Melbourne International Film Festival is back for 2022 and its 70th birthday

By
Myke Bartlett
August 3, 2022
MIFF - Sweet As. Photo: Nic Duncan

There is something quintessentially Melbourne about leaving the house in the middle of winter to queue in a damp alleyway for a late-night screening of a doco or a little-known film.

This week, many Melburnians will do just that as Melbourne International Film Festival returns with its first full program in three years – just in time for its 70th birthday.

Some gloomily wondered if COVID might finish off the festival – and cinema at large – but artistic director Al Cossar says the mood now is one of celebration.

“The fact that it’s been three years since we stood on a stage for opening night is mind-boggling,” Cossar says. “But I think people are ready and raring to go to have that joyful, collective experience of watching a film again.”

A 70th birthday is a good chance to take stock of the huge impact MIFF has had on its city. After all, the festival has become part of Melbourne’s cultural landscape in a way few others ever manage. 

For MIFF 70, the close – some might say obsessive – relationship between our city and cinema is celebrated with a strand revisiting classic Melbourne-based films including Death in Brunswick, Head On, Malcolm and Monkey Grip.

Noni Hazelhurst and Colin Friels in Monkey Grip Photo: Supplied

“Every August, MIFF kind of takes over Melbourne,” Cossar says. “Part of the joy of it is you’re not only spending time with these films, but you’re also spending time with all different kinds of Melburnians in the same space.”

Those Melburnians range from casual filmgoers to hard-core cinephiles who, each year, take three weeks off work to enjoy an annual holiday where the silver screen does all the travelling for them. 

But there’s one element of the audience on whom MIFF has had the most profound impact – the budding filmmakers who have lined up to be inspired, encouraged and ultimately premiered.

Nyul Nyul/Yawuru director Jub Clerc says MIFF has long played an important role in getting Australian directors noticed.

“MIFF allows our stories to get on the international stage,” Clerc says. “It can be a sounding board for overseas festivals putting their tentacles out, going, ‘Oh, what’s showing over here?’”

Clerc’s feature debut is one of 11 Australian films this year to have benefited from MIFF’s Premiere fund. Based on her own experiences, Sweet As tells the story of at-risk teen Murra, who is sent on a photo safari of the Kimberley. It’s an uplifting road trip that might have been much shorter, if not for MIFF.

“If we didn’t get that funding, it would have been near impossible to produce the film that we did,” she says. “It definitely wouldn’t have been a road trip, which was the whole point!”

Internationally acclaimed Melbourne filmmaker Amiel Courtin-Wilson says MIFF has had a massive impact on his career and craft. 

In 2003, he was one of the first budding filmmakers to be accepted into MIFF’s Accelerator Lab, which is designed to provide a crash course in the business and can boast such directors as Anna Broinowski, Justin Kurzel and Taika Waititi as alumni.

“I never went to film school, I dropped out of VCE, so the Accelerator Lab was a pretty profound shift for me in finding a community of filmmakers, many of whom I’m still friends with to this day,” Courtin-Wilson says.

This year, he will be premiering his new documentary Man on Earth, which follows the final seven days in the life of the terminally-ill Bob. 

Courtin-Wilson says MIFF feels like the perfect place for the film because the nature of the festival, with its conversation events at the Wheeler Centre, allows for more discussion around the doco’s difficult subject matter.

“It allows us to reach out to the broader community,” he says. “Because death is a confronting topic, I really want to be able to reiterate that the film is really more a celebration of life.”

The festival’s scope for discussion and debate provides a timely reminder that the best thing about going to see a movie often isn’t the movie itself. 

In an age when multiplexes struggle to bring in an audience for anything but superhero blockbusters, MIFF can provide an experience bigger than the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“There’s something about the way we present stories and conversations between artists and audiences which can inspire your imagination, beyond streaming on your couch, beyond the multiplex, beyond your boundaries,” Cossar says.

“You come in at one door, and hopefully your curiosity grows. Maybe there are things that you love, and maybe there are things that you hate, but you certainly don’t regret trying. Ultimately, you’ll grow to love all kinds of cinema.”

MIFF 2022 \ In cinemas August 4-22, online August 11-28

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