Jill Shelton the Festival Director says, “Our aim was to create a festival where people could come along and participate in a wide range of passion tasting workshops, talks, presentations etc for the equivalent value of twenty dollars a session, while experiencing quality entertainment for even less.”

The Passion Tasting Festival has over 30 interactive and content-rich workshops, all carefully selected to give people the opportunity to discover, share and experience a wide variety of passions. Workshops range from living your passion and creative structure, to dynamic storytelling, public speaking, primal dance, singing and much more.

Local and internationally-recognised speakers will reveal how their life experiences have led to the development and pursuit of their particular passions. You will be inspired by speakers such as Dominique Finney, Falu Eyre, Vanessa Hall, Barbara Brewster, Sarah and Chris Pye.

For those who are passionate about the arts, or would love to experience art for the first time, there is a variety of hands-on workshops, an interactive Art Central area and Art Gallery.

A platform is being provided for emerging bands, musicians and entertainers during the day, with soul-stirring professional concerts at night. Friday night is a charity concert with Sulco, Hayden Hack Infusion and French Butler called Smith, and Saturday night De Greer Yindimincarlie, The Twine and OKA.

The Craft market stallholders provide a passionate display of their creative talents to peruse, and for the health conscious there will be a broad mix of gifted energy workers and healers on hand to demonstrate their skills.

Food is one of our greatest passions and festival caterers will fill your stomachs with gourmet tastes and liquid delights.

The 3 day Passion tasting festival is at the Maleny Show grounds on the beautiful Sunshine Coast Hinterland from 26-28 March.

For full program information and ticket sales visit the website at www.passiontastingfestival.com.au or phone:  07 5473 9498.

Left: Tim Donovan with wine glass.

THE BUTCHER, the baker, the cheese, chef and wine maker will all present their creative skills at The Kenilworth Cheese Wine and Food Fest on Easter Saturday, in Kenilworth Town Park.

Curious to know where that glazed ham comes from? Or what to do with the leftover pork hock? Introduce your self to local butchers Bruce and Jimmy and watch them go the whole hog. And a special treat –they will be selling bison beef on the day!

The day-long festival will present award-winning local produce including sumptuous sauces, organic olives, mushrooms, pies, and the famous preservative-free bread from the Kenilworth Bakery.

There will be cooking demonstrations throughout the day including unique tastes from local bush foods. Visitors can sample everything from cream scones to Thai country cooking, all produced with a local spin. The Farm-to-Fork Feast will be offering smoked semi dried tomatoes, beef jerky, tasty wood fired pizzas and Gitsham’s award winning sausages.

Obi Kobi Wagyu will be selling their gold medal-winning Wagyu beef steaks at the Festival.  In addition they will also offer Wagyu beef patties, hand-made Wagyu sausages and Wagyu kebabs for sale.

Other entertainment includes a Great Cheester Egg Hunt at 9.30am (registration at 9am). There’s a cheese rolling contest that kicks off at 9am and a line dancing display. More details: phone Di: 07 5446 0003.

Her strong works involve a labor intensive process -a step by step procedure including the manipulation and outlay of elements such as textiles, plants and the creation of their imprints and traces. She uses colour to bring out their texture, their richness and hidden beauty.

“I see a connection with the way we, as human beings, retain traces of events, experiences and significant objects that hold quiet meanings” says Nathalie. “The traces left are printed into our inner imagery and memory, forever altering the colors and textures of our lives”.

Nathalie has a strong artistic background with her grandfather and father both painters and sign writers. It was her father who passed on so many of the skills and techniques she uses in her art.

Nathalie is a senior support worker for Sunshine Coast Independent living Services in Nambour. She works in her private studio whenever she has the time.

“Masala” is a blend of ‘mixed spices’ representing the mixture of Indian influences.
Marianne says she feels a degree of trepidation when dipping her paintbrush into other people’s culture. “Observations by an outsider can be both trite and presumptuous and I would hate to offend”, she says.

“These paintings have been inspired by my visits to India and the deepest impression left by that country is always the huge and extreme contrasts of rich and poor.

The riches of the Raj may now be replaced by the moguls of industry and business enterprise, but the contrasting poverty becomes greater by comparison.”

Some of Marianne’s paintings explore the idealised visions of the Mogul emperors set against the harsh poverty and hunger that remains ever present in this remarkable country of social contrast.

