Regional screen cultures: the precarity and significance of Queensland’s film festival landscape

ABSTRACT

In the midst of drought in Central Queensland, the small town of Winton triples its population for the Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival. Even when facing challenges, the local community values the way the festival brings the community together, injects tourist dollars into the local economy and provides visibility to the local screen industry. However, staging a film festival in a regional location can be challenging. There are often less local funding and sponsorship opportunities available and the geographical distances involved increase pressure on time, resources and costs. Combined with increasingly accessible digital content and changing audience habits, regional film festivals face significant disadvantages in comparison to their metropolitan counterparts.

This article examines the role of Queensland's film festival network, focusing on how regional festivals are central to the development of the screen industry beyond the metropolitan centres. The research is based on a mapping project of film festivals in Queensland undertaken in 2018, which included interviews with festival organisers and industry professionals. 68 active festivals were identified across Queensland, of which 45% took place in Brisbane. This article investigates both the value of film festivals and the challenges for their economic sustainability in Queensland's screen culture and industry.

KEYWORDS:

• Regional cinema
• film festival
• economic sustainability
• precarity
• screen culture
• cultural tourism

Introduction

In the midst of severe drought in Central Queensland, the small town of Winton triples its population for the annual Vision Splendid Outback film festival. Even when facing their own challenges, the local residents value the way the festival brings the community together, injects tourist dollars into the local economy and provides visibility to the local screen industry. For a regional town, this popular event demonstrates the significant contribution a film festival can make on a local, state and even national level. However, staging a film festival in a regional location can be challenging. There are often less local funding and sponsorship opportunities available and the geographical distances involved increase pressure on time, resources and costs. Combined with increasingly accessible digital content and changing audience habits, regional film festivals are facing significant disadvantages in comparison to their metropolitan counterparts. And yet, film festivals remain important across both urban and regional locations in Australia.

In March 2020, as venues and organisations across Australia closed in response to the unanticipated and widespread impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the Gold Coast Film Festival – one of a handful of flagship festivals across Queensland – announced the festival's cancellation (Gold Coast Film Festival 2020). The decision to cancel came in response to the Queensland Premier's announcement that non-essential gatherings of 500 people or greater must be halted to stop the spread of the infectious coronavirus. While the Gold Coast Film Festival was one of the first high profile examples, it has not been the last film festival forced to cancel or, at best, re-vision their event.

The pandemic has forced an ongoing issue of the sector into the spotlight. Economic sustainability is a challenge that many film festivals face on a global scale, especially those considered ‘small city’ film festivals (Wallin, Collins, and Hull 2012, 230). The question of economic sustainability and how to articulate the value of film festivals emerged in the early stages of this research when mapping Queensland's film festival sector in 2018. In the current situation, the terms ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential’ have taken on loaded meanings and it has been concerning to see the arts sector widely considered non-essential by the federal and state governments (Eltham 2020; Anatolitis 2020). Film festivals are, therefore, non-essential gatherings that are subject to the mandated government shutdown. And yet, it is clear that film festivals do have a strong role in supporting communities, screen practitioners and audiences across the state. As such, although this article is now situated in a context that is still moving and largely unclear, the central enquiry about the role of economic sustainability and significance in Queensland's film festival landscape – particularly those festivals in regional locations – remains timely.

The film festival landscape in Queensland, and Australia more broadly, has been largely under-researched, with some exceptions (see, for instance, Fischer 2013; Van Hemert and Ellison 2015; Stevens 2016). This article investigates the role of Queensland's film festival network, with a focus on how regional festivals are central to the development of the screen industry beyond the metropolitan centres. Regional film festivals play an integral role in bridging the geographical barriers that many screen practitioners and professionals face in developing and sustaining their career. Specifically, this article delivers interim findings from an ongoing investigation into film festival activity in Queensland, with a focus on regional areas across the state. We examine the funding models and function of film festivals; the significance of festivals to both their local communities and the broader industry; and finally, the economic sustainability and strategies for longevity for festivals in Queensland.

