We’ve had some good feedback from Anchorage Film Festival in Alaska. Although we’re not invited yet, it’s great to get some encouragement from foreign shores…

Hi Toby,

Tony

It may be that our film will have a further life in festivals after all!

We made the film, against the odds — and we thought it was a festival film, but now it’s obvious it isn’t — so we are going to tour & screen the film ourselves, soon-ish, in make-shift fly-by-night grass-roots venues. From Brisbane to Adelaide. Any ideas where & for whom?

Nm

brisbane international film festival have sent us our last australian rejection. beautiful one day perfect the ¬¬ ˚ ˚˙ ˙˙ zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……………………………

We got rejected by Melbourne International Film Festival yesterday. I’m used to it by now. Radio National had a bit on their film show about how much competition there is between Scurvy Sydney and Miserable Melbourne film festivals. Turned out largely to be about who showed what first - because they all want the same hot films from European festivals… and to dig up some good films from the past for their repertory screenings. Guaranteed bums on seats I gather. All the best hits from the 60’s 70’s and 80’s anyone?

Three nasty clowns who don’t like our film!

It seems we sit between the devil of the big corporate festival and the deep blue sea of the ramshackled underground.

Our last screening in Melbourne was at Melbourne Underground Film Festival last year. I was really excited about the festival and went down to attend the screening. It was a cold wet night and we went to a cool small place called the Glitch Bar… Things seemed to be shaping up well. No-one was around from MUFF, so we had a beer and settled in to wait for the play - on before the films - to finish. As it the place emptied of theatre patrons the fellow from MUFF arrived. He was flustered and wet and had raced from another screening to get there and start the session.

He had, however, forgotten to bring a copy of our film - or the film we were a double bill with…! I was surprised, but dug through my bag to find a copy of Streetsweeper to hand him. We got the fifteen or so punters in the door and started the film… he stayed for a quick beer and left! I was disappointed with the quality of the projection, (a bit of a greeny purpley hue) and disappointed with the sound, (low and muffled) - but at least they took a chance on us and screened the film - unlike the cursed Dreary Dungog, Miserable Melbourne and damn Scurvy Dog Sydney.

Festival Tally:

44 Rejections
4 Invitations - Revelation 2007, MUFF 2007, This Not Art 2007 and Filmstock 2007 in the UK

We’re still waiting on Moscow, Brisbane, (both similar I know) and a couple in Italy… We’re bound to get one! Aren’t we? TR

I love the idea of film festivals. The romantic idea that they are a place where cinema might matter.

We are waiting on a final few before completing the festival cycle - but we have had 43 rejections. No interest at all from any “local” film festivals. Dungog and Sydney both rejected the film. I called and emailed SFF, and was not even replied to. We had a last minute glimmer of an offer from Dungog, but they seem content showing mostly films that have been in general release at Hoyts.

More and more I feel that the festival circuit is a pile of shit. The open entry system appears to be merely a paper pushing facade for an actual selection process that depends entirely on whom the filmmakers, and more importantly their distributors know.

I’ve wasted an enormous amount of time learning this and entering all these festivals. I don’t mind that they are a commercial and corporate concern, but I wish that they would drop the charade and simply select the films that they are lobbied to do - be open and transparent in their festival marketing and branding exercise. I would be shocked if any festival accepted our film now. It’s a good film. Real Australian Cinema. Audiences like it, and I am the harshest critic.

At least I know that the next film we make should be gently inserted into the rectum of the festival director over a long lunch - and then we’ll be getting somewhere… TR

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

Our film is on this week at FILMSTOCK INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL in LUTON, UK at the Filmstock Festival Centre in the Hat Factory 65-67 Bute Street, Luton, where it’s also screening informally on rotation as part of a strand of “visually stimulating” & “diverse experimental work” and this will be it’s first screening at an overseas film festival. It’s on tomorrow (6.15pm, Tuesday 6th November 2007)!

Filmstock seems like just the kind of festival we wanna be in: Robert Rodriguez opened the festival (?) and Wes Anderson is closing it (!). But hopefully we’ll also get into some bigger festivals: we need some momentum to raise the $100,000 needed to get the film ‘on film‘. NM

Ya di da di da di da di da di da di da di dum… or… I’m learning more and more about how the “film industry” works.

We got our hopes up about the IF Awards, as they seemed to have a transparent philosophy of counting the percentage of positive votes and rather than the total number of votes for a film. It seems a natural assumption that seeing as we had only a few screenings and mostly positive responses, that we stood a good chance to get a nomination. Over the last few weeks I had wondered if we would hear about the nominations early, but it was all quiet on the awards front.

This arvo I learned that we had not been nominated, buggar it. Fair enough, but I then noticed that according to IF, the nominations were made to;

“A host of the industry’s brightest came together this morning to hear Pia Miranda announce the nominees for the 2007 Inside Film Awards. MCs Lisa Hensley and Michael Adams welcomed the guests, including Brenda Blethyn, Brendan Cowell, Veronica Sywak, Jack Thompson, Kenneth Moraleda, Sam Worthington, and actors and filmmakers from throughout the film industry, waiting breathlessly for Pia to utter the words ‘And the nominees are:’…”

Now… I really don’t mind not getting a nomination, but I didn’t realise that the whole thing operated on a who you know basis. Clearly not being amongst ‘the industry’s brightest’ is the problem! My faux-naivety about the event has been shattered! When I see who the nominees actually are, my suspicions grow about the selection process…

Then again, maybe it’s like sport and we can play again next year? TR

¡Viva El Streetsweeper!

I just spent two days in regional NSW teaching youth how to make videos and they were attentive & enthusiastic & talented, it was a very refreshing experience: in just two days they wrote shot & made a quite sophisticated short film, brilliant.  I also had a few traditional Aussie meals & a couple of beers to keep the neck lubricated.  I went to the country early the morning after Streetsweeper screened at Tina to about 45 people.  T “Kong” R wrangled the ambient light in the make-shift cinema & made sure the film started on time.  (ironically, we also used banners from the AFC & the FTO to help block the light falling on the screen.)  [NOTE: any light is the enemy of HD, & lethal when combined with poor projection!]  It was a good screening (good pics & sound) to a good crowd: initial reactions were very encouraging.  I had a couple of nice quiet post screening beers in the TINA festival bar with S* & some other motivated artsy types, who appear to be immune to “affluenza”.  T & K & I also went to the zine fair in the park, which was nice & relaxed on a beautiful day but the sheer volume of work was overwhelming & made it impossible to judge a zine by it’s cover, I wanted to buyt many but ended up getting gelato instead.  Then, mid arvo, we had a beer whilst watching & enjoying a band from Melbourne called The Winternationale (?) who were  playing to an otherwise empty room.  Of course the whole long weekend we got Rock Star parking spots right outside all the places we visited: don’t ya love live-able cities!

The film has screened to about 300 people so far, in “alternative” spaces, & the grass roots feedback has been great.   Momentum is building. NM