My Sydney Film Festival with Festival DirectorNashen Moodley
My fifth year as festival director is the festival’s 63rd, with a theme very close to my heart. Six simple words: change your view, change your world. They describe the remarkable way that changing your frame of reference can alter your entire reality. I believe films can do this more effectively than any other medium. The immersive quality of cinema, simultaneously engaging so many of our senses, makes other lives, other worlds and other places compellingly real, whether fact or fiction. This allows you to change your view, seeing the world anew again.
Over the past few years, the power of film to cause real change has been demonstrated over and over. From Blackfish to Gayby Baby, documentaries may be the obvious candidates, but features do it too. Last Cab To Darwin’s plea for the right to die with dignity resonated with audiences last year and has helped move that debate along.
One film’s title from last year asked How To Change The World. My short answer would be, “Make a film.” I look forward to your discovery of this year’s life-, nation- and world-changing films. Some of the hundreds of new views to be found in this program include national perspectives in Irish Cinema: From Rebels To New Romantics and Korea On The Verge: Social Faultlines In Korean Cinema to broader programs including European Cinema: 10 Women Filmmakers To Watch. We will also change your view of the future of screen culture through our new free virtual reality and iCinema experiences. With changed classification rules this year, we can make more films accessible to younger audiences, and a larger youth program means Sydney Film Festival’s appeal is broader than ever.
This year we will present 244 films from 60 countries, and the program includes 25 world premieres, three international premieres and 137 Australian premieres. So plan your festival journey well! And I’ll see you there.
Full program available at sff.org.au
