Brisbane International Film Festival arrives with a storm and lands where it should
Battered by change, the Brisbane International Film Festival can now build for the future and give the city the festival it deserves.
12 Oct 2018
Sarah Ward
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Television
Plenty has hampered, derailed and even shuttered the Brisbane International Film Festival over the pasts, from staff and government changes to being temporarily replaced by the now-defunct Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival. But while BIFF’s newest iteration launched on a particularly grey and stormy day in Queensland, the worst of the weather held off for the festival’s opening night. That’s as good an omen as BIFF has enjoyed of late.
With Ben Hackworth’s Innisfail-shot Celeste doing the opening night honours, GOMA’s main screen was filled with sunshine and shades of green, as well as a luminous performance from Radha Mitchell. Although the film premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in August, it proved an understandable choice for BIFF’s debut at the gallery — showcasing a Queensland-made production in the space where Queensland’s major film festival was perhaps always destined to land, at least since GOMA opened its doors at South Bank in 2006.
Sarah Ward is a freelance film critic, arts and culture writer, and film festival organiser. She is the Australia-based critic for Screen International, a film reviewer and writer for ArtsHub, the weekend editor and a senior writer for Concrete Playground, a writer for the Goethe-Institut Australien’s Kino in Oz, and a contributor to SBS, SBS Movies and Flicks Australia. Her work has been published by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Junkee, FilmInk, Birth.Movies.Death, Lumina, Senses of Cinema, Broadsheet, Televised Revolution, Metro Magazine, Screen Education and the World Film Locations book series. She is also the editor of Trespass Magazine, a film and TV critic for ABC radio Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, and has worked with the Brisbane International Film Festival, Queensland Film Festival, Sydney Underground Film Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival. Follow her on Twitter: @swardplay
