St Kilda Film Festival: SXSW Showcase
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St Kilda Film Festival: SXSW Showcase

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“We’re willing to take chances on films when maybe another festival is like, ‘You know what? That’s not good enough’,” Godfrey says. “We see and try to foster the potential in people. Like a really good example of this is four years ago, we played Lena Dunham’s first feature at SXSW. If you watch it now, it’s not the most perfect film ever, but there was a vision there and something that was unique. Because not every film has to be perfect in every way – we’re looking more for a spark that’s different and interesting that makes it stand apart – we played that film and the next year she made an even better film.

“She met people at SXSW and they all went away and worked together the next year and made another film called Tiny Furniture and Judd Apatow saw it and said, ‘I think this girl’s really interesting’ and that’s snowballed onto making the Girls TV show. When she made her first film, it wasn’t perfect and I’m sure tonnes of people were like, ‘Eugh’, but everything doesn’t have to perfect, that’s not what we’re doing.”

Furthermore, having worked with SXSW for five years, Godfrey has the experience to offer some brilliant advice for filmmakers to not only get noticed but to create more interesting films.

“We’re trying to help and find and expose people who have talent and something different to say. That’s more of an issue with people making films, they focus on wanting to make every single aspect of it perfect and they end up with something that’s really polished that’s exactly like something you’d see on TV or on the internet or at the movie theatre, something that already exists, instead of focusing on telling a unique story, telling a story in a different way; focusing on that emotional connection and what they have to say…and I think everyone would agree, like films here at St Kilda – I wanna see something that I haven’t already seen 1,000 times, something that’s interesting.”

Godfrey will be programming four special SXSW Showcase sessions, although at time of print, two will already have screened. This weekend, however, make sure to check out Best of SXSW Music Video – described by the Festival as “the wildest, weirdest, most progressive and artful videos in the recent history of SXSW Film Festival in one music video super session” – as well as a presentation of Godfrey’s selected short films in Best of SXSW 2.

“What’s really fun about [programming SXSW Showcase for St Kilda Film Festival] was taking all the films that I’ve ever programmed at SXSW and getting to pick out of those. Five years ago I loved this music video and I get to play it here, so that was a really fun part about it. Every program has its own feel, and I’ve given everybody a different answer on this,” she laughs, when deciding on her favourites, “because it depends on how I feel today, but…Hell No is a really great short, it’s directed by Joe Nicolosi and it’s such a treat. Joe is so smart and packs so much into that amount of time, basically it’s like a trailer for a horror film if people in horror films were smarter. We all like to scream, ‘Don’t go that way!’ or whatever, but it’s if they actually did the logical thing in the situation. It’s really funny, everything Joe makes it I’m like, ‘I love it’, because he doesn’t over stay his welcome, you just get so much for a really short amount of time.

“It represents the funky, more midnight-y side of SXSW because we are a little bit less traditional. The Best of SXSW 2 has a lot of films that are really funny or weird so I’m really interested to watch those with an Australian audience and see what the reaction is.

BY TURK TARAS