Mapping the landscape

The study of film festivals as a field of academic inquiry has developed since the early 2000s. Scholars such as Marijke de Valck (2007), Dina Iordanova (2013) and Ragan Rhyne (2009), Julian Stringer (2001; 2003), Liz Czach (2004; 2010) and Skadi Loist (2011) have made important contributions in leading this field of research. Initially, film festivals were typically examined using a case study and interview based methodological approach. More recently, film festival scholarship has incorporated both a transnational approach, and a focus on the local and particular (de Valck, Kredell, and Loist 2016). While initially emerging from the field of screen studies, contemporary film festival research aligns more clearly with critical media industries research (Iordanova 2015). Scholars like Kirsten Stevens (2016), Lauren Carroll Harris (2013) and Gregory Dolgopolov (2013), Alex Fischer (2013) and Tess Van Hemert (2016) have led film festival research within Australia, and have investigated key issues for film festivals such as digital distribution, cultural policy, management and gender and diversity.

Comparatively, there is also a body of research situating film festivals within the context of event studies or tourism studies (Getz 2008), organisational management studies (Rüling and Pedersen 2010; Fischer 2013), and broader events and audience perspectives. Nationally, regional film festivals can also be positioned within a regional arts framework. In Australia, there is a body of existing work on regional arts nationally and in Queensland specifically (Radbourne, Glow, and Johanson 2010; Gair and Van Luyn 2017; Klaebe and Van Luyn 2014), festival research (for instance, Derrett 2003), and on film exhibition and consumption in rural Australia (Aveyard 2015). Current research in this field includes a nationally funded exploration of cultural and creative industries hotspots (Cunningham et al. 2019a, 2019b, 2019c), including Queensland regional centres such as Winton, Cairns and the Gold Coast. Although broader in focus than film festivals, these reports reveal useful information on the importance of local community professionals as brokers, the impact of natural disasters, and the importance of an agile creative workforce.

Within an international context of regional arts festivals, it is notable that Australia is somewhat distinct because of the geographical remoteness of parts of the country. Research into Australian creative economies has often considered smaller cities (van Heur 2010), and the work of Sue Luckman (2012) is an example of Australian focused research that still speaks to an international context. As de la Fuente and Van Luyn (2020, 14) suggest, ‘regions cannot be understood as homogenous but rather as having strikingly different capacities to nurture innovation and economic growth through knowledge economies’. This research project is positioned at the intersection of global film festival scholarship and regional arts research, particularly within Australia, in order to contribute to a deeper understanding of the role and importance of regional film festivals to the national screen industry and community more broadly.

The distribution of film festivals in Queensland

This project utilises a mixed methods approach over several phases of research. The first phase is a mapping of Queensland's currently active film festivals. A desktop survey of publicly available information was conducted to determine the number of active film festivals across the state. As Loist (2016, 120) notes, film festival research is starting to show movement towards quantitative data analysis, in order to extend our understanding of film festivals beyond individual case studies. The scan, conducted with the help of a Research Assistant, relied primarily on websites and social media available on the Internet. Industry documents such as Screen Queensland's annual funding reports were also included, as well as further detailed searching focused on specific locations to identify a number of festivals. The data was then compiled in a database that categorised the festivals geographically across the state as evidenced in Table 1.

Table 1. The figures of film festivals across each region in 2018 and 2020. These regions are based on the Regional Arts Services Network map administered by Arts Queensland (Arts Queensland 2020) as a way of categorising the state. Notably, there is no record of any film festival occurring in the Cape York and Torres Strait region.

