White Night Festival

Melbourne walks onto the international stage once more with White Night, and the night was an obvious success. The perfect introduction to the evening were the Flinders Street Station and Flinders Street building projections, aptly named Wonderland. Ever changing and unpredictable, it coloured the city and set the perfect tone to embrace the unexpected.

The events themselves and the way you took the evening was what made the night an adventure. Taking to the night with mystery and excitement led people to discover the Loading Bay cinema between Federation Square and the Yarra, or capture the bizarre Red Shoes exhibition off Flinders Lane. For some, it worked as a music festival with big acts like The Cat Empire, World's End Press and Eagle & The Worm bringing people to the amazing Flinders Street Station-turned-rock stage, or the smaller stage on Degraves Street, featuring jazz sessions with Bob Sedergreen's Trio, Nina Ferro and others. Some took advantage of NGV with Jeff Wall and consumed some more traditional art while others tried to figure out what the hell was happening in the Hi-Fi Bar.

Something of a problem were crowds, which for festival organisers is fantastic, but for the amount of content on show, the minimal space created some bad pedestrian traffic and much frustration. Popular events like Particle Picnic – a somewhat calming 3D experience in the Forum Theatre – or the 101 Zombie Kills (Cent une Tueries de Zombies) that needs no further explanation, had up to a one-hour wait, which for some left exploration of the festival to be unfulfilled. For the first year of a festival this was to be expected, and for the years to come it is a hope that the festival grows in size and content to cope with the large numbers that were at first expected to be 100,000 yet turned out to be triple that.

The success and future of White Night is evident by the scribes of Facebook and the Instagram chronicles read on Sunday morning. Like European festivals, White Night is best enjoyed with your closest friends and like-minded thinkers.