Flickerfest began as a small local festival at the Balmain High School in 1991. Over the last 17 years it has grown to become Australia's only competitive International Short Film Festival with entries coming from filmmakers across the globe.
Flickerfest is considered in International circles as the leading Australian competitive short film festival and increasingly filmmakers view it as one of the main festivals on the world circuit. To maintain this high standard each year the festival director visits festivals around the world seeking new films most of which have not been seen in Australia.
In 2003 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science elected to recognise Flickererfest as a qualifying festival for the Best Short film and Best Animation categories of the Academy Awards ®
The honour of Academy Award ® accreditation will guarantee Flickerfest's international profile for many years to come, whilst also ensuring greater opportunities for our Australian short film makers internationally.
Flickerfest's national tour has become a very important part of the festival and started in 1995. The tour takes the main competitive programmes and some Special sessions to many regional and metropolitan areas, which rarely have an opportunity to view this collection of the best of the world's short films. The difference between Flickerfest and other film festivals is that Flickerfest is acknowledged as a quality arts event. Each year we screen Academy Award nominated films plus many other internationally award-winning films.
Thankyou to all our sponsors, participating filmmakers and to you our audience for supporting Flickerfest 2008.
DIRECTORS REPORT
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I am very pleased to welcome you to the 18th Flickerfest International Short Film Festival 2009. This year has been another year of substantial growth for Flickerfest and we look forward to continuing to present you with a short film competition amongst the best in the world.
In recognition, we were thrilled to be awarded the IF Media Award for Best Australian Festival at the IF Awards in November. Thanks IF!
This year we received a record 1350 entries from around the globe, which shows that Flickerfest continues to attract the latest in cutting-edge and award-winning shorts from the world’s most exciting new filmmakers for our Academy® accredited shorts competition.
The successful films screening at Flickerfest are all united by their excellence within the short film genre. They promise to surprise you with a range of subjects and cultures that represent a unique view of global cinema.
As the festival director for the past 12 years it has been my great pleasure to see the festival embraced so enthusiastically by audiences around Australia. After our Sydney festival season we will tour our award winning short film programmes to 18 venues around Australia this year, including Avoca for the first time, bringing audiences all across the continent an inspiring look at the world through short film.
As Australia’s only Academy® accredited short film festival, films in competition at Flickerfest are fiercely competing for a number of prestigious prizes including The Coopers Award For Best Film, The Yoram Gross Award For Best Animation, The JVC Award for Best Australian Short Film, The SAE Award For Best Use Of Digital Technology In A Short Film, The National Geographic Award for Best Short Documentary and a host of other hotly contested prizes that recognize the various craft areas inherent in making a great short film.
In 2009 we will screen 14 different short film programmes during our ten-day festival season. Apart from our 12 programmes of International, Australian and Documentary shorts in competition we will also present a series of showcase programmes that are designed to inspire, entertain and challenge our local audiences to experience the world in a different way.
This year I’m really thrilled to be able to offer more opportunities for Australian filmmakers to showcase their work in a celebration of the great talent that exists in this country making shorts. I’ve been really impressed by the extremely high standard of Australian work over past years so we are now introducing five Australian competitive programmes instead of the usual four in recognition of this talent.
Each year I also have the pleasure of creating showcase programmes that focus on the art form of the short film genre and this year our two special programme highlights are Celebrity Shorts and Love Bites.
Celebrity Shorts is a celebration of the short and demonstrates that you don’t have to be a struggling filmmaker to love making short films. There are an increasing number of people who want to make short films even if they’ve had a successful career in feature films. Famous people who use their artistic talent and creativity to embrace the short film form include actors such as Kate Hudson, Jessica Biel, singer & activist Bob Geldof and director Lars Von Trier, all have shorts that are showcased in this programme.
Love Bites on the other hand is a sexy, fun look at relationships all around the world – the gamut of relationships. It’s a little bit naughty but more just about having fun and bringing short films together in a theme.
Each year Flickerfest also makes its own short film. This year’s trailer is a wonderful tribute to the French film Breathless by Jean-Luc Goddard. We chose to play with the French New Wave cinema because Flickerfest is about the new wave of international and Australian film, where new and fresh ideas come out of the short film format and where people perfect their craft.
Thanks to Gracie Otto and Matt Newton who co-wrote the trailer, Samantha Rebillet and Gracie who directed it, Gracie and Toby Schmitz who starred, our wonderful producer Kristina Ceyton of Passion Pictures who kept the show on the road and all of our generous sponsors and crew who participated.
Now in our eighteenth year, Flickerfest relies heavily on the support of our major sponsors without whom a festival of this nature would be possible. This year I would like to extend a warm welcome to our new principal partners Movie EXTRA.
I am very excited about our partnership and the opportunity to take Flickerfest from the cinema screens to the TV screens of the nation. Flickerfest- on -EXTRA will be Australia’s first TV series dedicated to the best of Aussie short films. With 6 x half hour programmes airing on the Movie EXTRA channel in April 2009, showcasing some of the most inspiring Australian shorts ever produced in this country.
I would also like to extend a warm welcome to our major government partner Screen Australia who support both our festival and national tour.
This year we are also very pleased to have partnered with Screen Australia in a new initiative – The Film Makers Resource Site which will enable us to guide Australian film makers across all aspects of marketing and distributing their short films to a global audience. This valuable resource for Australian filmmakers will launch in February 2008.
My gratitude also extends to our major sponsors the NSWFTO, SBS, SAE, RealPlayer, JVC Pro, and Triple J. Without their support our vision to present an International festival amongst the best in the world could not happen.
My gratitude and appreciation also extends to all of our other sponsors who are acknowledged in this programme for the essential support that they provide. We thank them enormously for their belief in us and our vision to nurture and support the wealth of talent in the short film world.
Creating Flickerfest each year is a huge labour of love. My enormous thanks and appreciation goes to the fabulous Flickerfest team, Festival Manager Annie Parnell, Festival Coordinator Jules Nemich, Production/Touring Co-ordinator Shane Rennie, our longstanding projectionist team Bob Gamlin and Alan Butterfield, technical director Tony Youlden, Front of House Manager David Kemmery, Box Office Manager Antoinette Smith and our intern Anita Lun for all of their hard work and support. And to our wonderful Selection Committee without whom it would have been impossible to whittle such a huge number of film entries down to the programmes we present this year.
From January to March 2009 Flickerfest is delighted to present you with our 18th festival under the stars, at Bondi and at our 18 touring venues around the country.
We hope that our films this year take you on an inspiring, creative and entertaining journey to a new world of global cinema. We welcome you to our world of shorts.
Bronwyn Kidd
Festival director