	Total No. 2018	% share	Total No. 2020	% share
All	8	10.26%	9	13.24%
Regional	3	3.85%	3	4.41%
Brisbane	39	50.00%	31	45.59%
South East QLD – South	8	10.26%	7	10.29%
South East QLD – North	6	7.69%	5	7.35%
South West QLD	1	1.28%	1	1.47%
Western QLD	2	2.56%	1	1.47%
Central QLD	5	6.41%	6	8.82%
North QLD	1	1.28%	1	1.47%
Far North QLD	5	6.41%	4	5.88%
Total	78	100%	68	100%

78 active film festivals were identified across the state of Queensland in 2018, although this dropped to 68 active festivals in 2020. In 2020, festivals were considered to be active if they occurred in 2019, or if not, have active websites or social media information detailing upcoming events. It is important to note the potential limitations to this finding: for example, tracking whether planned festivals occurred has not always been possible, and underground film festivals that have little online presence or funding may not have been included. However, considering the size of the state, the concentration of the population along the coastline, and the constantly changing situation of the industry in Queensland, it does seem surprising that there are so many active festivals.

The next stage of analysis identified distribution of these festivals across the state. In Table 1, the category ‘All’ is used for festivals that travel throughout the state. They may not visit all locations; however, they include both regional and metropolitan locations in their itinerary. In comparison, ‘Regional’ refers to festivals that travel but only to regional areas.

The findings suggest that Brisbane may be over-serviced with film festivals and has 45% of the share of all festival activity in the state. In comparison, only South East QLD – South (which includes the Gold Coast) and the All category reach even 10% of the total share. Figure 1 also reveals that for festivals outside of Brisbane, the majority are located along the coastline. Notably, there is no festival activity in the Cape York and Torres Strait region. Both South West QLD, North QLD and Western QLD each only host one festival, although the Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival (held in Winton in Western QLD), is becoming an iconic event that draws large crowds and attention.

Figure 1. A generated geographical distribution map of the festival spread across Queensland (made using Mapline). Note the concentration in the south-eastern corner.

The second phase of the research project was designed to examine a cross section of metropolitan, regional and rural film festivals as case studies. This involved interviewing screen industry professionals, including Queensland film festival directors, a representative from Screen Queensland (the state funding body) and two organisations with professional development and industry outreach programming across Australia. Interviews were conducted with Emily Avila (former Artistic Director) of the Heart of Gold International Film Festival, Mark Melrose (Festival Director) and Gregory Dolgopolov (Curator and Creative Director) of Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival, and John Edmond (Festival Director) of Queensland Film Festival. Rowena Billard (Screen Culture Manager) at Screen Queensland, Lisa O’Meara (Programs and Operations Manager) and Ken Crouch (CEO) of Screenworks, and David Horsley (Director) of Screenwave were also interviewed.

The benefits and challenges of film festivals in regional areas

Visibility of the screen industry

The social function of going to the movies and the collective viewing experience it provides have long been of importance to the study of cinemas and their audience (Aveyard and Moran 2013). The question of audience experience, and the ways that this can change due to choice of venue, geographical location and cultural context are all important factors when deciding where to screen a film. Current research on the screen sector suggests that audiences now expect a ‘more curated screen experience’ (PwC Australia 2019). Film festivals offer this with their distinctive screening environment (Stevens 2018). While the primary role of a film festival is to curate a programme of films, the festival theme, location, venue and audience type can all contribute to shaping a unique screening environment. In an urban context, film festivals must often compete against other similar events for audience attention, but also benefit from being closely situated to other industry infrastructure. For example, the growing success and profile of the Gold Coast Film Festival is arguably supported by its close proximity and visibility in relation to the film studios and industry infrastructure on the Gold Coast, a hub that Craven (2020, 70) suggests is contributing to the construction of a digital ‘terraform tropics’ transnational imagery on screen. In comparison, for film festivals situated in regional and rural locations, there may be little to no visible evidence of the local screen industry prior to the founding of a film festival. This was the case in Coffs Harbour, where the Screenwave International Film Festival was established to cultivate film experiences and screen culture for regional audiences in northern New South Wales. The challenges of establishing a film festival in a location with little prior connection to the screen industry may include difficulty raising funds, accessing appropriate screening venues, and building support from the local community and the broader screen industry.

