International film festivals are a way to recognise and value different cultures. They are a means of circulating culture, ideas and creativity from a local level to a global level. As filmmakers exchange ideas cross culturally, a complex process of alignment, mirroring and assimilating ideas and techniques occurs. As we interact with films from different cultures, we find points of identification and non-identification, similarity and difference between our lives and those of the characters depicted on screen. In this way, our International Film festival is a way of us ‘playing at’ being Japanese, Spanish, Indian, German, American, and Italian. It is a way to travel the world, to different circumstances, cultures and time periods, to explore what it is that makes people happy. As we engage with the lives of people in different situations searching for happiness, we also consider our own lives and what happiness means to us in our time, place and context.
Featured films explore themes of wealth and poverty, relationships and self sacrifice, sickness and death as ways to consider what happiness really is, and the different ways people seek fulfilment. We offer these films in the hope of contributing something of value to the dialogue, in a mutual exchange of ideas to add to an understanding of our shared humanity.
