The 2023 AGM was held at the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) on 11 November 2023. It was good to see delegates attend both in person and using Zoom. The Federation’s Zoom account allows delegates to attend the AGM from where ever they are in Australia and it is great to see it being used.

The Federation’s achievements in 2023

1. The creation of the “How to Start a Film Society in 60 Questions” page. This page answers every question that the Federation has ever been asked about starting and running a film society from scratch. It covers equipment, distributors, legal requirements, the best way to organise things and more. We hope the information will be a lot of help to groups who are just starting out and, if there is something that you are unsure of, it might be of help to you too.
2. Contacting all Australian film distributors in order to update their contact details and ask them how much they charge film societies under the Film Society Discount. While the amount distributors charge for screening permission used to be the same across all companies it now varies from distributor to distributor and it is important for groups to know what they can expect to be charged. We have put the cost of getting screening permission on our Australian Distributors page.

The Committee’s plans for 2024

1. We intend to contact our members to collect information on whether your film society accepts payments electronically so that this information can be added to the website. These days, less and less people are carrying cash and many electronic systems are expensive so we want to know what you are doing, the things that work and the things that don’t. This will help us advise the next group that comes along.
2. We also intend to contact all our members asking for updated information on the size of their groups. It is important that the federation provides useful information to distributors on how many members each film society has.
3. The Federation intends to contact all Australian distributors and make sure they have easy access to the AFSF Database so they can identify our members as genuine film societies.
4. The Committee decided to follow up the request that was sent out to members asking them to put a link to the federation’s website with a second one in 2024. This request will suggest different anchor text for the link.

In the election of the Committee for the 2024 year, we welcomed Gary Hovey from the Braidwood Film Club as a Vice President. All the existing committee members chose to stay in their current roles with Lynn Read becoming the Public Officer.