I just sat on a panel for Megan Spencer’s Destination Film Festival, talking about the internet and filmmaking. It was pretty exciting. I think that Megan is trying to start a revolution in the Australian filmmaking community. This involves screening a cool film or ten, inviting a diverse bunch of bodies to chat and field questions on any given topic to do with our chosen art or craft, and then getting the whole mob down at the pub to talk and drink together.

The pub is the important part. Inevitable excitable exchanges take place, but the jist of it all is that – we ‘young’ and younger filmmakers can get together and help each other with knowhow and encouragement, and just the rare feeling that we are not all alone in our little isolated worlds. The rough consensus seems to be that the old models do not work for us, and that we need to reinvent the system to suit ourselves, rather than wrestling it from the hands of the babyboomer gatekeepers in their death throws.

This presents us with a situation that is both exciting and daunting. We now have the technology to make a film like Streetsweeper in three days, and, with the financial goodwill of our friends and allies, we use this new freedom to liberate the medium of filmmaking, big or small, for a renaissance in the biggest small country in the world. It’s a grand ambition, but then – why the fuck not? Let’s do it.

Thanks Megan. You’re a bloody champ. TR

Shots from Destination Film Festival at Carriageworks

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 8:42 pm and is filed under film, film festivals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.