Less than one month to go…
February 17th, 2012 Comments Off
With now less than a month left until our festival begins, things have been very, very busy! More films will be announced in the coming days and we encourage you to sign up to our mailing list to stay abreast of event updates.
Mind by Emma Crimmings – screening opening night
MIND is the captivating story of Australian-Chinese writer, Tom Cho. From an early age, Tom thought he was different and knew he didn’t match his Chinese mother’s expectations of a good daughter. From the innocently playful gestures of a tomboy to the irrevocable impact of transitioning from one gender to another, Mind charts Tom’s escalating desire for personal transformation.
Attending Seen and Heard
Our festival is free/pay by donation. Proceeds from donations will go to Life Force Cancer Foundation. You are not required to book a place to attend, but we reccomend signing up to our mailing list and signing up to the event on Facebook to be notified of event details. Seen and Heard will be taking place at Sydney’s Red Rattler Theatre in Marrickville, a not-for-profit artist run initiative. Films being screened at Seen and Heard have not all received classifications in Australia.
Our first line-up announced
February 8th, 2012 Comments Off
Following a hiatus in 2011, Seen and Heard returns in 2012 with a bigger scale festival than ever with more international titles and Australian films from upcoming and established filmmakers.
Animation, experimentation, family, grief, escape, climax. Films from Australia and across the globe: short films and a feature length documentary.
OPENING NIGHT 15/3/2012
FESTIVAL SECOND NIGHT 22/3/2012
CLOSING NIGHT 29/3/2012
The Red Rattler, Sydney
The new horror movement
February 19th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
In 2009 one of my short films The Usherette was programmed into the first Seen and Heard film festival in Sydney. The Usherette was made the year after I left film school (2004) and was recreated from the 1939 Edward Hopper painting New York Movie. I had been working in a cinema while I was pursuing screenwriting and attending film school.
The film was actually quite a lonely portrayal of the life of an usherette, and speaking from experience, it was a lonely and melancholy job. Of course the benefit from being a cinema worker is the free access to films, so on my days or nights off (rare, as I was studying and also trying to write) I would trudge back to the cinema and watch a film that I hadn’t had time to catch. At the time, 3D was only a promise, horror was a Hollywood remake, and all the interesting films with something to say were found in the smaller festivals.
Australian films were light on the ground, well…they were made but no one would come to see them. With the exception of Wolf Creek, if an Australian film played in the cinema we would have to really work at getting people in. Who is in it, what it is about were the questions and if the patrons didn’t know the actors then it was a lost cause. If we did manage to get someone to buy a ticket, chances were they would leave halfway through, glaring at us as they left. If, by chance, someone asked who the director was, and if it was a woman (about a one in two hundred chance it was), then that was a turnoff as well.
Times have changed, but cinema-going really hasn’t. I sat in an empty cinema to see The Artist last week, but sat in a full one to see The Iron Lady, a film directed by Phyllida Lloyd, although she wasn’t the big draw card. I’m sure if you asked someone who had seen this film they wouldn’t know who directed it. Things are changing though, and the perception that women only direct soppy, romantic comedies is becoming a cliché.
The women’s horror movement is huge and gathering momentum. Heidi Honeycutt, a film journalist based in Los Angeles is the co-director of the annual Viscera Film Festival for horror shorts, and created the film news site PlanetFury.com about women in horror. Hannah Neurotica, a film writer, founded the International Women in Horror Recognition Month every February. For the third year, ‘WiHM expands opportunities for filmmakers, artists, and fans by raising awareness about the changing roles for women through filmmaking, writing, events, and networking.’
Tasmanian filmmakers Briony Kidd and Rebecca Thomson have contributed to this theme with the 1st Stranger with my Face Festival, promoting women’s horror films in Australia. As I write this Adelaide horror filmmaker Ursula Dabrowsky is in production of her second feature Inner Demon, after the success of her first Family Demons. These female horror outings are changing the perception of horror by telling female stories and promoting tough roles for women. No longer is the Final Girl a virginal victim that fights back, but now made over to become a strong protagonist that has lived life experience and enjoys it!
