by Dov Kornits

“I don’t think film festivals can be cookie-cutter. You can’t just pick one up and put one in any location,” says Gold Coast Film Festival director Lucy Fisher. And she should know.

A Gold Coast native herself, Fisher initially dreamt of being a science journalist, before venturing into event production and PR in the UK, which is where she also met her British filmmaker husband [Darren Paul Fisher]. Returning to the Gold Coast, she managed to get a job in PR on the film festival, before stepping into the top role when the position became available.

Commentators often mention that Australia’s outdoor lifestyle is a major obstacle to cinemagoing, and no location fits that assumption more than the endless beaches of the Gold Coast, and the climate to match. But not unlike the appeal of California for Hollywood, the Gold Coast also has the Village Roadshow Studios located smack bang in the middle of the region, attracting big Hollywood productions and the Australian technicians to work on them. It’s essentially a film industry town in a state that heartily supports the film industry.

For many years, the annual Gold Coast Film Festival struggled with its identity, but under Lucy Fisher’s helm, it is evolving into its own, with audience growth recorded for the past 3 festivals that she has spearheaded.

A strong advocate for female representation on the screen and behind the camera, one of Lucy Fisher’s initiatives was to introduce the first film festival creche for its participants [she had a 4-month-old herself when she was first working for the festival]. She also applied a Bechdel Test for the films curated by her programmer, Richard Haridy.

“We committed to having fifty percent of all speakers across the festival, men and women basically,” she says about the various industry workshops that are on offer during the festival. “That’s something that is harder to deliver than it sounds when we’re working in an industry that has such a gender discrepancy. It does require a very conscious programming effort.

“I think it’s important to give women working in the industry the chance to be on a panel, to be positioned as an expert in their field. I think that helps everyone.

“[The Bechdel Test] highlights the women characters; it really opens your eyes to how women have been written in films.”

Neither of these initiatives are necessarily dogmatic or alienating, they are inclusive and eye-opening in a way that bodes well for the future. Not that they didn’t come with pushback.

“I remember a man asking, ‘How long is all this women’s stuff going to last?’,” recalls Fisher amusingly. “And it was a serious question, like, you know, ‘is it just a one off?’ I think that’s the kind of thing that happens, and it’s saying, ‘that’s a nice theme, it suits you darling, now move on’.”

But Fisher isn’t going anywhere, embracing the unique offering of the Gold Coast for both its locals and visitors. Apart from playing the best local films with an emphasis on the independent sector, there is also the best of world cinema, tours of Gold Movie Locations, free outdoor family screenings, high school programs and much more.

“We’ve been able to grow the strong industry side of the festival, and really deliver professional development opportunities through panels and networking events. And we now get 29% of our audience not actually from the area as well.”

The 2019 Gold Coast Film Festival is on between April 3 – 14, 2019.

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