INTERVIEW WITH PALACE CEO BENJAMIN ZECCOLA AVAILABLE ON SCENESTR

I didn’t intend to go away for over a month, there’s been things I’ve been doing and I planned to post often but it just got away from me, overtime shifts, an impromptu getaway and feeble attempts to improve my health and sleeping patterns. So here we are and it’s been more than a month. I feel very frustrated that I’m not getting to write and read as much as I used to but the first thing I had to do was write about Kelly. Now that I’ve done that I will try to catch up on some things I’ve gotten published in the past month.

A few weeks back I jumped at the chance to interview the Festival Director of the Italian Film Festival which tours around Australia at this time of the year. Alas she was ill and last minute I got to speak to the CEO Of Palace Cinemas himself Benjamin Zeccola. Interviews are still a relatively new thing for me and often listening back to the tapes I hear a nervous interviewer building to his questions. How the hell was I gonna go with a CEO?! Well Mr Zeccola was so charming that I grew in confidence during our conversation. We spoke for about 30 minutes about how I met my wife at a Palace cinema, the changing landscape of media and how to program a film festival. It was a truly fascinating conversation with a man who revealed himself to be very grounded, a hopeless romantic but also a savvy businessman. It gave me a great deal of confidence coming out of it and made me realise what a dream it would be for me to do this for a living full time. Alas due to word count restrictions we were only able to print his thoughts on the 2017 Italian Film Festival which you can read here http://scenestr.com.au/movies/lavazza-italian-film-festival-coming-to-a-cinema-near-you

Later I attended the return of the Brisbane International Film Festival where his father Antonio Zeccola was acknowledged for his work in bringing back my favourite hometown film festival. I had thanked Benjamin and Palace for doing so during our interview and I feel eternally grateful for the privilege of being able to do that as a writer for Scenestr.

Produced by Eyeball Media Enterprises Scenestr. is an online national magazine with local offices around Australia. With over twenty years of publishing history they’ve excelled at moving into the digital realm but they remain at heart from the streets. They also publish Scenestr magazine in print every month and I was lucky enough that this featured in all the September issues published across the country. In the Queensland issue it featured alongside another interview I conducted. A digital copy of the printed magazine with two interviews I did for the Queensland September issue can be found here http://scenestr.com.au/read/QLD/2017/1095-QLD/scenestr-QLD-1095.html#p=63

Scenestr focus mostly on music gigs, festivals, stand-up comics, fashion and interviews with local and international bands. If you’re into music they’re a great read but they do cover all of the arts.

-Lloyd Marken