Delegates to the AGM discussed the following:

1. The President reported that the information about Australian film distributors continues to be the most popular and useful information provided on the AFSF Website. Plans were discussed for increasing the amount of information on that page.

2. The President reported that all film groups and societies that had given permission to the AFSF to be publicised on the AFSF Website have had their website entries updated with links to their websites or Facebook pages.

3. The President reported that in 2019 the Committee had sent out an edit link to all members that would allow them to update their group’s details. However, less than half of the membership had responded.  The AGM delegates felt that it was important that members update their details such as office holders and membership numbers regularly and so it was decided that the committee would send out emails with the edit links every year and try to follow up with groups that did not respond.

4. The delegates discussed ways that the the AFSF could promote itself more. They decided to recommend to members that they acknowledge their membership of the Federation in the signature line of official correspondence.  However, this would be trialed in one or two groups before being recommended to all members.

5. The AGM discussed the possible opportunities of accessing films from streaming services such as Netflix. The Committee committed to investigating the issue and reporting back to the Federation.

AGM Guest Speaker

Our Guest Speaker was Alice Taylor. Alice is a Canberra based documentary producer and film festival director. Since studying film and television at UCLA in Los Angeles, Alice’s career has spanned 18 years on film and TV projects in Sydney, London, Canberra and Alice Springs. In addition to production work, Alice is an enthusiastic agent in Canberra’s screen culture community. She has been a programmer for the Canberra International Film Festival for 3 years and CIFF Festival Director in 2016. Alice is co-founder and director of the Haig Park Pickture Festival in Braddon which is set to become an annual highlight in Canberra’s cultural calendar. Alice is honoured to be the current President of OnScreen ACT – a collective of Canberra’s local film festival directors that supports and advocates for screen culture in the ACT.

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