Other influences are the richly ornate temples and artifacts, the embroideries and miniatures, the vivid colourings and the evocative shapes of traditional Indian architecture.

“Imagination, fantasy and a touch of socio-political comment are what I aim for”, adds this thoughtful painter.

The 2010 program features quality films across all genres: comedy, drama, animation documentaries and student films have been selected for their excellence in film making. Amongst the 171 films is Australian actor Bud Tingwell’s last film titled The Last Bottle. Frank Woodley (of Lano & Woodley comedy duo) brings more humour to the program through his delightful short animation Chicken of God (below).

Kat Stewart [Underbelly] appears in a strong supporting role in a beautiful film titled Trampoline and David Wenham delivers a classic performance in a movie titled Glenn Owen Dodds [GOD] which carries the tagline -“Want to know the meaning of life? You’ve got five minutes.” (right)

The festival presents a fantastic family program which includes the stunning animation titled Lost & Found [UK].Narrated by British actor Jim Broadbent, this gorgeous feature film is about a little boy and his unsolicited mission to get a lost penguin back home to Antarctica. Also part of the family program is Luc Jacquet’s first film since March of the Penguins entitled The Fox and The Child: a beautifully shot feature film about a life changing encounter between a fox and a young girl set amongst breathtaking scenery.

Heart of Gold International Film Festival offers special events, documentaries, workshops, seminar programs and the very popular Filmmaker Presents sessions along with its extensive short film program from around the world.

The Heart of Gold festival recruited Malcolm Blaylock as its director. He has directed the St Kilda Film Festival and has also served as a jury member for Interfilm Berlin and Spain’s Short Film Festival Bilbao.

Malcolm commented on the quality of the Heart of Gold “There are so many good films, from all over the world. As I travelled the various film festivals this year I was looking for films that were entertaining and that fitted our unique brief. Regardless of genre, each film had to have somewhere within its premise -no matter how deeply or darkly placed - a positive spin on the world and a positive view of humanity”.

Heart of Gold International Film Festival

Gympie Civic Centre, 11 – 14 March 2010

www.heartofgold.com.au

Auction Item: Kym Barrett "Inner Terrain".

AN INTEGRAL PART of the annual Heart of Gold International Film Festival -Art with Heart -is set to showcase some of the region’s most accomplished and renowned artworks which have been generously donated by participating artists and creators.

To ensure the Exhibition includes something for everyone, this year Art with Heart has widened its scope to include all art forms, allowing artists to use their medium of choice to reflect Heart of Gold themes such as inspiration, creativity, hope and joy. Art with Heart 2010 will feature oil, acrylic and watercolour works on canvas, ceramic/clay sculpture, prints, a wrought-iron gate, 3-D embroidery, hand-crafted jewellery, a hand-crafted wooden seat and mixed-media creations.

Art with Heart will be considering all bids above the reserve, so be quick to avoid disappointment. Only unsold pieces will be auctioned at the Awards Party at the Gympie Civic Centre, Saturday 13 March 2010.

All Art with Heart works will be exhibited at the Gympie Civic Centre throughout the festival as a visual accompaniment to a fantastic film program.

For the catalogue, or to submit a bid, please email: info@heartofgold.com.au or phone 5483 7000.

guitarist/composer Anthony Garcia (top right) join forces to present a unique program of music to be held in the Artspark Australia, 407 Mt Mellum Road Maleny, home of the Ken Hinds Cultural Heritage collection.

The performance will see the world premier of White Notes Between Heaven and Earth, a new work for guitar and didgeridoo by Garcia and Barton inspired by the evocative artwork on display at Artspark and the immense beauty of it’s natural surroundings.

The Hinds gallery, with stunning views of the Sunshine Coast Hinterland and cradled by the D’Aguilar mountain range, is home to the work of some of Australia’s finest indigenous and non-indigenous painters.

William, one of Australias most celebrated didgeridoo players was a star of the 2008 Olympic opening ceremony. He has performed with orchestras around the world.

Australian guitarist and composer Anthony Garcia blends colourful, improvised flair with a masterful classical technique. This passionate improviser can cross from the experimental music scene in New York to early music with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. He fuses together a wide range of styles from ancient to contemporary from Latin folk to jazz, world rhythms and experimental.

