Andrew Pike
Festival Director 2017-2023
CIFF returns this year with a packed 3-day event presenting celebrated and neglected films from the past, given contemporary relevance through a range of guest speakers, Q&As and panel discussions.
The program includes notable highlights from the work of Australian filmmakers in past decades. Many of the film festivals that are presented these days in commercial cinemas in Canberra have occasional retrospective elements, but apart from the exemplary Cinema Reborn Festival in Sydney, no major festival in Australia has to date been prepared to go as far as we hope to go in our future events. For us, it is about pushing the envelope in order to accentuate our difference from the plethora of national film festivals focussing on “the New”, and to give ourselves a truly distinctive place in the local and national Festival landscape, offering a strong, curated celebration of what is known and unknown in the past of cinema.
By design, our short program this year intends to provide an immersive viewing experience which we hope you will want to engage with and will find stimulating and memorable.