Bellingen’s Memorial Hall will be buzzing with quirky, innovative, controversial, thought-provoking films from all around the world when the third Screenwave International Film Festival comes to town for two weekends in January.
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The SWIFF 2018 program, which includes screenings at the Jetty Memorial Theatre in Coffs Harbour from Wednesday January 10 to 25, encompasses more than 70 films from 18 countries, with 24 of them being shown in Bellingen.
“Bellingen is fun to program for,” festival director Dave Horsley said. “People like really far-out kinds of films, left-of-centre ones that you cherish the opportunity to screen at a film festival. They’re non-commercial a lot of the time, but they’re fantastic films that stoke debate and conversation and argument – all the good things that film does.”
Some of the big award-winners, like Palme d’Or winning satire ‘The Square’, will screen twice, in Coffs and Bellingen.
“That’s a huge film, an amazing film,” Dave said. “You’ve got to take the opportunity to screen those as many times as you can because you want everyone to see them.”
There are also some “beautiful little gems” that will only screen in Bellingen, said artistic director Kate Howat.
One of them is‘Pecking Order’ – an eccentric New Zealand doco-comedy about chicken fanciers vying for best in show – which will open the Bellingen line-up on Saturday January 13 at 12:30pm.
Next will be a potent Australian film, ‘The Namatjira Project’, following the descendants of Albert Namatjira as they journey from the desert to the gates of Buckingham Palace on a quest to regain copyright to his artworks. Producer Sophia Marinos from Big hART will introduce the film and have a Q&A with the audience afterwards.
Other films with special guest Q&As include family history ‘The Last Goldfish’, with writer/director Su Goldfish; one about Brisbane musical royalty, ‘The Go-Betweens: Right here’, with band member Lindy Morrison in attendance; and ‘The Pink House’, about the oldest working brothel in Kalgoorlie, with director Sascha Ettinger-Epstein.
Screenwave and its various film festivals is the baby of husband and wife team David Horsley and Kate Howat, who met on a film set in Brisbane over a decade ago and share a passion for bringing wonderful films to regional areas.
“We moved from Brisbane to the Coffs Coast about four years ago,” Dave said.
“And the first major program that we ran in Bellingen was called Sunday at the Pictures.
“It was like a mini film festival on the last Sunday of each month.
“We just wanted to provide some cinema access for Bellingen, because we’d met a lot of people from round here and there was a lot of support for it.”
They also had Cinematinee at the Jetty Theatre in Coffs, and the youth film festival Rec Ya Shorts (both still running) but they really wanted to do a big film festival for the region and so SWIFF was born, and it is now in its third year.
Last month they were awarded $25,000 from the AMP ‘Tomorrow Makers’ fund, which recognises people who can make a difference in the community, either by creating something special or inspiring others.
They’ll use the money to expand the youth film festival and also to take them to an innovative festival, South by South West in Texas, to network and be inspired by fresh ideas.
Something new for SWIFF 2018 is an immersive art experience running in Coffs that will provide the finale to the festival.
SWIFF Light Box will beam contemporary art and stories onto buildings and sites across the Coffs Harbour Jetty precinct, in a free outdoor exhibition for festival goers, locals, and visitors to the region.
The $70,000 project, a collaboration between four local artists and award-winning projection art collective Illuminart, whose past performances include Vivid Sydney, will form a progressive narrative as the viewer walks from site to site.
Projections will run nightly from 8.30pm till late, on January 19 to 25.
For more information about SWIFF 2018, see www.screenwave.com.au/swiff/