sunday Sue said the festival is now shaping up as a yearly event.

"We're already looking at next year," Sue said. "And it's very interesting. After having last night, where the children saw themselves on the screen, the children have been heard saying 'I want to do one for next year.'"

"Hey, what more can you want than that?"