Flickerfest’s Rainbow Shorts Programme Returns
Image: Rainbow Shorts. Image: flickerfest.com.au
Flickerfest, the annual competitive international short film festival, is back for its 31st year, at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
‘Come Watch a Bunch of Films About Us, Together’
For the fifth year running, the festival will feature a selection of LGBTQI short films – including a record three from Australia – through its Rainbow Shorts programme, which its curator, award-winning queer filmmaker Craig Boreham, described as “a nice space for the community to come and watch a bunch of films about us, together, and get a little insight into a lot of different experiences that other queer people have had around the world and the stories that they want to tell.”
The three Australian films are Hakuumacaato (directed by Kulan Farah, 17 minutes), a drama about an ex- Somali soldier dealing with PTSD while coming to terms with living in Australia and his son’s sexuality; Beautiful They (directed by Cloudy Rhodes, 11 minutes), a “tender, uplifting queer surf-romance about the nuance of gender and the refuge found in being truly seen”; and Are You Still Watching? (directed by Alex Cardy, 6 minutes), an animated short about Jamie, a Melbourne-based, non-binary 20-something who is single, horny, and always bored.
‘Slick Collection’ of Eight Films
Boreham noted that the films submitted this time around differed markedly from the previous year’s submissions. “Last year we had quite a few COVID films, people talking about their experience of COVID from a queer perspective, and this year, not so much,” he said.
“People didn’t seem to want to talk about it anymore. Not surprised,” he added with a chuckle.
Boreham spent days locked away in his screening room to put together the “slick collection” of eight films. Urging the community to secure their tickets quickly, he said, “these films are exceptional and you won’t see them anywhere else.”
Flickerfest 2022 runs January 21–30.
Rainbow Shorts 2022 screens on Friday, January 28 at 6:30PM.
