KRIS KEREHONA

The Canberra Short Film Festival strongly supports the makers and producers of Australian short films. From its beginnings in 1996 the Short Film Festival screened Australian short films as an enjoyable addition to the Canberra International Film Festival’s program of international and Australian feature films.

The overwhelming popularity of these short film mini-festivals inspired organisers to hold the first solo Canberra Short Film Festival in 1999 with two separate competitions – the National Short Film competition and the Young Canberra Filmmaker’s competition.

That year the 30 short films were selected for competitions were screened to packed houses and received rave reviews. Since then the festival has grown exponentially, with over 200 short films and music videos being submitted in 2006.

2002 saw the retirement of Festival Director Cris Kennedy who had lovingly run the festival since its inception in 1996 and marked the introduction of new festival directors, Marisa Martin and Matthew Fallon from EoR Media who began developing it into the vibrant festival it is today.  2007 saw Marisa take the solo role of Festival Director before passing it on to the team at SilverSun Pictures for the 2008 event, citing that the festival ‘needs fresh blood and new ideas

2008 saw a new beginning for the Festival, as local film production house SilverSun Pictures took over responsibility for co-ordinating the event. Kris Kerehona became the new director of CSFF and ran it with a great success.The team of creative professionals at SilverSun have a flare for innovation, providing Canberra with Film and Television production for over a decade.

This year’s 17th Canberra Short Film Festival is under the direction of Christian Doran, who is himself a Canberran filmmaker and has been a finalist in the last 4 Canberra Short Film Festivals. He expects this years festival to be bigger than ever and hopes to make the festival a continued success over the coming years. “It’s a fresh new festival that has kicked off its new beginning with our 5 year plan to grow the festival in to the likes of St.Kilda and Flickerfest right here in the nations capital”.