Posted February 02, 2018 12:28:48

A new series of short web documentaries celebrates the characters who define Melbourne's western suburbs.

We Are West has so far featured little-known locals as well as household names such as furniture retailer Franco Cozzo and youth worker Les Twentyman.

Local filmmaker Laurens Goud moved to Williamstown with his mother he was 11 years old and now lives in Altona.

"I didn't move too far," he told ABC Radio Melbourne's Richelle Hunt.

He said the idea for the web series came from local businessman Marty Rankin.

"[He] came to us and said, 'I want to make a time capsule of the way that the west is'," Mr Goud recalled.

Together they came up with a plan to produce a series of short documentaries featuring "some of the characters that are famous, and even some of the stories that are less famous".

"We're not all going to be around forever, so if we don't go about capturing the way that the west is now, we won't be able to remember what it was."

Famous and not-so-famous

The series started in November with a video telling the little-known story of Peter and Lola Anderson from community group Friends of Cruickshank Park.

"[They're] an adorable pair who put in a lot of work to make Cruickshank Park what it is today," Mr Goud said.

He said the Yarraville park was "an amazing resource for the west".

"I walked my dog there so many times without any idea about the amount of work that went into creating that."

The series returned this year with a video featuring high-profile youth worker Twentyman, before releasing its most recent episode on the furniture king Cozzo.

The Italian immigrant is famous locally for his television commercials and love of baroque furniture.

Mr Goud described Mr Cozzo as "genuine" and said he was "one of the most amazing people to meet".

"We actually just walked in [to the furniture store] and he was at the back of the store in his office," Mr Goud said.

"We said, 'We're doing this series, love to talk to you', and off we went.

"We could have cut a much longer story there; he wasn't afraid to talk, as you could imagine."

In the video Mr Cozzo talks about the early days of his business, and says the inner western suburb is "better than Toorak".

"I will say, 'West is the best'."

'Genuine' stories for social media

Mr Goud said with the first few episodes the producers were testing to see if there was an audience on Facebook for these sorts of local stories.

"Social media, there's so much action and people jumping up and down for attention," he said.

"We sort of thought: 'We think that there's an audience for genuine stories, for real people, but let's go out and find out if that's the case'.

"If we have people watching and enjoying what we're trying to do, then we'll keep making the stories."

Topics: documentary, internet-culture, social-media, television, community-and-society, people, human-interest, footscray-3011, williamstown-3016, braybrook-3019, altona-3018, melbourne-3000