The Events Centre Caloundra Ph: 5491 4240

Online: www.etixdirect.com.au

Miranda’s world is turning upside down: her best friend Sal gets punched by a new kid for no reason and he shuts her out of his life; her mother wants to become a contestant on a TV game show; and the apartment key they keep hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny slip of paper:

I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own. I must ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter.

The notes keep coming, and Miranda slowly realises that whoever is leaving them knows all about her, including things that have not happened yet. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her think she’s too late.

Making The Rounds With Oscar David Dosa

Oscar is a tabby cat who resides on the third floor of the

Steere House Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island. Adopted by the nursing home as a kitten, Oscar has lived his entire life on the advanced dementia unit. In time, staff at the nursing home began to rely on Oscar as an “early warning system” announcing to those present that it was time to notify family and increase hospice services for those close to death. In July 2007, David Dosa garnered international attention for an essay on Oscar that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. David decided to write a book about his experiences with Oscar.This touching and engaging book is a must-read for more than just cat lovers.

The Long Song Andrea Levy

The follow-up to Andrea Levy’s award-winning Small Island is a set in early 19th Century Jamaica and is a tale of the end of slavery. The novel takes the form of a memoir of an old Jamaican woman, July, who was herself once a slave, she is now living comfortably with her son, a printer, who intends to publish her story. Set against turbulent times of oppression and rebellion, July’s story is a personal chronicle of the lives and struggles of individuals, which is at times both heartbreaking and uplifting. Despite the seriousness of her subject, the narrator’s voice remains charged with humour and insight and she is able to delight and move us with her story telling.

ROSETTA BOOKS

12/43 Maple Street Maleny ~ Ph: 5435 2134

ON A RECENT television news bulletin a distraught resident of Port au Prince in Haiti faced the camera to declare that, “I have lost my wife and my children. I only have God now”.

The horrific earthquake in Haiti and the 2004 tsunami that devastated coastlines to our north, are only two natural events that many still see as ‘acts of God’.

History reflects these tragedies many times where whole societies are bewildered and disorientated by rampant death and destruction. Inevitably it seems, people turn to their gods for the who and why of such events.

It was not until 1906, when San Francisco was wrecked and set ablaze by a giant earthquake that a different explanation was given, and God was taken out of the equation. The governor of California set up a commission of enquiry of scientists to work out what had taken place. The final report was a classic of modern geology, and it defined a 1300km-long fracture in the earth’s crust that they named the San Andreas Fault. God was not in the report.

Mind you, scientific explanations for natural catastrophes have not stopped faith-based thinking on such events. Despite the science, Pentecostalists in 1906 believed their earthquake was evidence of ‘God’s vehement disapproval’.

Retired Anglican priest and academic Ray Barraclough has tackled this complex issue in a book called Why -how to explain life’s tragic experiences.

Ray Barraclough’s book essentially traces the who and what of earthly calamity including diseases such as epilepsy.

The religious and supernatural causes stretch from the multitude of deities to the stars. He acknowledges that Christians have always approached God with the difficult questions. For example, if God is omnipotent and all loving why doesn’t he stop catastrophes occurring, and why does he let people go through such prolonged suffering?

Rarely in the book though does this former priest reveal a conflict between his own belief in an omniscient God and scientific explanations for disasters. But he does display a very open mind on the matter. For example, on illness he says, ‘There are too many people whose suffering has been relieved, or even removed, by modern medical procedures for me to be so dismissive of people’s belief in modern medicine’s capacity to affect what is within its claims to affect’.

Ray Barraclough inclines towards the social justice core of liberation theology which is where he comes close to his Catholic colleague and rebel priest, Peter Kennedy. Like Kennedy, he is wary of Church dogma and fundamentalism: “There is a need for alternative Christian voices to speak softly of God in the midst of resurgent strident expressions of faith.”

It is in his final chapter that Ray Barraclough focuses on the Why of his book. When nature becomes destructive of life and ‘the brook becomes a destroying flood’ it is Ray’s view that ‘in the face of these dimensions of nature, hymns of praise sound heartless.’

When tragedy strikes, Ray asks, what use are words, religious or otherwise?

Grief is intensely personal and Ray acknowledges that ‘God-talk’ is manifestly inappropriate and a hangover from past theology.

Ray Barraclough’s book Why is a fascinating insight into the role of calamity in our lives. We humans want certainty despite the scary randomness of horrific events. Many will not go as far as Richard Dawkins to claim that God is a delusion, but Ray recognises that within the underbelly of theology: “…pious explanations will tend to make the floor more slippery”.

