Delegates to the AGM discussed the following:

1. The continuing increase in visitors to the AFSF website. Visitor numbers have increased for the sixth year in a row. The Information provided about Australian film distributors continues to be the most popular and useful information provided.

2. The President noted that The AFSF is progressing towards being the largest federation in Australia.  One reason for the growth was that the AFSF accepted members from across Australia and currently had members from every state accept Western Australia.

3. The Treasurer reported that the Federation had made a significant one-off payment to Code Red Solutions for the invoicing, membership database and email software upgrade they had provided over the last couple of years to greatly improve the administration of the Federation.

4. The President reported that the Committee had undertaken a program of linking the AFSF website to the website of member groups in order to improve their SEO and this had been completed with all every group with a website not listed on the Federation website having been contacted.

The AGM decided that the Federation’s Executive will review the film groups and societies who have given the Federation permission to publicise them on the Federation website to ensure they are being publicised on the website including any relevant links to any relevant websites or facebook pages.

5. The President reported that he had been contacted by numerous organisations asking for access to the contact details of the Federation’s members in order to send them emails about various films and commercial products. These requests conflicted with the Federation’s strict Privacy Policy regarding the collection and sharing of information and were not being granted.

The meeting agreed that the Federation should not provide the contact details of members to third parties for such reasons but a mechanism should be developed to supply information to members.

AGM Guest Speaker

Our Guest Speaker was Dan O’Malley, the Theatrical and Marketing Manager from Hi Gloss Entertainment. Dan gave an interesting talk on a distributor’s view of the world of film societies and gave his ideas on how distributors and film societies can work together to improve communication and visibility. He also talked about the origins  of Hi Gloss Entertainment and some of their popular releases and identified a few innovators who are spreading screen culture in their areas.

For all Federation members who couldn’t send delegates to the AGM, we are able to present a video of his talk below: