'Mask wearing, social distancing and QR code check-ins may have become normalised practices in our everyday lives, but in the context of an international film festival they remain novel (and at times onerous) additions to the cinema-going ritual. During the 68th Sydney Film Festival last November, these new customs gave me cause to reflect on the evolving cinema experience. In the era of cinema closures, lockdown viewing and adapted festival formats, with future metamorphoses inevitable but as yet unknown, we’ve been forced to confront what we value about cinema-going, about cinemas as public spaces and the experience of being part of an audience.' (Introduction)
'When the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) rolls around in early August, that final month of winter always feels a little warmer in Melbourne, Australia. The festival’s 69th inception was planned to be its big comeback after having to significantly minimise their program and move online in 2020. Although plans were made and tickets were bought for a glorious week of in cinema and drive-in screenings, complimented by a range of online offerings, the recent string of lockdowns in Melbourne put a sad halt to all of the in person festivities this year. The week before MIFF finally cancelled their in-person screenings felt like everything was in disarray. Cineastes were on the edge of their seats, constantly eyeing their phones for an update on the proceedings while the rest of the city began to tremor once more under the weight of the pandemic (and now, as I’m writing this, literally tremor under a 6.0 magnitude earthquake!). But alas, the show must go on! MIFF chose to screen their program online for the two week duration of the festival. In lieu of the dropped headliners such as Leos Carax’s latest musical epic Annette (2021), Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s first film out of his native Thailand Memoria (2021) and Janicza Bravo’s Zola (2020), a crime, road movie, which is the only film I know of that’s been adapted from a Twitter thread, MIFF announced that they would add more titles to the already large amount of online offerings, from the likes of Filipino auteur Lav Diaz’s latest scaled back saga Genus Pan (2020) and the posthumous release from Orson Welles Hopper/Welles (2020), which charts an intimate, drunken conversation between Welles and Dennis Hopper in 1970 to name a few, fleshing out the online program up to over 100 features and short films.'(Introduction)
