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Karina Libbey on the Access All Areas Film Festival
Transcript
4 November 2012
Roberta: The Annual Access All Areas Film Festival showcasing Australia’s short and feature films with accessible features has announced its program for 2012 and we have with us Karina Libbey, Festival Manager to tell us about it. Welcome Karina.
Karina: Hi, thanks for having me.
Roberta: Now what is the Access All Areas Film Festival?
Karina: Well Access All Areas is an accessible film festival, it’s a part of the Don’t DIS my ABILITY campaign which celebrates international day of people with a disability. We screen all Australian films, short films and a feature film. And all of our films are screened in accessible venues with captions and audio description and with extra wheelchair seating and that sort of thing. So it’s about creating cinema access for Australian cinema.
Roberta: And you’ve just released the program for this year?
Karina: We have, we have and we’re so excited about it, there’s a program of short films, really amazing pieces of cinema in there. There’s a lot of, they’re all family friendly short films, little ones that have toured to many festivals and won awards. One of them won the Animation Award at the Sydney Festival so we’re really excited about that. And then we’re also screening a feature film, The Sapphires, and so we’re thrilled to be able to be presenting that with captions and audio description for people who can use those services.
Roberta: Now tell us about the types of screening available as part of the festival, and perhaps maybe you might be able to tell me who can attend which screenings?
Karina: Yeah absolutely, so the festival was sort of, it’s our 5th year this year, so we’re sort of really fine tuning the way that its run and we have three, sort of, strands of the festival I guess you could call them. So we tour to schools a lot and that’s about bringing access into schools and obviously the family friendly program goes there and that’s usually private screenings for schools.
We have a lot of regional screenings and they’re in respite centres but also community centres, art galleries, regional cinemas, and then we also screen in cinemas in Western Sydney and in metropolitan Sydney, in cinemas and sort of art centres. And they’re open for everybody, it’s basically a celebration of film and of access and everyone’s invited. It’s a free event so it’s just about booking a ticket and bringing your friends and family to be able to celebrate.
Roberta:And I believe that people are able to host their own screenings also, is that right?
Karina:Yeah absolutely, because the reason that we started the festival was to be as inclusive as possible. And a lot of cinemas still don’t have a lot of access particularly in regards to wheelchair but also the technology to be able to have captions and audio description and things like that. And so what we’ve started doing is providing people content if they would like to host their own screening in a venue that suits them, which is better. Their respite centre can host their own, or a small community centre can host their own screening instead of having to bring it into a larger cinema that might not be suitable for everybody that would like to attend.
Roberta:Now the program Karina, can people access that to see what they would like to go and see or, and where would they access that?
Karina:Yeah absolutely, so it’s all on our website which is AAAFF we like to call it for short, so our website has listings of all the screenings, screening times and also how best to go about booking tickets for that. So like I said it’s free but we usually say the booking is essential so that you’re guaranteed a seat just in case we get really full.
Roberta:And for people to host their own screenings is there a cost involved in that?
Karina:No, no, we provide all of the content for free for the short films, yeah it’s a bit harder for us to tour around the feature films so most of those ones are in bigger locations but for the short film program, it’s completely free.
Roberta: Well this film festival has certainly spread its wings since I first heard about it, it has just absolutely grown and congratulations to you and your team, I think it’s an amazing thing, it really is.
Karina: Thank you so much, thank you, we’re really proud to be able to get it out as far as possible, it’s really the message so.
Roberta:And some of the films are good I must say, they’re really, and some of them are very funny.
Karina: Yeah.
Roberta: Yeah I think it’s definitely worth having a look so for more information on the festival including the full program visit the AAAFF website, thank you for all of that today Karina and the best of luck, I don’t think you need luck, I think it’s going to happen.
Karina: Thank you so much.
Roberta: I’ve been speaking with Karina Libbey, Festival Manager of the Access All Areas Film Festival, and I’m just going to give you that website again because it is pretty important that you find out all about it. That’s the Access All Areas Film Festival 2012. And this segment was brought to you by Media Access Australia and Media Access Australia are supporters of this program.
Go back to Karina Libbey on the Access All Areas Film Festival page