Megan’s Blog #11: 26.11 ~ True believers…
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.
sad that i couldn’t be there for the films or discussion but i will be there on a plane with anarchistic bells on for the 8 december!
this idea of community is really interesting - an eternally frustrating concept that haunts so many areas of society. i often wonder whether 1 person can qualify as a ‘community’ - or to be less unreasonable, a duo? i certainly would count trios.
as an artist who circles on the edges of most ‘disciplines’ (hence preferring to be undisciplined!) i feel very excited to be part of the inaugural destfest and to advocate for its future incarnations.
now, with australia finally taking a risk to change their government (and their related policies), maybe along with this will come an acknowledgement and more lateral support of fringe cultures, diy approaches and less focus on categorizing ‘content providers’ into little convenient boxes.
destfest is testament (sorry, no intention to introduce biblical concepts - i think we’ve had enough of those in the election campaigns!!) to the idea that artmaking doesn’t have to aspire to commercial enterprise!
x jase
JEEEZUS!
A fantastic start to the festival.
The big issue: A real filmmaking community. With real sharing, and real support. Absent any concept of competition.
Could it really exist? Maybe it already does.
Listening to Kriv Stenders talk was inspiring. He mentioned that somewhere in Australia (Adelaide?) there were a group of filmmakers who were planning to implement a Roger Corman style system where 10 or so filmmakers get a small-ish budget and everyone goes and makes their own film with the same amount of money and same resources. This sounds exciting. It also sounds like the makings of small filmmaking community, the constituents of which have no reason to be in competition to each other. I guess this was also Coppola’s dream with American Zoetrope. And that certainly produced some amazing films, THX-1138, for instance.
Another panellist spoke about the strong sense of community that exists between filmmakers in Denmark: apparently at the Danish Film Institute the 12 or so filmmakers who are working on funded projects meet each day at lunchtime to talk about how their respective projects are progressing and use each other as sounding boards. Amazing.
I don’t want to say too much more about this point at the moment. Except that I believe when there exists a true and real sense of community amongst a group of filmmakers, this can pave the way for the establishment of a filmmaking collective (e.g. Corman-style), and this is in turn can lead to many films being produced by the members of that community, which in turn can form the foundations of a new movement in cinema.
Lofty, I know. But it’s there. I can feel it.
I just want to be part of that community when it crystallises.
Benjamin Samuel Broso
PS - can I also say that Heavy Metal Jr. rocked my world in a huge way!
Long live Hatrid/ed!!!