The Queensland Film Festival returns with its largest celebration of film and art to date screening from Thursday 19 to Sunday 29 July. Taking place at the Elizabeth Picture Theatre, New Farm Cinemas, the Gallery of Modern Art and the Institute of Modern Art, the festival is also proud to shine a spotlight on female talent in its fourth year.
The Brisbane-based international film festival will boast 59 features and shorts in its 2018 lineup, including 39 Australian premieres, as well as an exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art that runs the course of the festival. Once again offering a carefully curated, propulsive showcase of cinematic excellence, the festival 2018 opens with a night of new Australian cinema. Queensland Film Festival has commissioned and published a book of essays examining their output, which will also be freely available online in partnership with Senses of Cinema.
From the festival’s contemporary program, it looks to champion filmmaking as artistic expression, jumping from Cannes standouts and long-awaited returns to creative experiments and mind boggling 3D films that plunge through the history of cinema. A consideration of the aesthetics and politics of care also runs through the festival. Grounded in a retrospective of the French filmmaker Valérie Massadian, the series presents works that engage with caring, parenting and domestic labour — films demand justice, to and from the world.
The 2018 design and expansion comes from the overwhelming response to last year’s program, and to the festival’s existence to date, Director John Edmond notes. “Local and interstate support from both the general public and our partners has guaranteed we would be able to increase the number of screenings and extend our partnerships to showcase important and rare films,” says Edmond. “QFF is a unique festival in the Australian festival landscape. Though smaller than many festivals, in commissioning publications, integrating artistic exhibitions, placing timeless classics and cutting-edge experimental works on the same level, and showcasing female directors, QFF imagines what Australian festivals could be like in the future. We’ve found Brisbane really responds to this curated, personal, exploratory approach, and we think it gives our festival energy.”
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