There were times when French cinema was the best in
the world. I don't think now is one of those times. I
think they make some interesting films, some good
films, also some really bad films. And the festival will
reflect what's happening, so you'll have some good
films and some bad films...
You were director of the Sydney Film Festival for
many years, what do you think is the key
importance of running a film festival?
There are so many different kinds of film festivals.
There are the big film festival like Cannes and Venice
and Berlin which are competitive, they have a very
prestigious competition - and they only show world
premieres. Festivals like those three (particularly
Cannes and Venice) have over the years really helped
promote a wider range of international cinema. For
example Japanese cinema, which was basically
unknown in the west until 1951, when Rashomon by
Kurosawa was shown in Venice and won the main
prize. It just took one film... Venice and Cannes are
very important for those reasons.
French film is going to be shown in Sydney is
through this festival, and 2000 people go to see it,
then I think a proportion of that box office should go
to the people who made the film. That's a relatively
new concept, because it used to be that festivals - like
when I was doing the Sydney festival, we would
invite France or Germany or Hungary or Canada to
enter films, but I would choose them. We would
invite them from the government agency, and we
would never pay for them. But if you were doing it
today, you would have to pay for them - and I think
it's only fair.
Then there are festivals like Sydney and Melbourne
and Toronto and hundreds of others... they don't have
world premieres, they might have national premieres,
but they are putting together a wide range of films,
and they're for the public. Cannes and Venice are not
really for the public. Berlin is a bit, but certainly
Cannes is not, it's for the film industry. These other
festivals, Sydney and so on, they're for the public, the
people of Sydney, the people of Toronto or wherever,
and they play an important role in showing films that
might not be seen at all in any other way.
And then there are the specific national festivals, like
the French festival, like the Lebanese festival, and
there are an increasing number of those. Those again
are on the one hand directing themselves at the
French audience, the Lebanese audience, but they're
also trying to introduce those films to a wider
audience. So each kind of festival has an important
role to play... Then there are specific festivals,
devoted to things like science fiction... I went to a
festival in June, in Italy, in Bologna, wh ich was
devoted to retrospectives, only retrospectives, so there
was no film made after about 1980. There's all kinds
of festivals and they all have a role to play...
At the AACTA Awards in January 2015. David
Stratton received the Raymond Longford Award
for lifetime achievement in 2001
I think if it's a smaller festival, and if it's going to be
the only way that a film is going to be screened in a
particular territory or city, then I think that the
filmmaker has to be compensated in some way. If
you've made a French film and the only way that
I think it's giving them more opportunities to see
things. Perhaps it's making it more difficult for the
Sydney film festival, the Melbourne film festival,
because these national film festivals are taking a lot of
There are many cultural/foreign film festivals in
Sydney alone, how do you think this is changing
the way we perceive international cinema and
culture?