Before class, Matilda and I met with Maxwell and Spiro from the Melbourne Queer Film Festival for what can only be described as The Best Meeting Anyone Has Ever Had In The History Of The Universe!  They said that while they couldn’t provide us monetary funding for this festival, they’d love to support us for next years.  They’ve also been trying to build up Melbourne Queer Youth Film Festival for several years but for one reason or another, it has always fallen through.  They think that, depending on where we want to go with this festival next, we could come on board and assist Spiro in programming for a youth festival!

In class, there was a panel discussion with Erin Rosenberg from CHIFF and Rohan Sprong from Filmmaking.  I’m confused as to whether I’m meant to discuss their feedback or not, so forgive me if this is an incorrect platform.  I completely agree with them in regards to the sponsorship package.  Even as I was writing it, I was thinking “there are so many words and I have no idea why I’m writing any of them”, but I kept on going because that’s what the Women’s Film Festival did.  That being said, I should probably have mentioned the email that was sent along with it that gave a more succinct overview of the package.  As for the critiques they gave other departments, I shan’t comment but know that I felt extremely Loud and Passionate in my internal response to some of their comments.

As for the fundraiser, it went…  okay…
The space was set up really well.  It looked like it was our space, and the fairly lights and posters all around made it feel less like a university and more like a comfortable cinema space.  I definitely think that getting rid of the extra chairs was a good idea because Lord knows we didn’t need them!  The choice to serve free popcorn was a stroke of genius on Megan’s part, and having a couple of basic soft drinks complemented this well.

I found there was a bit of confusion between the door bois and the snack table.  I’m not really sure what they were actually doing because people kept coming down to show me their tickets and buy new tickets.  There were a lot of people who found themselves without something to do as well, so I wish we had co-ordinated roles a little clearer.

As for the film choices, the first one (Ben and Arthur) killed!  People loved it!  It had so many iconic moments and I only wish that we had kept it to this and not expanded to a double feature because the second Santa Claus vs The Martians came on the room died!  It was a flop!  It wasn’t good or bad!  Certainly not bad enough to be considered good!  I’m not sure Ben had seen it before he suggested it, as he apologized to the room post-viewing.
There was also an issue of noise.  The hallway near our cinema space are often used for hip hop dance practices (???) and despite people asking them to keep the music down numerous times, they just kept on going!  It was pretty distracting and killed the vibe a little bit.

I wish we’d had more time for this.  So many of us have been hyper-focused on the festival itself (me included) that this slipped through the cracks and ended up being very last-minute, despite the push back in deadline.