Despite these challenges, film festivals play an important role in making the screen industry accessible to current and future practitioners (Rüling and Pedersen 2010, 320). Although the visibility of the national screen industry can be harder to access for regional festivals, the festival can ‘bridge the gaps between local film clusters and global project and collaboration networks’ (Rüling and Pedersen 2010, 320). For filmmakers, the process of film festival selection, and having their film included, affords a mark of quality and critical acclaim (Czach 2004; de Valck 2007). John Edmond, director of the Queensland Film Festival, states that including a film in a festival program sets that film and filmmaker in conversation with the broader film industry. As well as providing a platform for the films themselves, festivals often include professional development opportunities, attract industry professionals and guests from other regions, and become a meeting space for the planning of future projects and collaborations. Providing access to opportunity is a significant function of film festivals that cannot be underestimated. Lisa O’Meara from Screenwave explains that ‘If you look at somebody who's working in a metropolitan environment, they have much greater access to key decision makers and opportunities, but they also have greater access to working within the industry in an early career role’. A number of the film festivals examined here provide professional development support to emerging practitioners, particularly in the early career transitions from high school, through to tertiary education and pathways into the screen industry.

Exposure to the screen industry itself and an awareness of the films, filmmakers and opportunities that exist in Australia is a primary, crucial role that film festivals can provide. This speaks to what Rüling and Pedersen (2010) call an ‘ecology of learning’, or a site of knowledge transfer for practitioners. Regional festivals are well-positioned – often as one of a handful, or indeed the only film festivals in their location – to provide this learning opportunity for secondary or tertiary students and/or emerging practitioners. The Nextwave Film Festival, run by Screenwave founders, and the school outreach program run by Screenworks, are two important examples. Similarly, the Capricorn Coast Film Festival specifically includes two categories (‘open’ for ages 18 and above and ‘junior’ for under 18) for Central Queensland filmmakers. The Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival also runs the Vision Splendid Institute, which involves 60 students travelling to Winton to make a short film for screening in competition at the end of the film festival. The festival organisers, Gregory Dolgopolov and Mark Melrose, have strategically positioned the festival to foster a pipeline of content and new industry practitioners. The film students visiting Winton work closely with the local community to arrange shooting locations, props, costumes and story ideas. Local members of the town are often cast as extras in the short films. This collaborative effort strengthens the film festival's relationship with the local community, the students’ professional skill set and their relationship with a regional filmmaking hub. Importantly, it also provides them with a professional experience outside of the usual urban opportunities. As Melrose states, ‘They’ve got to think on their feet. They’re put in the middle of nowhere and they’ve got to create a film with what they have’. The presence of the students and filmmaking activity are also keenly felt by the local community. Dolgopolov explains, ‘It's not a town where you see a lot of people over 15 and under 30. So having that demographic in town just changes the vibe. We forget the discrepancies between the regional and urban environment … that's a massive boost’.

Geographical barriers

A major challenge for regional arts festivals in Queensland, and in fact across Australia, is the geographical distances between locations (de la Fuente and Van Luyn 2020, 1). While many regional locations in Queensland are striking on film, or a ‘cinematic spectacle’ like the Great Barrier Reef (Craven 2020, 70), the practicalities involved in running a film festival can be less appealing. The geographic isolation of many regional or rural sites in Queensland are difficult in a number of key ways for film festival organisations, and also for the local film communities. Where urban cities often have a number of cinema venues to choose from, including privately owned infrastructure (Wallin et al 2012), regional centres may rely on a single cinema venue – or in some cases, the activation of non-traditional cinema spaces like performing arts venues, community halls, or even outdoor projection set-ups. Regional sites typically rely on venues or spaces owned and/or administered by local government bodies, and although often sympathetic to a festival's cause, these organisations can also be restricted by local policies, rules, and regulations. Practically, film festivals in the region face significant travel requirements to bring in talent and expertise, specialised equipment (if required), and also to connect with potential partners who may have only city offices. Similarly, many regional festivals rely on staff that travel from urban centres. Emily Avila, previous Director of Heart of Gold International Short Film Festival in Gympie, explained that her role was for three days per week, and she used to commute the approximately 170 kilometres from Brisbane, stay locally, and then drive back each week. This is exacerbated the further removed a regional centre is: the Festival Director and Creative Director of Vision Splendid are based in Brisbane and Sydney and travel to Winton each year.

