President’s Report on the 2022 Annual General Meeting

It was held at the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) on 10 December 2022. It was well attended by delegates both in person and via Zoom. We hope to use Zoom to accommodate more and more AGM attendees as the years go by as well as using it for Executive Committee meetings.

However, distance and time prevents many groups and societies from sending delegates which is why I send out this annual report to tell you what was discussed and what might happen over the next year.

Much of last year was spent collecting membership fees. This was for the fees that were postponed in 2021/2022 and the regular fees for the 2022/2023 financial year. The shutdowns connected to COVID had taken a toll on many of us and 14 film societies did not survive. Many of those that did were disorganised and many officeholders had been replaced.

One accomplishment last year was the creation of a location map on our new Find a Film Society in your Area page.

This is an easy-to-use map that was suggested at the 2021 AGM. Each member has a pin on the map which contains information about your group and a link to your website and/or your group’s entry on our website. As well as letting people know how many film societies there are, we think this will help people find you, your website and the information we have about you.

Please check it out and let me know if you have any comments, suggestions or problems.

Another addition to the website was a three-question survey designed to get some feedback on the information the website provides. We want to know how we could improve it.  If there is information that you have looked for and not found, please fill in the survey and let us know.

The AGM also endorse a couple of decisions that had been made during the year.

1. There is now a fifth rule of membership. That film screenings are held in enclosed areas where only members can see them.

• AGMs will no longer have guest speakers

This year we said goodbye to Committee member Theresa Huxtable who has served many years and hello to a new Committee member Mary Collier from the Canberra Irish Club Film Group. We also marked the passing of our vice president and friend Richard Keys.

The Committee’s plans for 2023

We will be contacting all our members with a request to put up a link to the Federation’s website. This will be completely voluntary and if you don’t wish to do it, that’s fine. However, we believe that:

1. The creation of links to the Federation will help people find us. Both in terms of creating backlinks which improve our Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and because the people who go to your website are the people who will be interested in ours.
2. Linking to us will improve your SEO and help people find you. The Federation’s website rates very highly on Trust, Authority and Expertise. These are the things that Google Search looks for and the website gets a lot of traffic. Last year the website got 16, 405 views.

Another thing we plan to do this year is to revise and update the information held on our How to start a film society in 10 steps website page.  Please contact me via the website if there is information that you would have liked or would like to see there.