Ray feels on more solid ground with the message of liberation theology where he sees social justice as the very core of the Christian gospel in action. It may not be the total answer to why but, “No explanation can repair the fractured faith so damaged by the realities of experience”.

Ray Barraclough is now a Hinterland resident who will join rebel Catholic priest, Peter Kennedy in a community conversation on Wed March 17, 6.00pm in the Maleny Community Centre. Bookings at Rosetta Books. These two thought-provoking clerics will explore the relevance of God in a contemporary world that must cope with the Haiti earthquake, AIDS, global warming and other natural and man-made calamities.

This was a crisis that had been brewing for several years and was as much about Peter’s shedding of Church formalities as it was about his personal struggles with the relevance of a heavily doctrinal church.

Kennedy was accused of not wearing vestments at Mass, of allowing lay women to preach and of using alternative Eucharistic prayers. More concerning for the dogmatists is Kennedy’s worrying out loud that Jesus was a human being rather than a divine one.

Peter Kennedy has been strongly supported by his articulate congregation at St Mary’s Church in South Brisbane. Following Kennedy’s sacking they became St Mary’s-in-Exile and re-located to the Trades and Labour Council building also in South Brisbane.

Journalist Martin Flanagan has assembled a number of commentators who reflect on Kennedy’s personality, the people who worked with him, his social justice work with the disadvantaged in Brisbane, and the complexity of his doctrinal fight with Catholic hierarchy that went all the way to Rome.

Broadcaster Paul Collins is clear on what side of the line he stands -”the temple police seem to be the kind of people who psychologically can’t tolerate the fact that others may have different approaches to faith to them…”

The specific combatants were Kennedy and Archbishop Bathersby who was once Kennedy’s friend, and Collins now sees the clash of two pretty big egos. He puts the blame for the sacking on Bathersby who he sees as having ‘a very narrow view of the nature of ecclesiastical communion’.

Age journalist Martin Flanagan’s sensitive portrait is of Kennedy the lonely but determined and charismatic man.

That charisma was felt by Millie De Conceicao a Timorese migrant who was the community garden coordinator at

beliefs.

History professor Ross Fitzgerald goes further to suggest that, ‘Fr Kennedy is the victim of an institutionalised Church more concerned with papering over the cracks than in cleaning up its own act as a force for good in the world.’

Catholic nun, Veronica Brady takes up that theme and is worried that the Catholic Church is bureaucratic and follows the model of the old Roman Empire. “The Law seems more powerful than the Spirit and prophets are regarded with suspicion”, she says.

A differing point of view comes from theology professor Neil Ormerod who says that when Kennedy brings into question the divinity of Christ, he can’t then call his beliefs Catholic or Christian. He frowns on the schism caused by Kennedy and says that ‘notoriety is almost guaranteed to produce St Mary’s. A strong Catholic, Millie is deeply saddened by what has happened at St Mary’s. ‘It’s taken a lot of people’s home away’, she says conscious of the homeless people who came to rely on the community garden and the church grounds. ‘The church without Peter … is nothing’ she adds.

Like Millie there are a number of short contributions in the book by St Mary’s supporters and a wide range of thoughtful people who were drawn to this vibrant church community.

Some are concerned at being ‘out of communion with Rome’, still others are angry at conservative church vigilantes who secretly reported on Kennedy’s wayward interpretation of church doctrine. Kennedy is said to have ordered one vigilante out of St Mary’s for taking photos at an unorthodox Christening.

Michael Morewood, a former Catholic priest believes what has happened to Kennedy is symptomatic of the wider view of Christians who don’t see relevance in orthodox theology or Catholic sacramental practice. He says these people are not being unfaithful, they just want their religion to shift to more contemporary views of men,

women and their relationship to each other and their

popularity’. In the end it comes down to whether Kennedy’s parish can claim to have upheld central Christian and Catholic beliefs.

Australian songwriter Shane Howard has sung at St Mary’s. He attempts to analyse the dilemma that caused Kennedy’s sacking and like many essayists in this book, sees an inflexible Church unable to embrace a modern world.

He concludes with what the Church has perhaps forgotten, that they and Father Peter Kennedy are on the same side: “Fr Peter Kennedy and St Mary’s ‘crime’ was to lean toward a modestly different kind of Australian Catholicism. It’s not a foreign country. ‘All are welcomed, none are turned away’.