Ken Crouch from Screenworks noted that while there are some industry wide challenges at present, such as the increase in streaming services and changes to the way projects are funded and supported by the government, the physical, geographic distance is a specific barrier for regional screen practitioners. Crouch noted that practitioners are particularly disadvantaged by the increased costs that are required for regionally based professionals trying to ‘stay connected to an industry when they are actually quite distant’. Technological issues can be incredibly difficult to overcome, as much of regional Australia faces slow connection speeds, especially for uploading content for sharing. Similarly, Crouch identified that this distance can keep practitioners disconnected from financial support for projects. Unfortunately, these challenges are more likely to impact the career opportunities of emerging practitioners with less established portfolios and track records of success. Lisa O’Meara, also of Screenworks, said ‘[those] stepping stones that you see people in metropolitan centres have easy access to, it's much harder to [access these] when you’re in a regional centre’. As such, Screenworks remains a strong advocate for travel opportunities for practitioners – both domestically but particularly internationally. This is evident in their Evolution program (funded by Screenworks and Screen Australia), which offers a regional screenwriter the chance to travel to Los Angeles to connect with the industry and progress their career.

It is not, however, just practitioners that are challenged by the geographic locations of regional centres. David Horsley, Managing Director of Screenwave International Film Festival (SWIFF), identified distance as a key struggle point for him to secure financing. In 2019, Horsley decided to fly to Sydney to try and secure larger partners. The funding programs often call for collaborative or matched funding from industry partners, and David believes many of the funding bodies ‘don't understand … that [regional festivals] don't have the opportunities to leverage being in major cities with headquartered corporations or major large businesses’. For SWIFF, their main partners remain Coffs Harbour City Council – something that is evident for many regional festivals across Queensland, who rely heavily on local government funding either through specific funding allocations or local arts grants like the Regional Arts Development Fund (jointly funded by Arts Queensland and local councils). Interestingly, Horsley believes ‘the people that tend to make the most cultural difference here are sort of metropolitan expats … they've been priced out of Sydney or Melbourne or whatever, and they've moved with their successful art business’. The growth in people relocating for a sea or tree change has, for Horsley, helped legitimise the creative industries in a regional setting. For example, he notes, ‘the idea that people can get paid for working in the arts is a weird, weird hurdle we still encounter’. The decentring of creative and cultural expertise from the metropolitan centres is something Cunningham et al (2019a, 2019b) identified in their research into cultural and creative activity, which examined regional centres across Australia.

Tourism

Queensland's regional centres have long relied on tourism as a key economic driver. Thompson et al (2016), in their examination of agritourism in North Queensland, suggest that landscapes can play a key role in developing a tourism identity for a location. In particular, a region's specific landscape can help create engaging and authentic experiences for visitors (Thompson et al, 2016). Festivals often are specifically located within their specific site and this engagement with place can be crucial for providing context to the artworks themselves (Ellison and Thompson 2020; Van Hemert 2016, Stringer 2016). Outside of the content itself, many festivals rely on their location as a drawcard; regional arts festivals often act as attractions for tourists because they reveal insights into a community's lifestyle (Timothy 2011). In regional Queensland this can be seen in film festivals that strongly locate themselves within the town, such as Port Shorts Film Festival, which strongly focuses on Port Douglas as a premier location for both tourism and the screen industry. Getz (2008, 412) suggests ‘arts festivals in particular display a lack of concern for tourism’ and that although linkages are possible, ‘there will always remain tension between these [arts and tourism] sectors’. In this research, the divide appears less prevalent in regional festivals, presumably because of the strength of local tourism sectors.

