It’s over and we can all finally take a breath of fresh air.

Wow, what an experience this Film Festival has been- both good an bad. Over the last 12 weeks, I think it is safe to say that not only myself but everyone has learnt a lot about not only just what it takes to get one of these festivals up and running but a lot about ourselves and what we’re capable of under pressure. As I’ve not-so-subtly mentioned in previous posts, I think a few people have learnt that maybe this isn’t what they’re cut out to do and that’s okay! I believe there is a really strong core group of people though who are already talking about potentially keeping the Melbourne International Youth Film Festival alive and running for future years- I think this comes from the kind of disbelief at how well the whole thing actually turned out (which is understandable considering we had a total of zero people coming to our Australiana Afternoon one day prior). There was definitely a festive atmosphere we managed to capture, Megan and Matilda killed it with their catering (especially on such a limited budget) and Ben’s MC’ing really brought everyone together and gave the space a sense of purpose.

The Backlot, despite being so awkwardly placed in location, was perfect in the atmosphere it provided. It felt very bar-esque and ‘fancy-casual’ (… if that makes sense). There were a couple of ‘complaints’, for lack of a better word, on how to get there. I did post on Facebook (being the manager of the online event) on how to get there via public transport and so forth, although never actually attending the space beforehand, I didn’t realise how out-of-the-way it was. This is something that going forward would be useful to keep in mind, perhaps posting a map on the layout and how to directly enter (use the second door etc.). Something else I found that would have been good to publicise was the fact that there would be nibbles and mingling pre-screening just because I feel as though a majority of people that attended didn’t realise what a ‘film festival’ entailed and that they simply thought that it would be to screen the shorts of others. Something to lock into the memory for (hopefully) next year.

In terms of the films we actually showed, I feel there was a nice range of shorts that would have appealed to most people’s tastes. Including some such as ‘Cannibal Cat’ made those who may not be as ‘into’ arthouse films feel as though there was something for them too. While I didn’t love every film we had on offer, I don’t think that’s the point as I and the rest of the programming team agreed (Alice and Tristan), it was the fact that we had the ability to distinguish between what was ‘good’ and overall enjoyable and what was not up to par. I . did hear from friends and family as they left the cinema that they didn’t love ‘this’ or ‘that’ film but that overall it was enjoyable- which I believe is exactly the point. Even when attending ‘legitimate’ film festivals such as the St. Kilda Film Festival, there were films I loved and films I hated. In summary, you’re not going to have a one hundred percent strike rate with everyone. The films that did end up winning awards were;

• Best in Festival – Screw The Boys (Fuck Les Gars) dir. Anthony Coveney
• Best Australian – Limbo dir. Gwendolyn Lin
• Best Emerging Talent – Dirty Sing dir. Andrew Mills
• Best International – Until It Turns Black (Поки не стане чорним) dir. Anastasiia Falileieva

During the final session of MIYFF I was able to have a long and interesting talk with Maxwell Gratton, the Chief Executive Officer of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival and his partner. It gave myself and Alice a lot of hope when Maxwell talked about the beginnings of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival and how it was just initially thirty people in a room watching a movie on a TV from a VHS tape- wow. I mean, what we pulled off was by no stretch of the imagination perfect and it is a learning curve, but hearing that and seeing what the MQFF has evolved into, the second largest film festival in Melbourne behind the Melbourne International Film Festival, gives me a gleaming beam of hope that this could become something more.

I think some other takeaways of how this festival could potentially have had its downfalls or been more successful in terms of ticket sales would be the overall timeline of its conception. This seemed to move very slowly at the beginning- tasks only being completed during class time one week apart (which is dire when we only have 12 weeks to get the ball rolling and across the finish line). Definitely, as mentioned in the readings too, promotion needs to happen soooo much earlier on (at least a month prior). With only two weeks of small-scale promotion, with content not already completed, we did a great job to achieve what we had but we could be well on the way to knocking it out of the ballpark given the right timeframe. This includes, but is not limited to,

• Having Broadsheet, Timeout Melbourne, Urban List etc. promote us (although Andrew did do a great job of trying to get that to happen)
• Paid Facebook advertising (more of it)
• Our programs out and in circulation throughout Melbourne
• Growing our social platforms to a respectable level
• Having a supercut of all the films and a proper trailer that doesn’t scream ‘fertility advertisement’
• Getting more sponsors on board (although Bridie and co. did a great job, snagging a wine sponsorship next year would be fantastic)

I will say this though, there was not one technical hiccup and honestly, we have Sean to thank for that. The silent unsung hero of this festival, sorting out every technical aspect there was behind the scenes, I really hope that if we do go forward with this that he is onboard for it all.

I think we have our audience,  I think we have a great idea on our hands and I think we have an excellent core group of people to really give this a red hot go next year. Defining our roles more precisely (although the collaboration was excellent) will help for things not to go unnoticed and missed. The stress we all felt (I know I most certainly did) got to be by the end but who doesn’t love a little pressure to thrive under- that’s how diamonds are made after all.