Sydney Film Festival
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The Sydney Film Festival is a non-competitive film festival that began in 1954. The festival runs for two weeks each year in June and showcasing Australian, international and alternative films.
The first festival opened on June 11, 1954 and screened in four halls at Sydney University over four days. Attendance was at full capacity with 1,200 tickets sold at one guinea each.
The festival remained at Sydney University until 1968, at which time it moved to the Wintergarden in Rose Bay. In 1974 it moved to its current main venue, the historic State Theatre in the centre of Sydney, with some films also shown at the Dendy Opera Quays, and two screens at the George Street Cinema Complex.
Members of the audience mostly purchase a subscription to the full two weeks but the number of single session tickets, as well as flexipasses of ten, twenty and forty tickets, has been increasing since introduced in 2001.
Strict guidelines in relation to previous screenings of films means that audiences see films that haven't had general release. An audience award is nominated at the end of the festival and the Dendy short film awards occurs in the first day of the festival, with the winners announced at the opening night of the SFF.
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[edit] Festival Directors
- Valwyn Edwards (dir. 1958)[1]
- L. Hunter (dir. 1960)
- Patricia Moore (dir. 1961)
- Ian Klava (dir. 1962–1965)[2]
- David Stratton (dir. 1966–1983)
- Rod Webb (dir. 1984-1988)
- Paul Byrnes (dir. 1989-1998)
- Gayle Lake (dir. 1999-2004)
- Lyndon Barber (dir. 2005-2006)
- Clare Stewart (dir. 2007-)
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ David Donaldson was Film and Program Advisor.
- ^ Ian Klava was the first full time director for the Sydney Film Festival. Prior to this, the role had been shared around somewhat amongst members of the committee.
[edit] References
- Pauline Webber. A History of the Sydney Film Festival.
- Senses of Cinema. Looking Back, Looking Forward: the Sydney Film Festival at 50. Retrieved on April 25, 2005.
- Sydney Film Festival ; designed by Edward Gillan (1993). An Oral history of the Sydney Film Festival : 40 years of film. Sydney: Sydney Film Festival,. ISBN 0-9596235-1-5.
