Flickerfest is back in the Pavilion
Image: Flickerfest in the Bondi Pavilion Amphitheatre 2017. Image: Flickerfest
Flickerfest is Australia’s largest and one of the world’s most prestigious short-film festivals. It receives entries from across the globe, this year totalling around 3,150 films all vying for honours in a number of competition categories.
Flickerfest is also the only Australian film festival with Academy® qualification and BAFTA recognition which means films that win in the following categories are eligible for an Oscar: Flickerfest Award for Best International Short Film, the Yoram Gross Award for Best International Animation, the Panasonic Lumix for Best Australian Short Film and the Flickerfest Award for Best Documentary.
Now entering its 32nd year, the festival has had at least 26 of its events held in the Bondi Pavilion, and after a two year relocation to North Bondi Beach Park, it returns in 2023 to its newly refurbished home.
“We’re looking forward to being back there…it’ll be really nice to have an all-weather venue,” says Bronwyn Kidd, Festival Director. While she appreciates the glossy new building and updated facilities of Bondi Pavilion, she can’t help feeling nostalgic.
“There was something very lovely and charming about the old Bondi Pavilion; it did have a few little rough edges here and there, but there was something really sweet and charming about it…to screen in the amphitheatre like that was kind of magical, you know, to have a projector pointing out a window from a balcony…we adapted with the Pavilion and we’ve evolved over so many years… so it’s going to be really interesting to be back there in its new incarnation.”
By the time she’s finished programming the 2023 festival Kidd will have watched around 900 short films. After so many years (she became festival director in 1998) she can still appreciate every individual film, and is constantly impressed by the changing scope and variety.
“It’s really massive, but I’m also really excited by the diversity of the program this year…each year we’re just seeing a greater diversity of voices,” says Kidd.
“We’re seeing films reflect environmental concerns; we’re seeing films that are kind of putting forward a cultural perspective – particularly with First Nations films – a real sense of empowerment, of claiming voices, of telling stories that are significant to them. With female directors, similarly too, I think there’s a whole lot of empowerment, really strong voices…”
On Survival Day (January 26), Flickerfest will feature a program focusing on First Nations film-makes. It’s a very popular program and one of which she is proud.
Also popular is the relatively new Rainbow Shorts program featuring LGBTQI+ film makers.
“Again, so many strong films, and I have to say this is an area where I’ve just seen an explosion in storytelling in the last three years. I mean, we opened up to Rainbow Shorts just four years ago now…but just the quality and the explosion.”
Technology has made film making much more accessible to a wider range of people and that has also changed the landscape, with one of the benefits being immediacy.
“That’s the great thing about short film because people can tell a story which is contemporary and happening right now without having to wait one year to get funding or bring a whole lot of people on board like is the case with feature film-making,” explains Kidd.
Winnowing down a field of 900 films to a program of 120 is no mean feat and there are tough decisions to be made. One thing Kidd is decisive about is that there be no films about the pandemic or anything else that’s a downer.
“I’m not looking for bleak story-telling, I’m not looking for issues-based story-telling, you know I wanna take people on an uplifting journey. I want them to come and find a bit of joy at Flickerfest.”
With Flicker Kids, aimed at 4 – 12 year olds; Love Bites featuring films about relationships; and Short Laughs, a collection of comedies, plus a bar inside, and the beach outside Flickerfest truly has something for everyone.
