Participants and mentors have been announced for the 2024 Melbourne International Film Festival Critics Campus, which will take place from from Monday 12 to Friday 16 August as part of the festival’s 72nd edition.
The eight young and emerging screen critics selected include ScreenHub regular Grace Boschetti, and the established mentors include our own award-winning regular, critic and freelance journalist Stephen A Russell.
When asked to describe the future of cinema in five words or less, Grace Boschetti said, ‘In need of safeguarding’, which could indeed be seen as the rationale for the campus itself, a program initiated in 2014 with Ghita Loebenstein as coordinator – a role now filled for many years by Luke Goodsell.
Entering its 11th incarnation, the MIFF Critics Campus is an incubator for emerging Australian screen critics. Since participating in the lab, alumni have gone on to write for publications including The Guardian, Hollywood Reporter, Film Comment and Sight & Sound, and have worked for Netflix, the ABC and SBS, in roles include screenwriting, producing and film programming. Mentors have included included K Austin Collins (Rolling Stone), Guy Lodge and Jessica Kiang (Variety), Jason Di Rosso (ABC Radio National), Wenlei Ma (news.com.au), Adrian Martin, Jonathan Rosenbaum – and, for transparency, me.
The underpinning idea behind the Critics Campus is that a healthy Australian screen culture and screen industry requires well-informed, skilled and diverse criticism. With fewer solid career opportunities for film critics in the shifting media landscape, the Campus sees its role as helping to prepare the next generation of writers for success in writing about screen and the arts more broadly.
When asked what what he thought the main issues were facing contemporary film criticism, Stephen A Russell said:
‘There are precious few Australian outlets dedicated to screen culture. The places that do offer critical space are running on increasingly devastated budgets. With a gutting out of staff gigs, emerging critics are admirably going it alone, but I worry they aren’t necessarily benefitting from the mentorship I enjoyed. This is a big part of why Critics Campus is so vital, and I’m proud to lend an old hand.’
Tara Kenny, another 2024 participant, is a culture writer and critic from Melbourne, and like the other participants, already has some some significant writing and publishing experience. Kenny is The Monthly’s television critic.
When asked why film criticism matters in 2024, Kenny said: ‘The omniscient sniper film critic may be increasingly redundant, but we’ll always need critics to guide us to consider art in deeper ways. And while Filmtok recommendation vlogs, pithy Letterboxd reviews and the incessant meme-ing of popular movies all have their place, nothing elevates the discourse quite like thoughtful and rigorous criticism.’
How Critics Campus works
Taking place during the festival each year, the campus is an intensive, week-long program of panels, workshops and mentoring designed to nurture new Australian screen critics within the pressure and excitement of a live festival setting. (There’s nothing like the adrenaline of having to rush home from a screening, with a couple of post-premiere drinks on board, to write your review by morning, to get rid of that inner perfectionist!)
Read: MIFF 2024 gems picked by the programmers
The emerging critics are paired with experienced mentors – leading Australian and international film critics, who provide direct guidance and feedback on writing, live editing sessions, as well as building those all important networks and giving informal advice. The participants receive a full passport to the festival as well as invitations to attend social functions, galas and other festival events. It’s a busy time and not necessarily easy for introverts.
The pairing between participants and mentors has not yet been announced.
The 2024 MIFF Critics Campus participants
Alice Bellette
Grace Boschetti
Nicole Cadelina
Tara Kenny
Isabella Gullifer-Laurie
Austin Lancaster
Daniel Tune
Dylan Rowen
The 2024 MIFF Critics Campus mentors
Philippa Hawker
Beatrice Loayza
Jonathan Romney
Stephen A Russell
Michael Sun
Cher Tan
Isabella Trimboli
Alison Willmore
To find out more and follow writing by MIFF Critics Campus participants, check out Revue. Or look at the individual profiles for Participants and Mentors for great insights into why criticism matters, what inspires these critics, and what they’re looking forward to at the festival this year.
