The Melbourne Women in Film Festival is returning for its ninth year, cementing itself as the vital home for the championing of female filmmakers with an impressive lineup of over 40 feature films, shorts and special events that will disrupt, challenge and inspire.
The festival will focus on fresh perspectives, delivering dynamic screenings, talks and masterclasses that push the boundaries of storytelling, all while celebrating the visionary women at the forefront of the film industry.
Screenings include the opening night of Josephine Stewart Te-Whiu’s We Were Dangerous from Aotearoa; the wickedly funny Australian comedy Audrey will be a special event screening with a panel discussion Reframing Audrey. The Almost Midnight Movie Marathon features some unmissable horror films including Alice Maio Mackay’s T Blockers, Sasha Rainbow’s feature Grafted and is a blood-curdling ride not for the faint-hearted.
The MWFF takes over ACMI and Federation Square from March 20-24. You can view showtimes, purchase tickets and share with your friends here
Alyssa De Leo spoke with Dr Sian Mitchell about the upcoming festival.
Alyssa De Leo: What are the highlights of the festival this year?
Dr Sian Mitchell: It’s hard because I love everything. I think one of the great sessions we’re doing is the Reframing Audrey session because part of that is to generate more visibility around the reframe stamp and what that’s all about.
With Audrey being a recent addition to the list of international films that focus on having gender balance in their crew. We really want to use that session as a way of letting filmmakers know what it’s about, how they can also think about their own crewing practices and advocate for that gender balance, and by gender balance, I do mean not just women but also gender diverse and trans crew as well. Just shine a light on that initiative and why it’s important. Not only is it going to be obviously a fun session for watching the film, if people have seen it or for the first time and seeing it on a big screen is going to be fantastic, it is also a way of educating the industry around this initiative that is important. Another one, is something that we’ve not really done for a little while is that double feature, the Almost Midnight Movie Marathon, where we’re making a few horror films, a bit of a genre focus. Playing Alice Maio Mackay’s T Blockers and then playing Sasha Rainbow’s debut feature, Grafted. So just trying to mix up how we put our feature screenings together and these two films seem to be just the perfect sort of match made in heaven for a kind of recollection to those of double features you go to the drive in to see. The third one I’ll mention is the retrospective. We have some incredible shorts packages, we always do it every year. They’re always strong. The retrospective shorts we’ve got this year are special. So, we are screening some hard to find and quite rare short films from experimental kind of punk riot girl sort of focused films from the 90s and 2000s, one of the films is on 35 mm, which is also exciting to see it on a film print which we’re lucky to do. That’s going to be a special session too. It sounds like there’s a lot going on, there’s heaps to choose from, which is fantastic.
Alyssa De Leo: Do you have a particular film that you’re most excited about?
Dr Sian Mitchell: I guess it’s the opening night film. It’s such a special slot. And it’s called, We Were Dangerous. It’s a film from New Zealand. It’s special for a couple of reasons. The story is fascinating around these young girls and their rebelliousness to fight back against an extreme program they were put into, and it does relate to true stories that happened in New Zealand at the time, particularly to young Māori women as well. That’s part of the what makes that film so special, and the way it’s handled in the film is interesting. But also, the director, Josephine Stewart Te-Whiu. is someone that we’ve screened before. We’ve screened her short films before, and in 2023 she won our best short film, and then was also a jury member for us last year, we’ve had a bit of a relationship with this filmmaker over the last few years, and so it’s really nice to be able to go, hey, let’s lift this film up to our opening night and really shine a light on it because this filmmaker is obviously incredibly talented and we just love to see that trajectory of women filmmakers coming through from those sort of short films and up into their first feature film, which is what our festival really is all about.
Alyssa De Leo: There are a lot of networking opportunities, panels, masterclass events for up-and-coming filmmakers. What can attendees expect to learn from some of these events?
Dr Sian Mitchell: We’ve got a free making genre film and television panel. Part of what we do as a festival that we’re really focused on is we’re focused on career development and particularly for, let’s say, student filmmakers or early career and emerging filmmakers. A lot of those extra things that we put into the program. They are targeted, more towards those in their early career. That’s, I think, that’s where we’re positioned. We’ve got that panel, that’s a free panel at ACMI, but we are also, and this was something we learned coming out of the COVID. Sometimes, we also live stream it, because it’s a conversation that people outside of Melbourne, interstate, or in the regions, to be able to have a listen to and participate in, so we are able to live stream that, so people can register to get the link to watch it. Then we have a masterclass that we’re doing with a production designer, Lucy Gouldthorpe, she does a lot of Australian TV including Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and the Kettering Incident is another one of her credits. She is doing a sort of interactive masterclass with us around production design, but on a budget. It’s focusing on a smaller budget. projects but as a way of really heightening the production value through production design. We normally do a workshop or a masterclass every year as well and that’s that one for this year.
Alyssa De Leo: You have a specific focus on women and gender diverse filmmakers, but is there anything else that you think that sets you apart from others?
Dr Sian Mitchell: Yeah, I think because we are smaller than a big international film festival, we’re quite targeted, I think, in terms of our programming. We try to streamline the programming so people can go and see multiple things and not really have to choose one or the other. And as you say, yes, we are absolutely focused on a particular niche in terms of women and gender diverse and the kind of intersections with that as well. Thinking about race, class, age, different sorts of identities that we try to bring into it. So, with that, what we try to do, because we are a bit smaller, is we can focus on creating hopefully a culturally safe space for the community that we’re targeting women filmmakers, gender diverse filmmakers and being able to facilitate conversations between them and their audiences and really be that space where an audience can come to see, okay, who’s going to be the next big female filmmaker that comes through, or the next big sort of trans filmmaker that comes through. We want to occupy that space and work with the community to help to build and evolve that space as we go.
Alyssa De Leo: Why do you think it’s particularly important for people to attend the festival this year,
Dr Sian Michell: I think about last year’s program with this question because last year we did want to tackle some big issues happening around the world and still happening around the world. We’re looking at things like sustainability and climate and, first Nations resistance and things like this through the program, I think these are important things to highlight and explore. This year we thought to ourselves as programmers that we wanted really important stories and perspectives, but maybe also program some things that could act as just a bit of catharsis or a little bit of escapism or just something that I suppose, with everything that’s going on in the world at the moment, just coming to a festival for a couple of days to just chill out for a moment. That’s why we’ve got a lot of genre films and horror films and things that focus on different perspectives and different ways of playing with the form of film. With a focus on aesthetics and style and things like that. If someone wants to come and just have a fun ride for a day or a session or just want to be entertained by some great filmmaking.
