- what were the key insights about staging film festivals in Australia you took away from Richard Sowada’s guest lecture, and from attending a film festival screening in Melbourne?
Film festival, an event that provides films for people, includes red carpets, open-air screenings, paparazzi. From the guest lecture by Richard Sowada, I had a primary understanding of Film Festival, such as how film festival running, and how much film festivals in contemporary century. Every day in the world, there are more than one film festivals take place, small size or large scale. Richard mentioned that he doesn’t agree that the size is a key point to judge a film festival is good or not, because the best film festival he attended were in the small pubs. Richard also talked about the history of film, after the second world war, film festivals appeared. At that time, the theme, form and the aim of the festivals are not the same with film festivals nowadays. The most obvious difference was the screening method, at that time, people use film roll to present films, which was the original method of filming, but complicated and hard to preserve, however, the quality of film roll has its own unique color, that modern technology cannot compare with.
In our weekly reading (Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice), the author stated that size is important to an international film festival, which is opposite to Richard’s opinion, the author mentioned, all international film festivals are large scales. In my opinion, the meaning of small size film festivals and international film festivals are different, but they both got their advantages and disadvantages, it depends on what kinds of audience they focus on.
All film festivals got a common point, all of the organizers aim to present and spread their opinions, like political directions, environmental protection, LGBT culture and so on. Similarly, each region, each country also got its own theme, although the exact theme won’t be the same, but the large position, and the problem they focus are exactly the same. For example, the reading <Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice> stated that South Korea targets the local fan communities of fantasy film, broadly defined as ‘all that we can not experience in the real world’. This definition can be divided to a bunch of themes, like the horror film, action film. In addition, the reading also mentioned that the films in Ireland, the target audience are also including the local ethnic communities, so the film festivals in Ireland are also playing Africans films to get relations.
After the second world war, the Australian film festival culture was growing gradually. However, to compare with the European film festivals, Australian film festival culture were developed their own structure and ideologies. The most famous film festivals are almost from Europe, when the size of the event getting large, the organizer should consider more about sponsors and the taste of the public. In Australia, the key point of their film festivals is how to meet their own opinion and the target audience would be the true fan of what they film. The most famous film festivals are MFF and SFF, and both of the organizers are truly the enthusiasts, they all work for the people like them, that are also have high enthusiasm of films. Australian film festivals form would be independent and unique in the world, and they will also follow in their footsteps, with their grass-roots community orientation, rather than the international spectacles.
- And what were your key takeaways about international film festival culture, present and past, from viewing Film Spa?
After I coming into this course, also listened to Richard’s lecture and watched <Film Spa>, I had a comprehensive understand of film festival, like how a film festival running, how they organize. I never attend a huge scale film festival before until last week, I went to a small film festival in RMIT, it was a Chinese film festival, but I realized that film festival has more meaning, not just show movies to the audiences, for instance, that Chinese film festival was target to the Chinese international students, and when we get together to watch a Chinese movie at RMIT, in Australia, for me I had some new thoughts, not just sitting in the cinema and watch movie, I will think more about the meaning of the movie, and why they choose this movie to show us.
Through <Film Spa>, I knew that almost international film festival was started after the second world war. The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival dates to the mid-1940s, which is one of the most famous international film festivals in the world nowadays, <Film Spa> recorded the history, change point and growth of KVIFF. The first KVIFF film festival was organized by some film lovers, and that was a non-competition festival. Since the Czechoslovak Communist Party gained power in Czechoslovakia, the film festival was started by the Czechoslovak National Film Ministry. In the next 10 years, the festival needs to largely serve the propaganda of communism. So, this condition has limited lots of movies to be shown at the festival. In 1989, the velvet revolution completely changed this situation. At the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in 1990, a number of Czech local films that were previously banned were allowed to be shown at the festival. In the following sessions, many international famous filmmakers, especially the former Czech director Miloš Forman who was forced into exile because of the movie <Prague Spring> also attended the festival. That was greatly improved the popularity of a film festival. In the following years, the quality of the participating films is increasing and the style is becoming more diversified. There are lots of black and white archival footage, and some interview of the director, that made me feel I really back to the time and see the early film festival.
In the last two weeks, I learned a lot of film festival cultures and history from this course, Richard’s lecture and <film Spa>. I changed my superficial thought about film festival, and realized I got a lot to learn and explore in this course.
Reference:
“Enthusiastic Amateurs: Origins of Australia’s Film Festival Movement” in Kirsten Stevens, Australian Film Festivals: Audience, Place, and Exhibition Culture (Links to an external site.), Palgrave Macmillan US, New York, 2016, pp. 17-46.
Marijke de Valck, “Introduction: What is a film festival? How to study festivals and why you should (Links to an external site.)” in Marijke de Valck, Brendan Kredell and Skadi Loist (eds), Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice, Routledge, New York, 2016, pp. 1-11.
Cerise Howard, “Local and/or General… Of Time and Place at the 50th Karlovy Vary and 6th Odessa International Film Festival (Links to an external site.)”, Senses of Cinema, no. 76 (Sep. 2015)
Cerise Howard, “A Time of Reckoning? The 53rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Links to an external site.)”, Senses of Cinema, no. 88 (Oct. 2018)