Tully's Tips: A Film Festival Story

As part of my Screen Culture course at AFTRS in 2010 I was required to conduct a creative project that in some way commented on an issue or contributed to a sector of the film and television industry. For this I chose to set out on a mission to establish a Korean Film Festival, partly due to my passion and knowledge of cinema from the Peninsula, but also because I couldn't believe a Korean Film Festival didn't currently exist. While the Japanese Film Festival had just completed its 13th Year, Korea was null and void and so I set out to change this fact.

After merging with a project team at the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea, which consisted of Kim Young-gu (a staff member of KOFIC, the Korean Film Council) and Jungyeob Ji (an experienced assistant director and crew member of the Korean Film Industry), what resulted was the 1st KOFFIA Korean Film Festival in Australia. The event had its ups and downs, successes and failures, but most important of all, it will return in 2011. Other forms of Korean Film Festivals had occurred in Australia before, but none returned for successive years. A primary difference for KOFFIA was that this festival was not just for the Korean community in Australia, but for everybody, and this was at the heart of its success.

Jung, Kieran and Young-gu at KOFFIA

Meshing 4907

In 1943 the husband and wife team of Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid decided to put their creative minds together to produce a film. The result of this is the influential short "Meshes of the Afternoon", which has a structure that in today's Screen Culture we would label as 'Experimental'. Well this blog post is an experimental piece in its own right, as I will mesh together a film made by a couple in 1943 with a film made by a couple in 2010. That is, the film "4907" made by Raelene Loong and myself.

Now I had never seen "Meshes of the Afternoon" until last week when it was screened as part of the Story module of my Screen Culture course. And yet, a film made 57 years ago, has a sharp resemblance to this short film that I wrote and co-directed this year. Now maybe i'm just unoriginal, which is quite possibly the case, or maybe it is an indication that 'experimental' is really not that experimental after all.