Zooming with Revelation Perth International Film Festival Director Richard Sowada and Programmer Jack Sargeant amidst a Melbourne lockdown feels like an episode of ‘Staged’, except these two embrace and excel at adapting with technology.
The 24th annual Rev has launched with the theme ‘Distant But Connected’ – aptly describing its home city (one of the world’s most isolated) and society currently – complete with an augmented reality component which sees the programme’s artwork, depicting a satellite, brought into the fourth dimension by Australian artist Marc-o-Matic.
“The media landscape is totally converging,” Sowada says. “The games aesthetic, games narrative structures, cinema aesthetics, cinema narrative structures, online delivery – it’s important for us as a festival to be experimenting with these and understanding how they work.”
“When the opportunity came to integrate augmented reality into the festival it was an obvious thing to do. . . And fun!”
Sargeant adds: “When you get your phone with the QR code and the satellite’s turning and you can look at it from above and below you realise the potentials of the space we’re moving into and for people to engage with those keeps everything we do fresh.”
July’s festival brings Perth the work of artists from 21 countries, with events including feature, short and documentary films, and a programme of industry events on topics such as drones, synthetic voice software (i.e. ‘deep fakes’), and film distribution.
'Freshman Year'
There’s also hybrid events, such as WA party icon Tomas Ford’s immersive musical adventure 'Have A Bath With Me?', and events online including nightly talks with filmmakers around the world.
“We’re always expanding our knowledge,” Sargeant says, “we’re always looking at what’s next, what audience is out there, what filmmakers; so there’s always that sense of possibilities.”
In recent years this has involved starting an annual virtual reality and games conference (XR:WA); making and producing films – in 2020 commissioning four VR shorts employing 40 people; and its own streaming platform RevStream (formerly REVonDEMAND).
To say the festival’s come a long way since starting as pop-up screenings, projecting 16mm films, in the ‘90s. . . Is an understatement. As Richard tells it:
“In Perth there was no proper, challenging film festival-type activity and I’d been working for the Melbourne Film Festival and was introduced to this whole underground scene – particularly in San Francisco.
“When I first came across these films, it was just a whole other world to me and I thought, ‘oh, man, these things are incredible’ and ‘people have to see these’.
“I started showing them and things just snowballed; the audience grew, the idea got more ambitious, I needed to pay rent so things expanded a little more and as it grew, with it came people who were interested in the same thing.”
'Paul Dood's Deadly Lunch Break'
“It’s that idea of creating an artistic community,” Jack adds. “I was doing similar things in Britain and when I moved (to Australia), Richard and I decided we should do something.”
This collaboration – a retrospective of punk on film, during Richard’s tenure at the Australian Centre For The Moving Image (ACMI), showing rare and unseen cinematic gems – led Jack to be welcomed to the Rev team in 2007.
Since then, the duo’s shared aesthetic and interests in and adjacent to cinema have continued to bring Perth the best of cult, classic and cutting-edge film experiences, and to show off the city to some exceptional guests.
“We have done loads of cool things like Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth coming and performing with films; when Amyl & The Sniffers came over they were just a small Melbourne band and now they’re one of the biggest in the country,” Sargeant says.
He says a highlight on screen this year is 'Rebel Dykes', a documentary about London’s (at the time, considered radical) lesbian scene in the 1980s.
“Films that might appear niche actually speak to people who don’t see themselves on screen necessarily, and I think you show people things and it opens the world to them.”
Being open, starting dialogues, creating opportunities and nurturing local screen culture is constant for Rev. Its grassroots initiatives include the City Of Vincent Film Project, Get Your Shorts On! and this year’s second annual Westralia Day screening and networking event for WA film creatives.
“When we started there was one feature film made in WA every three years and maybe three short films in a year and now look at the industry!” Richard exclaims.
'Some Kind Of Heaven'
“I put aside ideas of red carpet and sequins a long time ago; I really look at what we can do from the ground up, developing a critical audience and a collaborative audience.”
This year, Blind Date invites WA music and film creatives to collaborate; local filmmakers choose from local songs submitted to make their video clip (with or without involving the musos), which the song-makers see for the first time on the night the clips screen, with previously award-winning results.
“The film programme itself, as good as it is, is really a doorway to something else,” Richard says.
Step through Rev’s door with one of Richard’s top three picks: opening night’s off-kilter SXSW Grand Jury Prize-winning American indie rom-com 'Freshman Year'; the “beautifully out-there” French/Belgian outsider tale of love, 'Jumbo'; or sobering doco on alt-right influencers in the Trump era, 'White Noise'.
Jack’s picks: Dennis Hopper’s restored directorial masterpiece 'Out Of The Blue', “one of the best films of the '80s”; and 2020 releases 'Other, Like Me' – a doco on groundbreaking artists COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle and the genesis of post-punk music; and Australian premiere 'The Night Of The Beast' – a coming-of-age tale of two teens who dream of seeing Iron Maiden live.
While the films come from all over, Richard and Jack concur it’s their unique sensibilities that make Revelation distinctly for and about Perth.
“You have to take that genuine gamble on your ‘voice’,” Sowada says. “What we try and do is say ‘look at this idea’ and have people be inspired by that.”
Revelation Perth International Film Festival was orginally scheduled for 1-11 July at locations around Perth and online. Due to recent lockdown restrictions it will now take place from 3-11 July.
