Sit Down, Shutup and Watch! Film & New Media Festival

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:57): This afternoon I would like to speak about the Sit Down, Shutup and Watch! Film and New Media Festival. The festival is a creature, or a sister, of the Tutti Arts group. It is Australia's premier film festival for films made by people with a learning disability. Everyone on the steering committee identifies as having a learning disability and a passion for films and filmmaking. The Sit Down, Shutup and Watch! Film Festival 2016 will be held at the Angaston Town Hall in the beautiful Barossa Valley this Friday 21 October from 10.30am.

Like its sister film festival, the Oska Bright Film Festival in the UK, Sit Down, Shutup and Watch! is raising awareness of a growing international learning disability led screen culture that seeks to promote cultural change, social inclusion and acceptance of high quality original work by filmmakers with a learning disability. This Friday night, following the screening of the films, there will be a red carpet award presentation from 7pm. Audiences can book for both events online.

The film festival is unique in that it is the first learning disability led film festival in the Southern Hemisphere. Its purpose is to nurture the passion, creativity and careers of those with learning disabilities, and I have seen in previous years that the quality is outstanding. Films at the festival are screened under the following themes: films that make us think, animation, films about relationships, films that make us dance and sing, films that make us smile, and a spooky film.

The festival will showcase some locally made films that were made at the 2016 SDSW film workshops. These workshops were presented in the regional areas of Renmark, Mount Gambier and Port Augusta. They will also showcase international films made in Ireland by AbleVision, a media production and training company for people with intellectual disabilities. AbleVision production crews are empowered to speak up for themselves and to challenge expectations about what they can achieve by making their work visible and valued by the wider community.

Learning disabilities seem to touch so many people and families, so this film festival is designed to make sure that the film culture is accessible to all, and to also inspire people to be involved in film culture. As I said, the festival is a Tutti Arts initiative and the aim is to raise awareness of a growing international learning disability-led screen culture. The vision of the festival is to live in a world where learning disabled people achieve their creative dreams and screen their work in Times Square or on iPhones and every other screen in between.

The aims of the festival are to form a community of like-minded learning disabled film makers and new media artists who can teach others; to have their voices heard and to be taken seriously; to get other learning disabled people to express themselves creatively through digital arts and technology; encourage other learning disabled people in the wider Australian and global community to connect, making physical location far less significant for their social relationships; and to become a force for social change.

Some of the films will be screened at the first official festival opening at 10.30am. Under 'Films that make us think', there are I Am Runner, Sara's Film, Music and Me, Enlighten, Now I Play Soccer, Bastion and Aptitude With Attitude. In the 'Animation' category, there are Football Frenzy, The Chosen One and Pinning Down on Luck. In the 'Films about relationships' category, there are I Really Want to Get to Know You, A World for All and Sam's Daydream. In the area of 'Films that make us dance and sing', there are Hard Core on Tour, Love and Peace, Coco Butter, Lorcan's Rap and Creatures of the Revolution. There are a number of other films to be screened.

Most of the films are by their very nature short films, but either the actors or the people who are involved in the production have learning disabilities. I am hoping that a lot of people will descend on Angaston Town Hall this Friday to view these films and to support the people with learning disabilities to showcase their films.