Transcript: Access All Areas Film Festival 201120 November 2011
Roberta: The Access All Areas Film Festival begins its annual tour of New South Wales and Australia this month screening audio described and caption films and celebration of the International Day for people with a disability and that’s on the 3rd of December. We have Karina Libbey, manager of Access All Areas Film Festival here with us today to tell us all about it. Welcome Karina.
Karina: Hi thanks. Thanks for having me.
Roberta: My pleasure. Now can you tell us a bit about the festival?
Karina: Yeah, I’d love to. So Access All Areas, we started back in 2008 as part of the Don’t DIS my ABILITY Campaign and we started touring to a few venues around New South Wales and since then we’ve just been growing bigger each year.
The idea of the festival was to create access and inclusion for everybody to be able to come to the cinema. So going to the movies can be something that we all take for granted. But it’s also, so the aim of the festival is to increase access so that as many people as possible can come as well as raising awareness about access for people in the community with a disability and also raising awareness in the film industry from film makers to exhibitors about how we can make a cinema accessible for as many people as possible and that that’s actually an achievable goal that we should be striving towards.
Roberta: And, of course, it’s not only letting the people who might use this service know about it, it’s also the people who are going to supply it. We mentioned at the top of the program, Karina, that you were going to be touring New South Wales. Is that the first part of the tour?
Karina: Yes. The tour actually is beginning very soon. So we kick off community screenings on the 26th of November which is just next week.
Roberta: It is indeed.
Karina: Yeah, and it goes until the 8th of December. So we’re visiting, the tour is over a selection of Australian short film, the best of kind of from festivals and things like that. It’s going to Albury, Casula Powerhouse in Liverpool, Parramatta, Wollongong, Wagga Wagga and Erina.
Roberta: That’s a fair old whack isn’t it?
Karina: Yeah and then we also...
Roberta: Covering the...
Karina: ...are going to the Riverside Theatre in Parramatta and the Dendy Opera Quays in Sydney as well.
Roberta: And where else in Australia?
Karina: We will expand it into Queensland this year to do a few screenings and also aiming to going to Canberra as well. So sort of stretching out a little bit this year, hopefully.
Roberta: Certainly are. I’m very pleased you’re going to Queensland because I lived in Queensland for a very long time and a lot of things never quite made it to Queensland.
Karina: Oh really? Oh that’s good. I hope so. We’ve had a really nice response from people in Queensland so...
Roberta: That’s good, yeah. No, I understand that there are also screenings in schools.
Karina: Yeah. It’s something we’ve been developing over the last couple of years. We think it’s really important to get the idea of festival about access and inclusion and about cinema into schools ‘cause they’re our future. So we’ve got a program of short Australian films that are appropriate for school age children and they tour around to schools basically all over New South Wales and Queensland and it’s accompanied with like an education pack to help them engage with all of the themes and concepts of the festival and about film making.
Roberta: Yes and one of the programs with you earlier was talking about the difference of audio describing for children and for adults which is rather interesting as well.
Karina: Yeah, exactly. I mean, of course, and in terms of captioning as well you have to really...
Roberta: Use the language.
Karina: Yeah you have to use language so they understand because if you’re providing a service but still not of use to them, you’re shooting yourself in the foot really so...
Roberta: Exactly. Now, Karina, what films would be shown with audio description do you think?
Karina: So we’ve got the program of short Australian films on the tour and they’ll be showing in Erina, Casula and in Wollongong on the tour with audio description and then also we’re hosting a screening of Red Dog, that great feature film that’s blowing...
Roberta: Oh fantastic.
Karina: ...everyone away.
Roberta: Me too.
Karina: Yeah, that’s going to be screening at the Dendy Opera Quays in Sydney on 1st of December and we’re running two simultaneous screens, so one with captions and one with open audio description for people to attend and it’s free.
Roberta: And that helps raise awareness too when people, who can see, go to the cinema and have it audio described, they go away and tell their friends about it...
Karina: Yeah, exactly.
Roberta: ...which is wonderful.
Karina: I think it’s also, it is really important for us to, from our perspective to help raise awareness like to the whole community so that people, like lots of people have friends that yeah, you could say like, “oh they’re putting this on if you have a friend that has low vision or is blind,” and you know what I mean, like you can...
Roberta: Yes, exactly.
Karina: ...it becomes really inclusive, you can bring your family and your friends to these things and...
Roberta: Oh Karina thank you for that. That’s very exciting so...
Karina: Thank you.
Roberta: ...anybody listening, if you want to find out more about the Access All Areas Film Festival and to view the program you can visit Access All Areas Film Festival, I like that one and it’s all those words joined together accessallareasfilmfestival.com.au. So thank you very much for all of that and I know I’ll be talking to you soon about how it went.
Karina: Cool, great. Thank you so much for having me on the program.
Roberta: I’ve been speaking with Karina Libbey, Manager of Access All Areas Film Festival and this information has been brought to you by Media Access Australia. Media Access Australia are supporters of this program.
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