Congratulations are in order to Justine Curgenven from Cackle TV. Her latest short film, Islands of Fire hasn’t been released yet but has already won, “Best Sea Kayaking Film” at both the Reel Paddling Film Festival and the Waterwalker Film Festival.

Islands of Fire is a 30 minute film about sea kayaking in the warm turquoise waters of Sicily’s Aeolian Islands. Justine says the film is as much about Aeolian Islands as it is about paddling which includes climbing active volcanoes, harvest grapes and explore ancient ruins giving real insight into the Italian way of life.

On her blog, Justine hints at a cool (at least to me) part of the story about how she finished editing and literally dropped it in the mail to the Reel Paddling Film Festival the day before they started their Tierra del Fuego expedition back in January. Since she didn’t have time to send along another copy to the Waterwalker Film Festival, the gang at Rapid Media (who also organize the RPFF) kindly made a copy and submitted it to Waterwalker on her behalf. I think that’s fantastic. In theory both film festivals are competitors but with the world of paddling films being so tiny they sometimes need to work together to get a decent selection to judge.

If you don’t make it to either the Reel Paddling or the Waterwalker film festivals tours, you can see it on Justine’s DVD when it comes out in October/November. If you can’t wait, there is a 3 minute trailer for Islands of Fire over on the RPFF website.