Summertime Shorts

The international short film festival behemoth Flickerfest is back. As it does every year, the proceedings will begin in Sydney, at Bondi Beach, where over 100 hand-picked films will vie for honours in a range of competitions for ten days and then, once that's all over, the festival will begin touring its winners and highlights across 46 venues country-wide. And this year, Flickerfest has got a big announcement up its sleeve.

“We became Academy accredited with our international competition in 2002,” its director Bronwyn Kidd proudly explains, “and now this year we've just become Academy accredited with our Australian competition, which means the film which wins the best Australian film award will have an opportunity to go forth to the Oscars!”

No doubt encouraged by that recent accomplishment, the festival this year has also grown some 200 submissions on last year's entry numbers.

“It's just bigger every year!” Kidd exclaims. “We've about 2300 entries this [time], which is an enormous amount to get through. And to put the program together that takes many, many months.”

To help process this sea of films, Kidd has a committee of over 50 peers who watch and review every single submission, and then she and two other curators spend about 18 hours a day parsing their recommendations from that into a rough top 100.

“It's a huge job,” she admits, “but it's a labour of love, and it's always exciting to discover the next generation of talent and see some really amazing work from here and all around the world. It really is the cutting edge of cinema: it's creative, and it's innovative, and [for us] it's really exciting to be a platform for [that] discovery.”

So, what does this mean for audiences? Well, a lot to look forward to, for starters. Flickerfest itself has done a lot for bringing an appreciation of short films into popular conversation. It's proved with the amount of venues its touring alone that the demand for and understanding of the format is growing.

“I hope we've [helped]” Kidd agrees. “Certainly… we helped pioneer it. I remain as passionate about it as I was back then, and I think we've managed to bring over the years these short films to a growing audience, and I hope we've been a part of that growing enthusiasm.”

The festival has achieved such success, Kidd says, through a dedication to ever-increasing diversity.

“I certainly think we've evolved into showcasing a lot more diverse work. We've got environmental shorts, a national high school [and] primary school section, a program for families and for kids; we're even doing an Elvis special this year, [as well as] comedies – it really has evolved into quite a diverse range of films.”

“[And] perhaps my tastes have become a little more sophisticated,” she laughs modestly. “I certainly see a lot, and I'm really not wanting to just do easy programming for people, I'm wanting to show work that I think is amazing. I want the festival to be world class, and I want the level of competition to be world class.”

So in short, the longer she does what she does, the better Flickerfest festival we get.