For regional centres, the ability to attract people to the area is often used as a point of leverage to increase support from local partners. As David Horsley of Screenwave identified, ‘We use the natural landscape that we have, which is one of our greatest assets in our community … We use that to our advantage, which kind of links in with one of our major partners, which is Coffs Harbour City Council’. Considering that many regional festivals are supported through the local councils in Queensland, it is clear that the importance of the tourism industry cannot be understated. Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival, for example, relies heavily on funding from Tourism & Events Queensland, the state's key tourism body. For local places like Winton, the festival provides a significant event for the annual calendar.

Importantly, tourism also provides an avenue to measure economic impact for film festivals (Wallin et al 2012). Gattenhof (2017, 57–58) notes the challenges for arts evaluation models that are often attempting to identify cultural impact or meaningful audience engagement – factors that can be intangible or difficult to quantify in ways palatable to funding bodies. However, economic impacts from film festivals can be viewed, and then quantified, through a tourism lens: increased visitor numbers, accommodation bookings and restaurant sales. This information is often crucial for successfully securing further funding.

Criteria for Screen Queensland's screen culture funding, which is particularly competitive, are quite locally specific. For example, the event proposal is expected to ‘demonstrate showcasing of diverse screen content that the community would not otherwise have access to’, show ‘evidence of community support’ and that it ‘fulfil[s] a need and/or interest in the community’ (Screen Queensland 2020). The tension in Screen Queensland's remit between a focus on local communities, but also a need to show sustained growth and significance, can be challenging to manage as a festival director. Former Heart of Gold International Short Film Festival director, Emily Avila, flagged this issue specifically. She said that it is impossible to gain multi-year funding unless the festival attracts audiences of 10,000 or above – a figure extraordinarily difficult for nearly all of Queensland's regional festivals. Avila argued that Screen Queensland has the power to remove this caveat and:

share a bit of the pool that belongs to Gold Coast [Film Festival] and BIFF [Brisbane International Film Festival]. Because I think that if you compare the impact that we have on the community with some of the larger film festivals then you would see that it's almost statistically on par with what they’re delivering.

Similarly, both Ken Crouch from Screenworks and David Horsley from Screenwave flagged the importance of securing multi-year funding for their organisations, explaining that they are able to keep a core team year round because they have secured this dedicated ongoing support. Without this, festivals – regardless of their size – are often only able to strategise year to year and are unable to establish the long-term partnerships and planning required for ongoing growth and strategic investment.

Community engagement

The success of a film festival ultimately relies on attracting and sustaining an engaged audience. Established film festivals build their reputation on clearly articulated programming, and an ability to balance a strong connection to the festival location and community with an industry facing national/international profile. Stevens (2016, 156) argues that a film festival audience is inherently different to an audience at a commercial cinema screening, in that they are conceived of as ‘film-literate and highly engaged cultural consumers’. In Australia, the Melbourne International Film Festival and the Sydney Film Festival are clear examples where the engagement of the audience validates the cultural standing of the film festival. The profile and reputation of both festivals are so established that it has fostered a culture of advance ticket buying (personal communication, Edmond 2019). The festival audience trusts the quality of the programming to the point that advance ticket sales, particularly season passes, create a ‘panic buying’ effect amongst audiences to ensure that they don't miss out. Edmond (personal communication 2019) noted that repeat visits to a festival by the same ticket holders helps facilitate a more engaged screening environment, with audience members more inclined to participate in social activities and discussions between films. Those who hold a multiple ticket pass to a festival may also demonstrate a willingness to take chances on more obscure films in the programme. These patterns of audience behaviour all collectively contribute to a more engaged festival culture.

