Entries close on Friday 31 July for the 2015 Innovative Tasmania Awards   celebrating the very best innovations from past and present. Entries are flowing in already from large organisations like Incat, the developers of the Wave Piercing Catamaran, and smaller innovators in the e-medicine, community sector and new food/beverage producers.

Entry is easy: just write a 120 word description of the innovation, add a photo and (if you want) include an extra page of support materials.  And its FREE to enter!

If you know of innovations that have had an impact on Tasmania in any sector of life from past to present day then encourage nominations  (www.bofa.com.au/innovativetasmaniaawards/) in the categories of:

• Mouth-watering innovations: food and beverage production
• Boundary pushing innovations: science, technology and transport
• Fun & fanciful innovations: sport, leisure and the arts
• Law and order innovations: politics, governance and security
• It takes a village innovations: community and  environment

Once entries are in they will be put online on the BOFA website and  then the public including you can judge which are the most innovative ideas on offer.

Proudly founded by Big Picture Tasmania,  Australian Innovation Research Centre and BOFA in Action. Partners are federal Department of Science and Industry, Tasmanian Department of State Growth, Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Eaglecrest Technologies, Slow Capital, Anglicare and Red Cross.

The BOFA film programme team have been hard at work attending festivals, scoping out overseas festivals and trawling the net and distributors to find the finest of films for you at BOFA 2015.

Some "breaking news" titbits to tempt you to book  a space in your diary are:

Our red carpet opening night screening will be the Tasmanian (and probably)  World Premiere of Death or Liberty, shot in Australia, UK, Ireland, USA and Canada. The film, produced and directed by Tasmania's own Roar Film, tells the story of the British Government banishment of  their political enemies - viewed with the same alarm as today’s ‘terrrorists’ – to the shores of Australia. The story is told through the vivid first-hand accounts of those still revered as heroes and martyrs, freedom fighters and patriots in their homelands, plus interviews with author Tony Moore and  celebrated writers and historians. Hamish Maxwell-Stuart, Janet McCalman, Cassandra Pybus and Richard Flanagan. The Roots music soundtrack is composed and performed by singers and songwriters like Billy Bragg (UK) and Mick Thomas (who will perform at BOFA 2015)

Oscar nominated Irish animation,  Song of the Seas, will set the tone for our new FAMILY BOFA section. It features Ben, a young Irish boy, and his little sister Saoirse, a girl who can turn into a seal, as they go on an adventure to free the faeries and save the spirit world. Voiced by a star cast including Brendan Gleeson, star of The Guard (BOFA 2011) and Calvary.

Korean masterpiece, My Love , Don't Cross that River, winner of the doco prize at LA Film Festival, screened recently at Sydney Film Festival and shortly at Melbourne International Film Festival, is an exquisitely crafted documentary of a couple married for 76 years.  It was a box-office sensation and the most commercially successfully Korean documentary of all time. "The perfect distilled essence of romantic comedy that fictional films try and typically fail to achieve." – hancinema.net