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Australian Film Festivals pp 17–46Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Enthusiastic Amateurs: Origins of Australia’s Film Festival Movement

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Part of the book series: Framing Film Festivals ((FFF))

Abstract

From the development of Australia’s first film festival, the 1952 Olinda Film Festival, this chapter traces the evolution of the Melbourne (MIFF ) and Sydney (SFF) film festivals. Emerging in the early years of international film festival development, MIFF and SFF represent distinctly different festival experiences compared with events emerging in Europe contemporaneously. This chapter engages directly with assumptions that the early years of festival development were a uniquely European phenomenon, arguing instead that Australia’s engagement with the format suggests that festivals were a global response to the spread of cinephilia and the growing hegemony of Hollywood in the post-Second World War period.

This chapter is derived in part from an article published in New Review of Film and Television Studies, 14.1 (2016), © Taylor & Francis, http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17400309.2015.1106689

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Monash University, Caulfield East, Australia

    Kirsten Stevens

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  1. Kirsten Stevens
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Stevens, K. (2016). Enthusiastic Amateurs: Origins of Australia’s Film Festival Movement. In: Australian Film Festivals. Framing Film Festivals. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58130-3_2

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