BigPond Adelaide Film Festival: A true independent

Everyone’s going to Adelaide this week, to be at the country’s most risk-taking festival. Encore spoke with festival director Katrina Sedgwick and associate director Adele Hann about the secrets behind its success.

The first point of differenceis the festival’s Investment Fund, which has delivered some of Australia’s most acclaimed films of recent times, including 2009’s Samson & Delilah. The pressure to continue this high level of performance from its slate hasn’t seen the funded projects become safe, predictable choices. It’s been quite the opposite.

“The Investment Fund has meant that Australian cinema is put to the forefront. Over time the success of the slate has generated anticipation; it’s become the element of the program that people really look forward to, the one that sells out first and excites the industry. One of the great things festival director Katrina Sedgwick does with that money is support some fairly risky projects that get the opportunity to evolve and develop because she has that confidence in the creatives.
“There may very well be some pressure [to find ‘the next Samson & Delilah’], but we’re trying not to focus on one film. There will be a number of projects from different genres and styles that will generate a lot of interest and excitement,” explained Hann.
This year, the Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund will also reach New York, when seven of the films it has supported since its creation (Last Ride, Ten Canoes, My Year Without Sex, Look Both Ways, Samson & Delilah, Mrs. Carey’s Concert and Boxing Day) screen at the Museum of Modern Art in April.
“It’s a week-long program that MoMA has selected and curated. It’s an extremely prestigious institution and for them to have decided to do this is a great honour,” said Hann.
Another point of difference is its emphasis on cross-platform. It’s not just web content such as the upcoming SBS series Danger 5, but about commissioning moving image artworks to be seen in galleries. One of this year’s highlights is a video installation by Warwick Thornton, part of the Stop the Gap exhibition.
“It’s certainly a conscious attempt to involve and get people thinking about the creativity that’s going on in other art forms, and looking at the ways that they cross over and merge in moving image works,” said Hann.
One of this year’s new initiatives is The Hive, a five-day residential lab including artists, musicians, theatre makers, dancers, choreographers, writers and filmmakers (represented by Tony Krawitz, Anna Broinowski, Amiel Courtin-Wilson, Matthew Bate, Sophie Hyde, Bryan Maison, Ashlee Page, Amy Gebhardt and Jason Sweeney).
“Potentially the results are quite intangible. It’s about stimulating people’s imagination and putting them into the same space with participants from other disciplines. It’s about cross-art form collaboration; it may be that projects are developed, and in that case, there is a pitch that they’re doing at the end of the lab to a select group of industry figures and agencies,” said Hann.
Another new element takes advantage of Australia’s culinary craze of the last two years, to reach audiences beyond the traditional festival crowd. The culinary strand Appetite celebrates food and film, with a feeding event at Port Willunga Beach, and Handpicked, a series of films selected and presented by food writer John Lethlean, restaurateur Gay Bilson, chef Cheong Liew and MasterChef’s Poh Ling Yeow.
“It creates an awareness of the festival amongst a much broader section of the population, and it promotes the area of the Fleurieu Peninsula, which is an important food and wine region for South Australia. It’s a way of letting people know that the festival is on, and they might want to come to see their favourite celebrity chefs introduce a film.”
Taking place alongside the Australian International Documentary Conference and the Australian Directors’ Guild Conference has also helped the festival become an event that attracts a high volume of industry professionals. With the former, the festival will be sharing guests such as Steve James, Bob Connolly and Pamela Yates. With the latter, it will also share events that will appeal to some of the delegates.
“Last time we did it with the Writers Guild, so I guess each festival we’ll approach and work with organisatons to get that critical mass of industry here. It really makes a great difference,” said Hann.

SOUTH FOR THE SUMMER