While film festivals in regional and rural locations may draw on a smaller or more disparate population, community support for the festival can be just as steadfast. Despite its isolated rural location, the Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival has achieved a remarkable engagement with its audience, with many visitors purchasing festival tickets and passes well in advance of the festival dates each year. The geographical isolation of the festival, and restricted accommodation and travel options, means that visitors often plan and book their trip to Winton well before the festival programme is announced. Although the location poses significant logistical challenges for the organisers, it also works to create a unique festival experience once underway. Dolgopolov explains that ‘the benefits are that the community is incredibly supportive. The isolation can also be a positive in that it creates that focus or immersion’. For Vision Splendid, it is the particular combination of the participation of the local community, visiting film students, industry guests and tourists that produce the unique experience of the outback film festival.

Heart of Gold in Gympie utilises a community led programming strategy to strengthen its ties with the local community and audience. Each year, the festival recruits screener groups of approximately forty members of the local community. These screener groups meet regularly to view batches of films and provide detailed feedback to the festival programmer. Their recommendations include advice on how closely each film aligns with the mandate of the film festival, and allowed Avila to ‘gauge the audience response on films before actually putting them out there’. This input is not only invaluable in designing a successful festival programme but also facilitates a stronger sense of community ownership over the film festival as a whole.

While there is certainly a strong number of film festivals across Queensland, which can lead to competition for funding, resources and audience attention, film festivals do not directly compete with one another unless they are on at the same time. Dolgopolov hopes that audiences will ‘develop an appetite for that festival experience, realising that it's quite unique, but it is also unique in different locations’. He advocates for film festivals working together to share strategies and support one another, as it allows for the collective building of film festival audiences, and a desire for festival experiences across the state.

The lasting memory and experience of attending a film festival is not always solely tied to the film that was screened. The collective experience of cinema going is inextricably linked to the spatial and temporal. Our experience as a member of the audience can be tied to more ephemeral factors, such as the feeling of the venue, the people we spoke to, the music that was playing before the film started. The interviewees agreed upon the significance of collective viewing: ‘You can't beat that face to face experience of all sitting in a room together … and feeling that audience response’ (personal communication, O’Meara 2019). Watching a film at night, under the stars in the open air theatre in Winton is a different experience to that of attending a session of short films in the Gympie community centre, accompanied by morning tea. Stringer (2016, 34) explains that understanding the spatial characteristics of a film festival ‘provides a potent means of grasping its relevance to social practices’. He argues that ‘because space is always socially produced as well as continuously situated, each and every individual event is embedded in historically specific social relationships’ (Stringer 2016, 34). This is important, because understanding the value and significance of particular film festivals to their distinct space, place and community can lead to a broader understanding of how film culture can be developed and sustained outside of Australia's urban centres.

Conclusion

At a time when our access to cinemas is on hold, we have a unique opportunity to re-evaluate the value and importance of seeing a film in a theatrical environment. Examining the scope of the film festival network in Queensland has shown that film festivals face numerous challenges in their ability to grow and be viable long term. They tend to rely heavily on volunteer labour, resourcing and precarious funding structures, which can be significantly impacted by changes to cultural and political contexts. On a global scale, unchecked festival growth has put pressure on festivals to be increasingly distinct. Rather than seeing this as a cause for concern, Elsaesser suggests that this rivalry on the festival circuit could instead promote development and innovation (2005, 86).

Historically, there has been a propensity to focus on film culture in the urban centres as sites of such growth. Yet Treveri Gennari, Hipkins and O’Rawe (2018, 5) challenge this idea, arguing that the regional and rural sites are not ‘disconnected from the cultural life of a country’, but instead ‘reveal practices where aesthetic and technological innovations are displayed’. The findings of this project demonstrate that regional film festivals are beneficial to the local community, cultural tourism and the wider screen industry. Firstly, regional film festivals provide vital exposure and access to film, and film culture. This access to the screen industry supports the development of emerging film practitioners, and contributes to developing the sector outside of metropolitan areas. Regional film festivals are also afforded opportunities in part because of their location: for example, the strong support for events that increase tourism and the often impressively high community engagement these events garner from local volunteers, businesses, and local government. Finally, at a time when ‘experience is key’, film festivals provide audiences with a curated, collective experience of cinema (PwC Australia 2019).