Of course there are many other festivals that have promoted women’s films and will continue to, but as Courtney Love once said (and I paraphrase) ‘Only when women give jobs to the girls is when we will be truly equal.’ So thanks to these niche film festivals that continue to push for recognition for women filmmakers, they are quietly changing awareness and taking up the baton for equality.
Donna McRae is an award-winning Australian filmmaker based in Melbourne who has just completed her first feature film Johnny Ghost. She has also made several shorts which have been shown locally and internationally. She has just completed her PhD entitled “Projecting Phantasy: The Spectre in Cinema” at Monash University where she lectures in the departments of Art & Design and Film & Television.
There’s a reason no one told you it was easy
February 10th, 2012 Comments Off
As a female filmmaker it took me a long time to own the title of “filmmaker”. The male filmmakers I met seemed to have a lot less trouble letting those words slip from their lips. But for many women I think there is less of a predisposition for self promotion, so it’s harder for us.
I also wrestled with issues of self-belief. When can I truly say I’m a filmmaker, does it take a certain number of films; or a certain number of festival screenings? It’s a tricky question to answer and is probably different for anyone. For me, I think it was when I realised this was really the only thing I can do with my time. I mean that I feel compelled to do it. I had many years ago chosen to leave a career in marketing to pursue filmmaking, but even then I wasn’t sure. So eventually at some stage I had to get real. Either I was serious or I wasn’t. Once I knew I was (and for me it took years) I had to start owning the word filmmaker. There is nothing else I find quite as hard, rewarding and continually evolving. In short, there’s nothing else I’d rather do.
So once you know for sure that you are a filmmaker, there’s still the eternal question of whether your work is any good, and it can take a long time to work your way through this one. It was only recently that I read a quote by Ira Glass (of This American Life fame) on this topic which illuminated my thinking in a new way, because successful artists rarely tell you that insecurity is part and parcel of this kind of work, at least at the beginning:
“For the first couple of years you make stuff and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good. It has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have the special thing we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or are still in this phase, you gotta know that it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. It’s only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap and your work will be as good as your ambitions. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You gotta fight your way through”.
So keep fighting all. See you on the other side.
KATHARINE ROGERS is a writer, director and filmmaker. She has written and/or directed five short films (including Tupperware it’s more than just plastic, The Moustache Incident and Out of Gas), an episode for community TV and a short play in the 2009 Short and Sweet Festival. In 2007 she completed a Masters of Media Arts at UTS. Katharine worked in programming at Sydney Film Festival for two consecutive years. She was also the curator and presenter of Caught Short Film Festival for more than a year. In 2010 Katharine directed a sixteen minute drama Behind the Wall which went on to screen internationally at the Indie Jam festival in the USA and won prizes in Australia. Her latest comedy short Crumb Catchers which she wrote & directed is currently being submitted to festivals. Katharine has written guest blogs for Jurassic Lounge and We Try This At Home.
Working hard for no money?
February 6th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
You may have noticed recently, if you’re following Seen and Heard on Twitter, that we’ve been posting the latest job ads relevant to the film industry popping up online. While sourcing these jobs, I’ve noticed that almost 80% of relevant jobs are, well, in fact, not jobs, but unpaid positions.
Last year I completed a four month internship with a major film festival. While I wouldn’t have traded that experience for anything, it was most definitely a sacrifice financially. In the lead-up to the festival, I would be working at their office three days a week along with two paid jobs while I was completing my Masters. As the festival drew near and my semester of study had finished, I was doing five days a week and working evenings. While the festival was on, I was working seven days a week, unpaid.
By day, I would be escorting Jane Campion to her Q&A session, and by night, I was being yelled at by customers over the phone because their pizzas had arrived cold.
The internship was vastly fulfilling, and by no means am I unappreciative of that experience. Doing unpaid work, for any length of time, is hard, and when you’re doing an internship, the length of time is often the biggest stretch. People in their twenties more and more are coming around to the idea of internships as a way of acquiring the necessary experience for getting their foot in the door. My family thought at the time I was crazy for taking up unpaid work, and now, some parents are even paying to get their kids internships.
