With its parade of gay neo-Nazis, flawed geniuses, hormonal German teenagers, bloodthirsty creatures, political thrillers, foreign-language dramas, and new features from directors such as Jacques Rivette, Harmony Korine, Todd Solondz and Samantha Morton, this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) features films for every taste, tickets to suit every budget, and caters to casual viewers and hardened cinéphiles alike. For Executive Director Richard Moore, the launch of the 2010 festival program before a packed crowd of MIFF members, stakeholders and media representatives on Tuesday July 6 was a time both for celebration and sadness, marking as it did the beginning of the end of his four years at the festival.
While Moore said he would prefer to leave questions about his legacy to others in years to come, when pressed to name his proudest achievements during his time at MIFF one of the first things he mentioned was his decision, early in his tenure, to introduce screening times to the festival guide.
“From an audience perspective, you know, that would probably be one of the main [legacies],” Moore laughed, “so you could actually see what times screenings were on, published in the program guide; you didn’t have to do seven or eight page interchanges. I thought it was radical.
“But jesting aside, while I do think program times in the guide are important, there are a few things. I’m pretty proud of building up when I came in, such as the much-neglected membership of the festival. There were only about 240 – 250 members, who were all pretty active in their cinéphilliac activities, and very keen and very supportive of the festival, but one of my main aims was to try and build that membership, because I see members as an important asset, and not only financially.”
Today MIFF memberships have increased to around 1700 – 1800, growth of some 400%, a statistic Moore is justifiably proud of.
“[Membership] has grown and grown and grown, and I think has been important for building a sense of community around the festival, building a sort of festival family,” he told Arts Hub.
Other achievements Moore mentions include establishing the MIFF Premiere Fund (the development of which he inherited upon joining the festival) and the festival’s industry program, 37° South.
“At the end, when you look behind the rhetoric of supporting Victorian films and Victorian documentaries and all of that palaver, really what the festival is on about in having that fund is about securing titles for the festival. And that has been important. To be able to open last year with Balibo and to close with Bran Nue Day – whatever one thinks about the respective qualities of those films – I think was a real statement of power and intent from Melbourne International Film Festival, and it was intended to be so.”
But while Moore has played a strong role behind the scenes, he has also played a prominent and successful role in the public eye during his time at the festival, championing genre films, especially horror movies, and supporting the provocative ‘States of Dissent’ program: a collection of highly politicized documentaries examining a range of issues from points of view very different to prevailing orthodoxies.
Last year, the inclusion of Jeff Daniel’s 10 Conditions of Love, a documentary about China’s exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, caused Chinese filmmakers to withdraw their films from the festival program in protest. The MIFF website was attacked by angry Chinese hackers, and the festival office was flooded by abusive and aggressive emails and faxes protesting the film’s screening.
“One of the highlights for me, I think, was standing on last year’s stage at the Melbourne Town Hall with Rebiya Kadeer and looking out across the Town Hall filled with 1800 people and finally saying ‘let’s press play’ on this little Australian documentary that caused such a fuss,” Moore reflected.
Despite causing significant stress for all at MIFF, Moore believes that not giving in to the Chinese government’s demands to pull 10 Conditions of Love has significantly contributed to the festival’s international standing.
“MIFF was already a well known, well respected festival, but I think I’m happy to leave it knowing the reputation of the festival as an independent one, and as being a brave one and a courageous festival, and interested in politics and discussion and debate and argument and conversation; if I left knowing that had been part of my legacy, I would be very, very happy, and I intend to continue that in northern climes.”
In January, Moore advised the MIFF Board of his intentions to step down as Festival Director after this year’s festival. The following month it was announced that he would take on a new position as Head of Screen Culture for Screen Queensland, a new role responsible for overseeing the company’s screen culture program.
But before he goes, Moore has one last Melbourne International Film Festival to oversee.
As well as the return of ‘States of Dissent’, the music program ‘Backbeat’ and the ‘International Panorama’ program streams, the 59th MIFF sees the addition of several new program categories, including ‘Flawed Geniuses’, ‘Wild Things’, and ‘Our Space’.
“‘Flawed Geniuses’ is a study of eccentricity; a look at eccentricity as it applies to the human personality,” Moore explained. “We were looking at all these films – and they’re primarily documentaries – and we were thinking, ‘How do we put these together?’ I remember the first conversation I had about it with Michelle [Carey, the festival’s Head of Programming] and going ‘Why don’t we call this section ‘Extremely Nutty People Who Are Passionate About What They Do?’’
“That didn’t quite work,” he laughed, “but it was sort of a strand where we could see these brilliant creative people who are obviously deeply troubled and deeply flawed, as we all are, but they’ve somehow achieved greatness in whatever area they’ve set their minds to.”
Typical of the ‘Flawed Geniuses’ program is The Genius and the Boys, a film by Bosse Lindquist which Moore describes as “about a scientist who’s still alive, who was up in Papua New Guinea. and it turned out that he’d been playing around with the little boys much later on in his life, and it absolutely ruined his reputation. I think with these films, and the ‘Flawed Genius’ thing, you think back to classical Greek tragedy and the idea that everyone’s got that fatal flaw inside their character; and it’s fascinating for all of us to see and hear and read about people’s lives. It’s really a study of human frailty.”
This year’s program also includes a special package of films celebrating American filmmaker Joe Dante, the director of such movies as the tongue-in-cheek Piranha (1978) and the 80’s classic Gremlins. It’s the latest in a series of spotlights Moore has programmed in recent years which celebrate the spectacle and dynamism of genre cinema.
“Genre films are one of my passions. I don’t count myself as an expert in that area at all, but Joe’s films are, as you know, deeply political and reasonably subversive, critical of the military and critical of the corporate approach to life, which is one of my pet hates – I can’t stand the corporate lifestyle,” Moore said.
“I’ve been wanting to do Joe’s films ever since I saw the success of Romero here [American filmmaker George Romero, best known for the subversive politics of his ‘Dead’ series movies, including 1968’s seminal Night of the Living Dead, was the focus of a MIFF spotlight in 2008]. And the reason I went for Romero was because I felt you had to break down the perception of MIFF seeing itself as some temple of high art, and temple of high art film. That can become a little bit self-important, and I think it needed to be broken down. And from an audience perspective, in terms of building an audience for MIFF, you have to appeal to a much wider and a much broader audience, without diluting your ‘film as high art temple’ business.
“And also I think both Romero and Joe Dante have a lot of fun with their filmmaking. They have a sense of humour, and they genuinely love movies. And going around the world and sitting in all these cinemas, whether it’s in Gothenburg or Rotterdam or wherever, sometimes you begin to wonder – particularly with the new move towards slow, contemplative cinema, of which I’m not a great fan – have you forgotten the audience? I think Dante, and Romero as well, both have that passion for an audience,” he continued.
“So in a roundabout way, that’s part of the reasoning [for programming the Joe Dante spotlight]. And I think that Gremlins, and Gremlins 2 in particular, is one of my favourite movies. I’ve been revisiting them lately, I’ve watched about six in the past couple of weeks, and Gremlins 2 is really fresh in my mind. And when the gremlins break into ‘New York, New York’ at the end of Gremlins 2,” Moore laughed, “who can fail to be moved by that?”
Melbourne International Film Festival, July 22 – August 8
www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au
This feature originally appeared on Arts Hub on Wednesday July 7, 2010.
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