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
.JPG)
I am very pleased to welcome you to the 17th Flickerfest International Short Film Festival, driven by MINI, who we are thrilled to welcome back as our naming rights partners for 2008.
Mini’s support of the festival over the past three years has been instrumental in our growth. We are delighted with their support of the festival and we thank them for assisting us in our vision to provide Australia with a competitive international short film festival amongst the best in the world.
In 2008 Flickerfest received a record 1300 entries from around the world ensuring our reputation as Australia’s largest short film competition and only Academy accredited short film festival.
We hope that our competitive programmes of Australian and International short films will continue to awaken local audiences to the freshest trends in independent cinema today.
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 11 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 17 venues around Australia this year, including Bathurst and Noosa 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 and the Yoram Gross Award For Best Animation, alongside the JVC Award for Best Australian Short Film.
We are also pleased to announce a new award in 2008. The SAE Award For Best Use Of Digital Technology In A Short Film. This new award recognizes the growing role of digital technology in providing the tools that enable a new generation of filmmakers to bring their stories to the screen.
All Australian films screening at Flickerfest 2008, are eligible for the 2008 IF Awards.
In 2008 we will screen 15 different short film programmes during our ten-day festival season. Apart from our 11 programmes of International, Australian and documentary 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 Flickerfest is thrilled to present an outstanding showcase of the best of homegrown animation that has seen our animators win awards and much acclaim around the world. ‘The Bold The Brave and The Best’, is curated by Academy Award® nominated animator, Anthony Lucas from the animations that have inspired his career. We are very excited about this collaboration and honoured to be bringing such an outstanding range of Australian animations to Australian audiences for the first time.
Highlights of the programme include award winning iconic television commercials, Louie The Fly, Mr Sheen and Aeroplane Jelly alongside award winning shorts by famous Australian Animators including Sarah Watt, Adam Elliot, Wendy Chandler and Bruce Petty (winner of the first Academy award for Australian animation 1970).
Flickerfest has also embarked upon an exciting DVD partnership with Madman that will make available this inspiring collection of Australian animation to the broader public after our festival screenings around Australia.
This year we also have another kooky and fun programme in store. ‘Bad Girls’ - a humorous and uplifting, laugh out loud look at girls behaving badly on the international screen. From naughty grandmothers to sexy sirens these girls certainly don't fit any stereotypes! Expect MISS-BEHAVE! with a capital M.
It’s certainly been enormous fun for me to curate this programme from my festival favourites over the years.
This year we are also very excited about another festival collaboration that brings Cinema 16 and its founder UK based Luke Morris to Australia for the first time.The Cinema 16 DVD series is internationally renowned for celebrating the short film, showcasing some of the best classic and award winning shorts from around the world. These include the fascinating early works of some of the world’s greatest directors alongside multi award winning short films from exciting new film makers. We are honoured that Luke has chosen Flickerfest to launch the international premiere of the ‘Cinema 16 world DVD ’, due for International release in March 2008.
Now in our seventeenth year, Flickerfest relies heavily on the support of our major sponsors without whom a festival of this nature would be possible. Alongside MINI our naming rights partner I would like to extend my gratitude to our major government partners the Australian Film Commission, and major sponsors the FTO, SBS, SAE, Realplayer, Jameson whisky, 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.
Creating Flickerfest each year is a huge labour of love. My enormous thanks and appreciation goes to festival manager Kathryn Hodgkinson, festival coordinator Aisling Gilhooly, our longstanding projectionist team Bob Gamlen and Alan Butterfield and festival production coordinator Shane Rennie for all of their hard work and support.
From January to March 2008 Flickerfest is delighted to present you with our 17th festival under the stars, at Bondi and at our 17 touring venues around the country.
We hope that you find our programmes this year an inspiring and entertaining feast from the globe that awakens you to the enormous talent working in the short film world today.
We welcome you to our world of shorts.
Bronwyn Kidd
Festival director