Australia largest film festivals needs to balance engaging with and resisting the digital age.
25 Jul 2013 12:00
Sarah Ward
[This is archived content and may not display in the originally intended format.]
Writing and Publishing
Film festivals offer the opportunity to enjoy a curated collection of cinema over a condensed period. Their form and function has scarcely changed since the Venice Film Festival became the world’s first major event in 1932.
The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) brought the trend to Australia in 1952, and movies are still shown on screens, en masse, to the masses, decades later.
Sarah Ward is a freelance film critic, arts and culture writer, and film festival organiser. She is the Australia-based critic for Screen International, a film reviewer and writer for ArtsHub, the weekend editor and a senior writer for Concrete Playground, a writer for the Goethe-Institut Australien’s Kino in Oz, and a contributor to SBS, SBS Movies and Flicks Australia. Her work has been published by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Junkee, FilmInk, Birth.Movies.Death, Lumina, Senses of Cinema, Broadsheet, Televised Revolution, Metro Magazine, Screen Education and the World Film Locations book series. She is also the editor of Trespass Magazine, a film and TV critic for ABC radio Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, and has worked with the Brisbane International Film Festival, Queensland Film Festival, Sydney Underground Film Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival. Follow her on Twitter: @swardplay
