INTERVIEWS
St Kilda Film Festival
“If I were a filmmaker and I made a short film thinking it was good, I would try to enter it in as many festivals as I could and get exposure that way.”
Amateur filmmaking is fraught with homage and Paul Harris, artistic director of the St Kilda Film Festival, hopes you spare his curating a thought before tossing your hat to your favourite Hollywood director. “After having watched 12,000 short films over the last 20 years, I don’t know how many I’ve seen with guys in black suits walking in slow motion down back-alleys.” For its 35th incarnation, the St Kilda Film Festival’s program skips the Tarantino mimics to exhibit a scintillating and shocking side of short cinema. It includes Australia’s top 100 short films, music video showcase SoundKILDA, and filmmaking workshops to turn fledgling Tommy Wiseaus into Tom McCarthys. The Academy Awards-accredited festival is unique as the longest running publicly-owned film festival in Australia, something Harris believes moulds its singular character. “We don’t have a board telling us what to do, but we also have to deal with limited funds. You have comparative freedom to try out new ideas, but there are always budget constraints – that’s the same for people who make short films, so we’re all in this boat together.” While the festival celebrates its 35th birthday, YouTube is celebrating its thirteenth. The video platform’s content saturation has had a monumental impact on short films, making production as easy as a phone call. Harris, in his 20th year as director, has experienced the effect of video-sharing, Netflix and illegal downloading of film entertainment firsthand. Downplaying any direct financial impact on the festival itself, Harris ponders the pros and cons its online “democracy” has brought.
“The media landscape is very cluttered, so how are you going to stand out from the pack? You’ve got more opportunity than ever to make mediocre films. If I were a filmmaker and I made a short film thinking it was good, I would try to enter it in as many festivals as I could and get exposure that way. As for YouTube, that’s the last stop, not the first. Once you’ve put it out publicly, you’ve lost all control over it.” It doesn’t matter if the film is made on your cracked and dilapidated iPhone 3G either – as long as you’re able to express a unique story, Harris can fall in love. One such DIY film this year is The Story, directed by Steven J. Tandy. It stars lone and weathered rocker Tim Rogers reflecting upon an emergency he witnessed. “The advice I give is: the shorter the film, the better. It’s a bit like trench warfare; you’ve got to jump out of the trench, make your killing, and jump back in before anyone realises what’s happening. You want to be taken somewhere you haven’t been before, whether it’s a comedy or a drama.” This year also marks the second partnership with the Virtual Reality Cinema to show a small selection of documentary short film. VR’s immersive
possibilities are closely tied to the short-film ethos, according to Harris. “Short films are ideal for the material being tailor-made to that kind of audience. Because of devices like that, the content people are watching right now is in short bursts. They want to watch things that are quick and economic.” After digesting Harris’ prophetic musings on the key to successful shorts, the trailer for the festival this year serves as a challenge to all wouldbe filmmakers, as its dizzyingly concise 80 second fantasy musical run through the festival program “makes Baz Luhrmann look like a spendthrift.” The 20-year milestone for Harris’ directorial duties only signals a renewed charge to steer aspirant cinephiles from soulless imitation towards expressive trendsetting. “There are new challenges, and you always get the feeling of work half done, thinking ‘just one more year and I’ll get it right’. I’m like Al Pacino in The Godfather: ‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.’” BY JOSHUA MARTIN
The Contortionist There’s nothing quite like a compliment or two from a visiting band to induce great Aussie pride. Starting this week, US progressive metal innovators The Contortionist will take to Australia in a tour that guitarist Cameron Maynard says will remind him a lot of being at home. “I think I can speak for all the guys – we love Australia,” he says. “It reminds us a lot of The States.” This far into their career – with 11 years on the scene – touring is old hat for The Contortionist. Though the band have played on stages with many greats in the genre, they’ve paved their own little niche, layering sound upon sound, making for a dynamic show of simplistic beauty. The Contortionist’s latest album, Clairvoyant, saw the band set the bar even higher for themselves. They’ve always been affiliated with bands of a similar ilk, but now The Contortionist can prove they’re an entity unto their own, especially in performance. “The progression of our sound is natural. Every step of the way, it was never a decision to try and strive, it was natural circumstance,” Maynard says. “When we put out Language [2014], it was a new thing for that album. We learned each other’s script. I knew how Jordan [Eberhardt] would play a bass part I composed, things like that. We learned each other’s strong points. “It’s a confidence boost because we know whenever we sit down to write, as long as our 20 BEAT.COM.AU
The St Kilda Film Festival runs from Thursday May 17 through to Saturday May 26 at the Palais Theatre & St Kilda Town Hall. Visit the website at stkildafilmfestival.com.au/ for the full program and more information.
“We’re in a unique position where our fans expect that now, for the ball to be thrown left field, and I think that’s pretty special.” fingerprints are on it, we can cover as much ground as we please. We’re in a unique position where our fans expect that now, for the ball to be thrown left field, and I think that’s pretty special.” The dialect in Language and Clairvoyant is equal parts beautiful and dark and clearly understood by their fans. “It’s definitely a niche and it’s the kind of thing where people who want to go down the rabbit hole, they do. At the same time you can still wait on the surface. That’s really what our objective is. “What we realise is we can be selfish and do a bunch of stuff and cover every ground and that’ll happen with every record, we’ll always try something new and that’s always been our MO. At this point it’s always going to be something fresh and we’d be failing ourselves and our fans if we tried to do something we’ve already done.” The sound and longevity of The Contortionist all points to the band being sure of themselves, and yet there are still walls to be painted, things they want to execute in future. “Every time we get done with a record we have a detailed list of things we didn’t get to do or didn’t quite cook right,” Maynard says. “We’re always composing music. We’ve been writing new stuff even though we’re touring, it’s a constant evolution. It’s not as separated out as it may seem.”
Maynard explains that the best way to witness this evolution is in the band’s live shows, a craft in itself honed over the years. “Just from composing something and seeing it go from paper to performance, it only comes from composition – we know what things are more practical than others, we know what will translate live, and things that won’t. “You can have the best players get on stage for the first time and immediately something’s missing. That’s something that can only be learned by doing, experiencing technical difficulties and knowing how to play ball.” When Maynard gets off the stage, the overriding feeling is always that performing feels good. “It takes a certain kind of crazy to do this for a living but I think we thrive on it,” he says. “We’re signed up and we’re not going to leave the team. It’s been 11 years and I always end up saying to my friends ‘11 years is a long time. Right now, if we had to create this destiny we’ve created, if we had to start right now, I don’t think it would be possible.’ Where we are in life, it feels good that the investment we’ve made is apparent. It feels good.” BY ANNA ROSE
The Contortionist will play Max Watt’s on Thursday May 3. Special guests are AlithiA and Transcience.