Paying for unpaid work? Really? “[Parents] are paying for-profit companies to place their college students in internships that are mostly unpaid,” writes Sue Shellenbarger of the Wall Street Journal. “Others are hiring marketing consultants to create direct-mail campaigns promoting their children’s workplace potential. Still other parents are buying internships outright in online charity auctions.”
Once again, the experience of my own internship was invaluable, but I certainly wasn’t making coffee for higher level staff, and the months following were also difficult financially.
Is the right sacrifice for everyone to make, and what are the alternatives?
Thinking outside of the internship square requires graduates to “create their own experience”, suggests Clare Whitmell of the Guardian. “Someone with social media skills may be able to help companies discover the benefits of using Twitter or Facebook to increase visibility and sales. If you’ve got a marketing degree, offer your knowledge to help a local company with their campaigns. Can you use your degree in modern languages to take people abroad, or help local businesses offer their products and services to overseas customers? Or perhaps you can spot an opportunity that’s too good to pass up.”
This can work most effectively for smaller organisations. Notice that a small production company has a rubbish website and 28 followers on Twitter? Or that a local company could benefit from you shooting, editing and uploading promotional videos to Youtube? Clare goes on to suggest asking companies for commissions or a reduced fee for your work.
Is an internship something you pursued during or following your studies? Was it effective? Was your experience positive, but with other impacts? Let us know and drop us a line at info@seenandheardfilms.com.
Links
Do You Want An Internship? It’ll Cost You
by Sue Shellenbarger
Alternatives to internships for graduates
by Clare Whitmell
Win a double pass to go see Lady Sings it Better!
February 6th, 2012 Comments Off
Six women take on the greatest male musicians of our time and reinvent them as sassy old-school cabaret. This is Midnight Oil, Michael Jackson, AC/DC, The Beatles, Nine Inch Nails, Leonard Cohen, Queen and the Rolling Stones as you’ve never heard them before; masculinity mixed up in sultry female vocals.
To win a double pass to any one of the nights listed below, tell us
Which male written and performed song would you most like to hear sung by a lady?
Lend us your answers on email, Facebook or Twitter (make sure to tag us).
Lady Sings it Better, featuring in blackcat lounge: a season of queer cabaret.
15, 23, 24 Feb & 2, 4, 7, 8 Mar 2012
Sidetrack Theare
142 Addison Rd
Marrickville, NSW – Australia
Want to volunteer?
February 2nd, 2012 Comments Off
Are you interested in developing your experiences in the arts, festivals or film scene? Drop us a line today: volunteers@seenandheardfilms.com
Now counting down
February 2nd, 2012 Comments Off
The time is getting close! With the festival just six weeks away (and our stress levels increasing), we are on the verge of announcing some big things. We’re very excited to be screening some cutting-edge stuff from young Australian women and some truly incredible documentaries and short films by international filmmakers. Stay faithful, folks, your support has been fantastic. We promise to deliver this March!
Working nine to five?
January 12th, 2012 Comments Off
If you’re not following our tweeting as of yet, you may have been missing out on recent employment opportunities. If you’re looking to expand your career with film based work, be sure to follow us on both Twitter and Facebook.
Have any professional development recommendations, or know of any work that’s going? We’re looking to make as many resources available to budding filmmakers as possible. Not only do we want to create exposure for the existing works of women filmmakers, we also want to expose opportunities available. Drop us a line at info@seenandheardfilms.com.
Our festival in March will also feature a professional development focus with guest speakers from the industry sharing their insight.
Please note that the jobs being advertised are largely Australian based, but we’re open minded.
Thanks so far…
January 8th, 2012 Comments Off
Thanks everyone for their entries so far! Our festival is looking better than ever with more international titles and exciting new Australian films. Taking entries until January 15 – all you need to do is fill out the application form and we’ll get back to you. No screening fees!
