Archive for the ‘film festivals’ Category
a message from Alaska
Monday, September 1st, 2008Hi Toby,
I thoroughly love every aspect of your film. You must be very proud of it. It’s completely mesmerizing and provoking. Every single frame is a stunning composition of light and movement, and the poetry feels profound. The world sure could use more movies like Streetsweeper.
Please give my regards to Neil and Marin, and I’ll get back to you soon.
Tony
It may be that our film will have a further life in festivals after all!
No Meen Feet
Friday, July 4th, 2008Nm

boring brisbane
Monday, June 30th, 2008Miserable MIFF
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008Three 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
Film Festivals are a pile of shit…
Monday, June 9th, 2008I 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
one woman revolution!
Saturday, December 8th, 2007The 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
Strtswpr scrns O.S. this wk!
Monday, November 5th, 2007Our 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

IF I were a rich man…
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007We 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!
what next?
Thursday, October 4th, 2007The film has screened to about 300 people so far, in “alternative” spaces, & the grass roots feedback has been great. Momentum is building. NM















