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A Report on the Film Festival

Thursday 2 – Saturday 4 March 2006
The Loft, Level 4, Bldg Z2, QUT Creative Industries Precinct
Musk Avenue, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane

After many months of planning, the Other Worlds are Breathing (OWaB) Film Festival made a brilliant debut in Brisbane, Australia. Hundreds attended sessions over three days, and enjoyed the diverse range of films shown at the festival. In this report I hope to fill you in on how the film festival was realised.

The lead up to the festival was intense. Apart from approaching the Queensland University of Technology's Creative Industries Precinct (QUT CIP) to secure their screening facilities as an in-kind sponsorship, the OWaB team (ie. hartflicker and the QUT Film & Television Society) needed to find financial sponsors to help us bring the films to Australia, and pay for publicity and promotion. After countless phonecalls and letters, we managed to find several generous organizations: Hassell, Queensland Teachers Union, Social Alternatives Journal and Amnesty International. Caxton Street Catering and Oxford Street Salsa came to the party a little later on to help us put on our closing night Fiesta.

In the weeks leading directly up to the festival, we began a campaign to make Brisbanites aware of the upcoming event, focussing on the fact that OWaB was free and about alternatives. We developed a strong website around the festival, set up a system for guests to reserve seats at any of the sessions, and created the OWaB Hotline for people to inquire about the film festival. Volunteers were recruited from the ranks of the QUT Film and Television Society, and from the general public.

Relying heavily on networks already in place around the city, we managed to get notices about the film festival in newsletters and on Internet notice boards, event lists and calendars. We found that many community and advocacy groups were more than happy to contact their members on our behalf. Keeping in mind that many people respond to ‘word of mouth’ information, we asked friends, family, colleagues and community contacts to tell others about OWaB, and to forward on emails about the film festival.

Approaches were made to the print and broadcast media with a good deal of success. Brisbane’s 4ZZZ Public Radio was particularly supportive. The OWaB volunteers handed out thousands of flyers at markets around Brisbane and Orientation Weeks at various universities, and posted our posters at shops, cafes, campuses and carparks around Brisbane. The Hotline ran hot with heaps of phone enquiries, especially in the last few days....

On the first day of the festival, southeast Queensland was inundated with pouring rain. While we were all glad to see the rain begin to fill up our drought-stricken dams, the deluge certainly had an impact on audience numbers venturing out for a night of cinema and inspiration. However, we played on the rain as a boon for the festival during an on-air interview on 4ZZZ Radio. Citing the films Thirst and Waterworks India we asked listeners to consider how the resource they could see falling all around them is going to be used, and possibly abused, and encouraged them to find out more by attending OWaB.

Part of our goal was to bring together people from all walks of life to engage them in ideas about filmmaking and activism. Our special guests – Christine Hendersen from Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; Carly Macoun from Amnesty International; and John Synott from Social Alternatives Journal – were marvellous ambassadors for their organizations and induced thought-provoking discussions at many of the sessions. There was also space at the festival for literature and further information for guests who left a session inspired and wanting to do more to change their world.

The inaugural Australian leg of OWaB’s world tour was very fortunate to have an outstanding, enthusiastic team of volunteers, who really got into the spirit of the festival. Thanks in particular go out to Helen, Amy, Annabelle, Anita, Jenny, Marisah, Greer, Scott, Rauri, Samantha, Estelle, Tessa, Laju, Tommy, Kirstin, Tom, Grace, Andrew, Lap, Lucy, Jacqueline and Kendall for all your hard work, talent and zest for life! The kind folks at QUT CIP were absolutely fantastic, and helped us a great deal - thanks Peter, Jill, Nigel, Daniel, Alison, Melina and Kylie.

And of course, thank you to our guests, who came from all over Brisbane and environs to attend. I myself was touched by the personal praise many of the attendees gave in response to the film festival. Some of the comments we recorded from guests attending the festival are as follows:

"Inspiring! I want to get out there and do something worthwhile."

"Great idea. Should be more of the same! Well done."

"Inspiring women - the West take note - the crone is great!"

"Waterworks India session had plenty of great suggestions for water use from more 'needy' cultures."

"Fantastic documentary on Bouganville. Excellent!"

"Have really enjoyed the festival. Media - independent media like this - is 'stupidly' important for social awareness and dialogue, and is just fun to watch as well. So thanks for making it free and accessible. Hopefully there will be more of this breeding more of itself in Brisbane in the future."

"Great event - service and energy from volunteers - look forward to seeing the programme and attending next year!"

"Venezuela Boliviariana rocked! Inspiring to see real people-power in action- true democracy! Thanks!"

"Thanks for the eye opener guys, keep up the good work!"

"It really made me see another angle to the world!!!" (Comment written upside down)

"I felt the selection of films were excellent and would hopefully make people realise the importance of the story and the issue instead of big budgets and high production values."

"Vive la revolucion!"

Of course, nothing worth doing is ever easy. Last minute changes to the program, deliveries from abroad at the 11th hour, and negotiating tricky import customs and local censorship regulations made the hosting of the festival challenging but certainly valuable. Originally there were plans to broadcast some of the films on Briz 31 – Brisbane’s community free-to-air television station. However, we found that the censorship laws surrounding public broadcast of films not yet viewed and assessed by the Office of Film Classification were too involved to negotiate in time for the proposed broadcast date. Thank you to all the filmmakers who agreed to help out.

These details aside, the festival as a whole could be safely categorised as a hit. The finale of the festival was a Saturday night screening of Venezuela Bolivariana and The Take, followed by a Latin dance party entitled Fiesta Latina. We drew our biggest audience of all for the screening – a packed auditorium – with many tears, sighs, laughs and applause throughout. The after-party had a really great vibe with plenty of animated dialogue, and lots of takers for a free Latin dance lesson.

Finally, I would like to comment on the high level of interest in the festival and the films shown at the festival. I believe that there would definitely be a dedicated audience for this kind of annual event in Brisbane and in other cities around Australia in the future.

Thanks again to everyone who helped out and attended, not forgetting the curators – the Magic Lantern Foundation – and the filmmakers and their subjects!

Phoebe Hart
Coordinator

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"Another world is not only possible, she's on her way.... [O]n a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing."
Arundhati Roy, WSF 2003