Reaching the week of the festival, emotions were heightened, and we were all itching to see just how many bums on seats we would get across the three-day-event. The turn out for Opening Night was a small success, with friends, family and trivia winners coming in support of DIFF. As for the following two nights, the number of ticket sales was slightly disheartening, and I couldn’t help but wonder if anything would be different had we all taken a different route. We didn’t catch the attention of the public as much as we had hoped for, but I think a big reason for that was not pushing the publicity earlier on. To put word out though, we needed official details and unfortunately didn’t have everything set in stone until the later weeks of semester.
On Opening Night while waiting eagerly at the entrance of The Capitol for walk-ins, someone made a point that stuck with me about time. They felt that if we had two more weeks of workshopping the festival, we could have done so much more. To some extent, I agree, and wish we had have taken greater advantage of being in the same room for the first few weeks to share our ideas of what the program would look like, and what we would need to do to put on a festival that reflects our mission. Being our first edition and with almost all 21 of us initially unfamiliar with the film festival world, I think putting on a ticketed event with a secured program hosted at two venues was an achievement in of itself.
As the film festival world was foreign to most of us, it was important that we attend and make note of “global trends” present across current film festivals, informing our research in the production of film festivals in a contemporary context (Pnacekova, Nicola and Pritchard, 2012, pg. 7). I wish I made time to go to other festivals, not just to the French Film Festival in the early weeks of semester, as this may have opened further conversation with the team during the making of DIFF. Setting up a Human Rights Festival vol.2 was a staple resource to guide us through making our own festival and getting word out about the event. Deciding on a production manager early on was important, as production “combines form and function”, a vital role that had to be filled to keep us all on track (Kuhn A, 2015). The group felt that Charlotte was most suited to the role of Managing Director, who proved to be a brilliant public speaker at both Opening Night and the mock-up Closing Ceremony, making a great face for the festival.
Kuhn’s list of festival team positions (2015) prompted us to consider where we all fit in, with a list of departments built which strung different roles and responsibilities together. These roles were more of an official title, as I found many of us were doing work outside of our designated roles simply to tick the boxes on our accrued list of tasks. The division of labour wasn’t always necessarily fair, which I feel was due to miscommunication and possible apprehension surrounding the collective project. These hurdles within the group might suggest the outcome of the event, arising questions of the festival itself.
It’s important to stand out from other festivals, and to do that, we had to find our “niche” (Stevens K, 2016), which I think was successful – but our program might have even been too niche (if that’s a thing). With sounds of animal abuse echoing from the theatre behind us during our closing night screening of Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), a group of us sat at the trestle table in discomfort, one pointing out possible wider success had we screened more mainstream films. While that’s a possibility, the programming team curated a great selection, with Tracey Moffatt’s Bedevil (1993) being a personal highlight. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of it comes down to publicity, and in future, we shouldn’t be shy to let the public know that we exist and that our festival is a big deal.
Poetic Video
The Age of Adolescence by Amelia Wilkinson, Saskia Velcek and Anastasia Yates.
In support of my friend Saskia, I attended Poetic Video’s exhibition. Saskia interviewed me a few weeks back about my experiences during adolescence, with a focus on “firsts”, from early crushes to identity. This group project took form of a Korsakow film, allowing audiences to interact with different segments of their own choosing. A compilation of nameless and faceless interviews weaved throughout the film, accompanied by B-roll representative of girlhood, which elevated the project. It was interesting to see how my voice accompanied other voices, who all spoke of similar yet vastly different stories, and the final work is really beautiful.
SURGE by Nick O’Brien, Auley Ryan and Kal Zhang
Having worked with Auley last year in partnership with Fed Square, it was great to see how he’s continued to explore the poetic mode of filmmaking and heightened these skills through the short film SURGE. I liked how the group weren’t afraid to make their audience uncomfortable, doing a brilliant job of depicting dissociation followed by drug-use. The precision of the editing and colour-grading was truly impressive, and had this film been finished earlier it would’ve made a great addition to DIFF’s shorts programme.
References
Kuhn A (2015) ‘Who Is Organising It? Importance of Production and Team Members’ in Setting Up a Human Rights Film Festival, vol. 2, Human Rights Film Network, Prague, pp. 71-83
Pnacekova, Nicola and Pritchard (2012) ‘Festival Programming and the Ways Young Festivals and Youth NGOs See it’ in Bright Young Screens: Developing Intercultural Dialogue and Non-Formal Education Through Youth Film Festivals, NISI MASA and FEST, Espinho, 2012, pg. 7.
Stevens K (2016) ‘A Festival for Every Occasion: Niche Programming, Event Culture, and Vertically Integrated Film Festivals’ in Australian Film Festivals: Audience, Place, and Exhibition Culture, Palgrave Macmillan US, New York, pp. 171-199.