However, regional film festivals and screen practitioners do face additional challenges that are distinct to those of their metropolitan counterparts. In the interviews, it was apparent that screen practitioners and professionals are grappling with strategies for economic sustainability in a precarious industry environment that is increasingly saturated with online content and vanishing funding opportunities. Geographical barriers and access to adequate resources are particularly difficult to overcome. There is clearly room to build an alliance or network of regional film festival professionals to share resources and/or encourage partnerships. Both Gregory Dolgopolov of Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival and David Horsley of Screenwave emphasised the need to work collaboratively, either through inviting festival directors to attend or working with neighbouring events to secure better distribution deals and partnerships. The importance of advocacy also emerged in many of these conversations. Although not always explicit, many of our interviewees spoke passionately about the importance of festivals to Australian cultural identity and showing the viability of pathways and careers in the screen industry. In Winton, Dolgopolov saw this in the confluence of the related industries, the council and the region, ‘feed[ing] into each other’ through the film festival itself. For Horsley, this emerged as targeted political engagement with their local Member of Parliament. Sharing the knowledge and resources that distinguish film festivals in regional and rural areas, and acknowledging their unique challenges and benefits, would arguably facilitate a stronger film festival landscape overall.

The issues facing the screen and festival sector in Queensland and especially those practitioners and professionals in regional areas are now further amplified by the global pandemic that has shut down the industry for an undetermined amount of time. The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the arts and tourism industries overall will be significant (Eltham 2020) and the already fraught funding struggles for festivals and organisations are presumably only going to continue. It is unclear if all of the film festivals in the region will survive. The major strategic plans of Screen Queensland and Arts Queensland are also in question: how will the recently released Ten Year Roadmap strategy document fare in the wake of such an event? The funding and support models from the state and federal organisations will clearly be changed as evidenced by the Australia Council for the Arts’ announcement of a ‘recovery’ grants round in April this year (Australia Council for the Arts 2020).

While economic sustainability, particularly in the wake of a global pandemic, will be challenging for many of Queensland's film festivals, the examples discussed demonstrate thoughtful and strategic approaches to engaging with the local community, increasing cultural tourism, and providing the collective screen experience that continues to be valued by Australian audiences. Regional film festivals provide crucial visibility for the Australian screen industry outside of metropolitan centres and support for regional screen practitioners. As such, they must be recognised for this potential and specifically supported in future plans for the sector.

Acknowledgements

This project has received funding from Central Queensland University's School of Education & the Arts, and from the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the generosity of the interviewees, who kindly shared their time and expertise, and the excellent research assistance of Emily O’Grady and Chanel Lucas.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on Contributors

Elizabeth (Liz) Ellison is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education & the Arts at Central Queensland University in Noosa, Australia. Her current areas of research include Australia’s regional and creative industries, with a focus on Australian beaches, writing, film and television, and also postgraduate education in the creative arts. Her recent publications include Writing the Australian Beach: Local Site, Global Idea (Palgrave Macmillan) and The Doctoral Experience: Student Stories from the Creative Arts and Humanities (Palgrave Macmillan).

Tess Van Hemert is Lecturer in Media and Entertainment Industries in the School of Communication at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), in Brisbane, Australia. Her current areas of research include global screen distribution and exhibition, and gender equality and diversity in the screen industry. Tess’ PhD was the first international study to investigate the role that international film festivals play in supporting and advancing the profiles of emerging women filmmakers.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Central Queensland University and Queensland University of Technology.