DestFest Manifesto

As I’ve said before, I’ll be participating on the ‘Cyber-Born Film’ panel at Megan Spencer’s Destination Film Festival (DestFest). It will be launched this weekend and Megan has provided a humorous but true point-of-difference post about the festival:

Big Brand Film Festival: “I’m going to focus on features and government funded films as if no other films are made in Australia (or that other films made in Australia don’t really count).

DestFest: “I won’t”.

BBFF: “I’m going to hold a panel about how to compete with your fellow filmmakers for government funding this round”.

DF: “I won’t”.

BBFF: “I’m going to hold a pitching competition so you can win an opportunity to make a film”.

DF: “I won’t”.

BBFF: “I’m going to spend thousands of dollars flying an American into Australia to tell you how to write the perfect script”.

DF: “I won’t”.

DF: “I’m going to encourage culture instead of industry, community instead of competition, artistic inventiveness instead of commercial compromise, and passion instead of toeing the party line. I’m going to ask filmmakers and film artists to take centre stage regardless of whether or not you’ve heard of them, whether they’ve been to Film School, been tagged as “the next big thing”, won an AFI award or received any government funding”.

BBFF: “Um…”

Though I don’t think ‘culture’ and ‘industry’ are two opposites, the sentiment of preferencing what is needed rather than perpetrating the standard line is much needed.