Many thanks to the ‘party faithful’ (!) who turned out in droves to support the first instalment of Destination Film Festival at Carriageworks on what turned out to be the Biggest Election Day witnessed in Australia in a couple of decades… DestFest was a bit of a primer for the night that followed, mirroring the sentiments for the CHANGE that has taken place within the Australian elctorate.

Many thanks to the audience, the filmmakers and panellists. They shone in their generosity and eagerness to contribute to what we are hoping might be a new kind of film festival, one that morphs and changes every year to reflect what’s really going on in film culture, and the needs of those who both make and “consume” the work. Their words were uncensored, informed, passionate and inspiring.

“Community” came up a lot in the panel discussion; seems there might be a need to return to a kind of filmmaking environment where people aren’t backed into the oft-too repeated position of competing with each other for funding dollars and exhibition slots and spaces. Seems there might also be a recognition that the digital / internet  / production / investment / distribution model might be the ‘way out’ on a grand scale.

Part II of this progressive discussion happens next week, same time and place, Saturday 1 December, 2 - 5pm.

Hope you can join us again - the place will be crawling with filmmakers and great short films.

Please feel free to post comments on how you thought DestFest went on Saturday below - or to contribute to some of the ideas raised in the discussion.

The goodwill towards this new Destination has been overwhelming.

People are rediscovering the idea that being in film doesn’t mean having to desperately claw your way to the top of the heap at all costs, but rather that you can contribute something individually that becomes part of something bigger, that a whole bunch of other like-minded individuals are doing at the same time.

It’s not an original idea but perhaps one that has been a bit forgotten or overshadowed in our age of ‘The Box Office is King’, ‘Awards Mean Everything’, ‘You Have To Go To Film School’, ‘Getting Government Funding Is The Only Way To Be Taken Seriously’ and ‘I’m On My Way To LA’…

It’s official: there is no more “in club”. The world has grown so big and the markets so small… Isn’t it now more than ever a case of Building Your Own Community, Finding Your Own Voice and Creating Your Own Culture? Doing your own thing and finding other people doing their own thing that you connect with. To become part of a collective, a movement even? And making some cash back so you can keep on going?

Yes? No? Maybe? Or what a load of BS?

Comments welcome below…

Big Brand Film Festival: “I’m going to focus on features and government funded films as if no other films are made in Australia (or that other films made in Australia don’t really count).

DestFest: “I won’t”.

BBFF: “I’m going to hold a panel about how to compete with your fellow filmmakers for government funding this round”.

DF: “I won’t”.

BBFF: “I’m going to hold a pitching competition so you can win an opportunity to make a film”.

DF: “I won’t”.

BBFF: “I’m going to spend thousands of dollars flying an American into Australia to tell you how to write the perfect script”.

DF: “I won’t”.

DF: “I’m going to encourage culture instead of industry, community instead of competition, artistic inventiveness instead of commercial compromise, and passion instead of toeing the party line. I’m going to ask filmmakers and film artists to take centre stage regardless of whether or not you’ve heard of them, whether they’ve been to Film School, been tagged as “the next big thing”, won an AFI award or received any government funding”.

BBFF: “Um…”

Saturday November 24: Vote 1 DestFest

November 24 is an exciting day for Australia: it marks the first Federal Election to come along in along time where the stakes actually mean something to the electorate. For the first time since the Hawke-Fraser years we have been jolted out if our political malaise…

November 24 also marks the first week of Destination , the first film festival produced by Carriageworks.

While nowhere near as important as the other ‘big event’ this Saturday perhaps ‘DestFest’ might also mark a little turning point of its own in our film festival culture. It will usher in a film event in Sydney that reflects the goodwill, collective passion, diverse points of view, anarchy, ingenuity, madness, blithe energy, creative spirit and industriousness that are part and parcel of making movies. And art. And art movies. And movie art.

Serious fun.

Because we need to foster a sense of film community (not just competition).

Because we need to foster a sense of film culture (not just industry).

Because we need to encourage open, honest, passionate critical debate and discussion about our film culture, not private ‘bitching’ and frustration behind closed doors.

Because festival programming isn’t just about filling up slots, red carpets or ‘world domination’.

Because Australian filmmakers make great short films.

Because most of the films made in Australia are short films.

Because Australian audiences know Australian filmmakers make hundreds of great short films each year and have no problems watching them.

Because we need to acknowledge the role that short film, film history, micro-cinema, DIY filmmaking, archiving, artists, graphic designers, photographers, musicians, actors, theatre makers, digital filmmaking, dancers, composers, designers, pop culture, fashion and THE ARTS play in filmmaking - and how they all feed each other.

Because DIY digital filmmaking is transforming traditional means of film production, distribution and distribution.

Because there is a new cinema movement evolving right under our noses, one that can’t be ignored (see above).

Because there are lots of people from all over with great things to say about making films in a variety of ways that don’t often get listened to or taken seriously.

Because the ‘death of copyright’ doesn’t mean you can’t make money or make a living.

Because it’s great to be part of a community who love something and want to contribute to it and be a part of its evolution.

Because film festivals can be memorable and give people something to take away with them - not just take their money.

Because when they’re good they’re very very good…

Because… CarriageWorks. It’s such a special place, one that has a real sense of history and what has come before; a ripe sense of preservation and what’s important now, and an endless, inspiring sense of possibility. Wait till you see it (it’s magical).

