FilmFestivalSession
Film Festival Session facilitated by Mien and Anna
Yi Hua - spoke about the Iron Horse festival which began with documentaries and social movements. It was set up to strengthen relationships between people and relationships between people and nature. Have many types of films including education, labour, children women's issues, gay issues, human rights etc Main people involved are main working group, directors and distributors, writers and speakers, volunteers and audience. Festival takes place over 9 days in Taipei.
Anna - Wild Spaces Environmental and Social Justices Festival for the first time in Australia in Feb 2009. Started in 1996 as an environmental forum but it has evolved in the last 10 years into a wilderness festival. The festival is being organised by Friends of the Earth who are a grass roots organisation in partnership with Engage Media. This will also be an online festival and will use the Creative Commons licencing for the festival or another open content licence. There is an Aotearoa festival called Real Earth which suggested using without a box.com
Indonesian Video art festival which is in its 4th year operating. It is a festival about the local indonesian scene and also looks at the international scene. Each festival has had different themes. In the second year they had 12 workshops for local people and also a call to international artists and they received video from countries that they have never heard of before. The main videos were screened in the National Gallery this year. The 3rd festival screenings were in public spaces. This year 2008 there is a road show of works that were produced last year and also workshops as buildup to another festival of screenings in 2009. Ariani says that what Ruangrupa are doing is a good thing because it appeals to a young audience. The people they work with are varied from ceramic artists to Government employees.
Mien - Freedom Film festival are wanting to be young and hip as well. This year the festival will begin with a competition of proposal. This years theme is democratic space and is specifically for young people from Malaysia. From proposals they choose 3 main films and give them $1500 US dollars for their films to be created. They are given 3 or 4 months to create their film. Also conduct community workshops to increase training and improve the making of video and also making public aware of human right issues. Want to encourage not just film-makers but people who have never made films before. At present do not really have the capacity to put everything online but would like to do this as a lot of population are already online. It is still important to show screenings out in the community.
Hong Kong Social Movement Film Festival is run by v-artivist and social movement resources centre. They run in zero budget and exchange the screenings right by chinese subtitles.workshop are hold during film festival.a network built during past six years and money comes from the networks that are built.
Japan - Organic Agriculture Festival - include farmers in the organising group. In Japan it is fashionable to eat organic food. Put on food training but only have 30% food sufficiency in Japan and need to support local farmers. Have lots of young people who want to be farmers and so we connect them with other farmers already operating.
Japan - Earth Vision Environmental Film Festival - prize money is $5000 US dollars so if there are any people who are interested from the Asia Pacific region.
Shavis - a list of film festivals around the world, is a website with loads of competitions.
Screening in Korea - screen films in cafes..
April 2009 there is film festival in Australia specifically about the aborigines in Redfern but are also looking for content from other people around the word.
Ariani: can screen any films (festival) in my place, Rumah Buku (Book House), Bandung. So far we've held Queer Film Festival, Canadian Documentary Film Festival, Resfest International Film Festival. We're also trying to make an outdoor screening....good for people to come and also have talks / workshops etc. Can also organise film screenings widely in Bandung.
STX - independent filmamakers co-operative. Festival in Phillipines. There are a lot of film festivals in the Phillipines but more are becoming mainstream.
Organising a festival depends on the size of the festival. With a growing festival then more people are needed. Build up a network and get more support from different organisations and people. Ruangrupa festival takes about 1 year. Always start with a small group of people first and then it grows and once the schedule is produced then they get more people for specific tasks.
