Sydney Film Festival

The Sydney Film Festival is an event held annually in June. The international film festival, which attracts thousands of people each year, lasts about two weeks and features about 150 non-mainstream, feature-length movies. The event is Australia’s leading international film festival and is recognised by the Federation Internationale des Associations de Producteurs de Films (FIAPF). The event has spawned other events such as the Travelling Film Festival, although the Sydney screenings and discussions remain the primary focus of organisers. Over its first sixty years, the festival has screened more than eight thousand movies. Although it has primarily been a non-competitive event, the organisers added some awards in 1970 and again in the early twenty-first century.

Background

Competitive film festivals began during the 1930s, with some, including the Cannes Film Festival, becoming prestigious events. While a number of festivals had been established by the late 1940s, organisers in Scotland conceived of a different type of film festival. The Edinburgh Film Festival, which launched in 1947, was a non-competitive event for audiences to simply experience films they might not otherwise have a chance to see.

In Australia at the close of the 1940s, fans of non-mainstream films had few options. They might attend a screening organised by a film society, or a group might borrow movies from the State Film Councils. In 1950, the Australian Council of Film Societies held a meeting in the Sydney suburb of Newport at which members raised the possibility of organising a film festival. In January of 1952, the first Australian Film Festival was held outside Melbourne. A turnout of more than eight hundred people attended screenings held in the town hall, church halls and other venues. The greater-than-expected response inspired many attendees to consider starting film festivals in other cities.

Festival attendees from Sydney wanted to plan screenings and discussions. They formed a committee, which was chaired by Alan Stout, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sydney. The first formal meeting, held at the National Film Board of Canada offices, drew a large group including representatives of groups such as the Independent Film Group and the NSW Federation of Film Societies. After promises of donations from several groups and the offer of space in the NSW Film Council’s offices, the group chose the University of Sydney as the site of the festival.

The first Sydney Film Festival ran for four days beginning on 11 June 1954. Using borrowed film projectors, it screened films in four halls. All 1,200 tickets were sold out at a cost of one guinea each. Films included Buster Keaton’s The General (1926), Rene Clair’s Sous les toits de Paris (1930), Roberto Rossellini’s Germany Year Zero (1947), Jacques Tati’s Jour de fête (1948) and John Heyer’s The Back of Beyond (1954).

Chairman Stout’s hope that it would become an annual event was realised thanks to the success of the inaugural festival. The time frame for the festival changed many times over the years, expanding to as many as seventeen days, but in 2010 was returned to a two-week format encompassing the long holiday weekend of the Queen’s Birthday. It was moved to October in 1957, but two years later was again on the June calendar, where it remained. While the university continued to host the festival for years, as the demand grew, the committee added additional outside venues. In 1968, the Sydney Film Festival moved to the Wintergarden Theatre in the suburb of Rose Bay. It moved to its permanent home, the State Theatre, in 1974.

The move to a centre city location changed the flavour of the event, which previously had allowed attendees to picnic on the university lawns or the beachfront at Rose Bay. The new venue’s more than two thousand seats and the beauty of the theatre were generally regarded as assets. However the spacious theatre was not as amenable to smaller film screenings and the layout created logjams as patrons leaving a screening faced throngs arriving for the next one. A number of nearby venues were used at various times to expand selections and ease congestion.

Topic Today

The Sydney Film Festival shows about 150 feature-length movies over its two-week run. Since 1977 it has hosted panel discussions and workshops. Many of these events are free and are targeted to aspiring filmmakers. More than 130,000 people attend each year.

Although conceived as a non-competitive event, the festival has introduced several awards over the years. A juried award, the Official Competition prize, is presented for a creative and cutting-edge film. Other honours include audience favourites, short documentaries and animated films.

The Sydney Film Festival is known for offering provocative feature films as well as documentaries that address important issues. Such screenings have been major events at the festival. As an example, the festival screened the nine-hour Chinese documentary West of the Tracks in its entirety. The organisers have also presented retrospectives of many directors’ careers, tracking down elusive rare films from across the globe. These are often presented by film historians and other subject experts, who provide context.

Question-and-answer sessions with the filmmakers follow many screenings. Forums held during the film festival were introduced in 1955. More modern events include forums that discuss film criticism. Many of these presentations and discussions are held in venues around the city, such as the Pitt Centre and the town hall.

The festival struggled financially during the 1990s and early 2000s, at times running a deficit. For many decades, ticket sales were sufficient to fund the festival and subscriptions sold out quickly. Gradually audiences were less interested in investing two weeks of their time in the event and changes were made to allow for the purchase of a few screenings as well as the full slate. Expenses have increased over years as well; international distributors often charge larger fees for higher-profile films. Organisers also had to convince the New South Wales government of the significance of the festival to gain financial support. In the late 2010s, the Sydney Film Festival was funded through government grants, multiple sponsorships, memberships and ticket sales.

Organisers launched the Travelling Film Festival in 1974 to give people across Australia a chance to see some of the movies shown at the main festival. Typically, about ten films are shown over a three-day period.

Bibliography

“Frater, Patrick. “Sydney Film Festival Teases Digital Edition.” Variety, 3 May 2020, variety.com/2020/film/asia/sydney-film-festival-digital-online-edition-1234596776/. Accessed 1 Jan. 2024.

“History.” State Theatre, 2024, www.statetheatre.com.au/history/. Accessed 1 May 2024.

Kaufman, Tina. “Looking Back, Looking Forward: Sydney Film Festival at 60.” Sydney Film Festival, 2019, online.sffarchive.org.au/archive/sff-archive-2019-edition/welcome/looking-back-looking-forward-sydney-film-festival-at-60. Accessed 1 May 2024.

“Sydney Film Festival.” Screen Australia, 2023, www.screenaustralia.gov.au/festivals-and-markets/festival-profiles/sydney-film-festival/9431. Accessed 1 May 2024.

“Sydney Film Festival.” FilmFreeway, 2024, filmfreeway.com/SydneyFilmFestival. Accessed 1 May 2024.

“Sydney Film Festival.” Sydney Film Festival, 2024, www.sff.org.au/. Accessed 1 May 2024.

Thomas, Sarah. “Sydney Film Festival Controversy as Audiences Walk Out of the Nightingale.” ABC, 10 June 2019, www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-11/sydney-film-festival-the-nightingale-premiere-sparks-controversy/11198288. Accessed 1 May 2024.

“Travelling Film Festival.” Sydney Film Festival, 2024, www.sff.org.au/tff. Accessed 1 May 2024.