I walked away from PLAY BACK convinced that a festival is a living organism animated by shared labour, a fragile sense of place, and the theoretical scaffolding we have absorbed across the semester. Looking back, I can still feel the pulse of our teamwork, the most conspicuous success we registered. From the first production meeting […]
Reflection
There is a moment in every collaborative project when the scattered pieces begin to cohere, and for me that moment came when I was hunched over a spreadsheet at 10 p.m., matching volunteer names to shifts and realising that the colour-coded grid was not just a timetable but the living heartbeat of our three-day Media […]
ASSIGNMENT #4: Festival Production – Process and Making
week 6: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/zijun-zhao/2025/05/28/week-6-soft-launching-the-festival/ week 7: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/zijun-zhao/2025/05/28/week-7-the-week-…urators-handbook/ week 8: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/zijun-zhao/2025/05/28/week-8/ week 10: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/zijun-zhao/2025/05/28/week-10-one-or-m…-that-youve-used/ week 11: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/zijun-zhao/2025/05/28/week-11/ Reflection: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/zijun-zhao/wp-admin/post.php?post=134&action=edit
Week 11
Week 11’s dive into MediaFactory’s archives made me rethink festivals less as one-off spectacles and more as living case studies in student-led agility. Reading the Debut International Film Festival posts, I was struck by how programmer Peter Petrusma’s hustling for screening rights and his insistence on diversity translated directly into palpable audience gratitude; his blog […]
Week 10: One or more film or arts festivals’ programs (booklets) or websites that you’ve used
Week 10 finally convinced me that “launching” a 2025 festival means choreographing an experience that starts on a swiping thumb and ends—ideally—in a 2 a.m. foyer selfie. Reverse-engineering the Melbourne International Film Festival 2024 Program Guide taught me how colour-coded strands, QR shortcuts and a ticket-syncing app hand narrative agency to spectators while feeding real-time […]
Week 8
Week 8 forced me to realise that a 2025 festival is no longer judged only by what unspools on screen but by the afterlives it engineers through print, merchandise and micro-events. George’s guidance on exhibition publications (2024) made me rethink our catalogue from vanity project to strategic interface: a portable artefact that deepens discourse, immortalises […]
Week 7: the Week 7 readings from The Curator’s Handbook
Week 7 re-centered my understanding of a 2025 festival by reframing it through the curator’s expanded toolkit. Adrian George’s discussion of the curator as “selector, interpreter, producer, educator, fundraiser and public advocate” made me confront the fact that a festival programmer can no longer hide behind program notes; instead, I must choreograph every sensory and […]
Week 6 “soft-launching” the festival
Week 6’s “soft launch” felt less like a rehearsal and more like a powerful lens through which I finally saw what a festival experience must be in 2025. I realised that audiences now treat festivals as porous ecosystems rather than bounded occasions. They expect friction-free entry points, personalised itineraries and an ethical narrative they can […]
ASSIGNMENT #2: Deeper Research into Festival Culture and Establishing a Festival
Post 1: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/zijun-zhao/2025/04/11/assignment-2-post-1/ Post 2: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/zijun-zhao/2025/04/11/assignment-2-post-2/ Post 3: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/zijun-zhao/2025/04/11/assignment-2-post-3/
ASSIGNMENT #2: Post 2
This is my speech, and I recorded the following video based on it….. When developing a festival from scratch, there are a few key things to consider especially developing the festival’s mission, themes and name. The purpose and values of the festival should be expressed in these elements so that there is a clear vision […]