The “New York Girl Of My Dreams” hit headlines this week

Sydney Morning Herald: www.smh.com.au/news/technology/i-had-to-meet-him/2007/11/11/1194766510016.htm

NY Girl of my Dreams: www.nygirlofmydreams.com

Okay, so ‘He’ sees a girl and he reckons she’s hot - or falls in love at first sight - whatever… ‘She’ leaves the train carriage before they have time to connect in person. Then He uses the internet to find Her and within 24 hours they’re in touch and on talk shows talking about this new ‘breakthrough’ in internet romance and dating…

Some might say it’s an out-and-out case of stalking; tracing someone inappropriately which, in regular circumstances would have otherwise been a random anonymous and fleeting encounter on public transport. Did He become too obsessed with Her?

Others might say romance is alive and well in the virtual age, upholding the idea that the internet and computer culture have not transformed us all into emotionless zombies - rather the opposite, creatures who crave connection and preserve romance as a way of connecting with others.

What say you? Please feel free to post comments below.

And come along to DestFest Week 3 and see Four-Eyed Monsters, a film about this very subject - love and communication in the digital age. FEM co-director Arin Crumley will also be part of the panel discussion live and online.

Just announced! DestFest is pleased to announce the that co-creators of Hands Hyland will be in attendance Week 2 of DestFest: Jeremy Hyland (co-director), Aaron Kiernan (co-director) plus DOP/co-director Nathan Lewis, just off the plane from London.

Hands Hyland is the winner of the 2006 Insight 300 Seconds Short Film Competition.

When I was programming Perth Revelation International Film Festival in July I selected a terrific DIY documentary callled DIY or DIE: How To Survive As An Independent Artist. It might seem old school to some, stating the obvious about the DIY ‘anti-corporate’ ethos, but I felt it possessed some inspiring commentaries and ideas about the importance of creating your own culture. It wasn’t so much anti-commerce as it was more anti-compromise.

The director of the film Michael W. Dean has just announced that he is “giving away the entire film as eight episodic chapters over eight weeks’ time, one per week as free video downloads” as podcasts.

Goodbye copyright as we know it.

Some of his reasons for this crazy act of ‘benevolence’? “It’s my gift to the world” and “the film has inspired many people”…

Most importantly if we’re looking at one of the BIG discussions that will be explored in DestFest: “I think that posting the whole film might actually drive DVD sales, not reduce sales. This is a film people seem to want to enjoy in a room with other people… Hell, I put the DVD out without copy protection and encouraged people to make copies for their friends. Press and word of mouth from that drove sales… “DIY or DIE” has sold over 4000 copies, and it’s on NetFlix, Blockbuster, GreenCine and on a lot of other video rental services, as well in some video rental stores. I think that at this point, people who would dig the film have either already purchased or rented the DVD, or else they’ve not yet heard of the film. I can’t imagine there are many people saying, “I’ve heard of that film, and really want to see it, but the DVD is EIGHT bucks, I’m gonna put it off.”

If you’re interested in finding out more about Dean’s new venture go to www.stinkfight.com/2007/11/11/high-quality-free-download-of-diy-or-die

And if you’re interested in posting your opinion about this idea please do so below - and come along to Week 3of Destfest which will look at this very issue.

You Tube comes in for all kinds of criticism - a royal “time waster” for workers, a platform for “losers”, “ne’er do wells ” and crazed ”depraved” souls and outcasts who reveal their grim messages about humanity, hysterics, neuroses and pyschoses… The place where bottom trawlers post the detritus, flotsam and jetsam that either isn’t taken seriously in culture or listened to. It’s just there for cheap laughs and cheaps thrills - right?

That may well be the case. 

But another case might also be made for You Tube as a site where serious freedom of expression, experimentation and truth about ourselves is revealed on a daily basis…

And when you can walk into any serious media organisation around the world and find every second serious journalist checking out clips You Tube and MySpace as a serious research tool, the time has come perhaps to take this online platform seriously as a new kind of cinema…

 Debates welcome. Post below.

DestFest is pleased to announced (ie totally stoked) two filmmakers to join the Week 2 panel discussion about short filmmaking: Sydney filmmaker Stuart Vauvert, director of award-winning 30 minute short Prada Handbag (and the one and only Heather Locklear Chocolate); and Tom Salisbury, a theatre director from Melbourne, and the director of The Interrogation Of Bryan - also an award winning movie (MUFF 08). Both Bryan and Heather will be screening on the day.

For more info on the Week 2 films click here, and more info on the Week 2 Panel click here.

Had a chat with an inspiring person yesterday - a 24 year-old ‘futurist’ called Liz Cahill. She’s one of the organisers of the Live Futures 2020 Festival happening this Sunday (Nov 11) at Victoria Park in Camperdown in Sydney (www.globalyouthfutures.org)…

She was quietly inspirational - intelligent, articulate, 24 (!) and utterly optimistic. Must be hard for futurists to remain so given that they quite often have to come up with doomsday scenarios in their line of work, predicting various outcomes for the future of the planet… However an optimist she was and is and I suspect she will always remain, which I admire.

When she was leaving she gave me a new thought - something I kind of knew but had never articulated, which was that people are now more creative in their lives than ever before… We all have cameras in our phones, we can edit and record and make movies on home equipment, write blogs, build myspace and facebook home pages, communicate creatively to each other - more than ever. I knew that but it hadn’t quite consciously occurred to me until she made the point.

Maybe that’s why she hasn’t lost hope. If we all make art - and approach it that way (art with a small “a”), maybe those ‘conversations’ we have with each other will add up to something great. And beautiful. And new. And r/evolutionary.

It’s a definite possibility.