9:16 cinema earns its place at the Adelaide Film Festival

After a humble but successful beginning last year with the inaugural 9:16 Film Festival, Film Buff Central proprietor, Mike Retter and 9:16 co-producer, Chris Luscri have teamed up with Renewal SA and Adelaide Film Festival to expand their ideas for the Vertical Cinema movement in 2015.

An Our Port success story, Film Buff Central video store was established in Port Adelaide in 2013 as a project of the Renewal SA and Renew Adelaide partnership. The store is now a graduate of this program and is an established business on St Vincent Street.

9:16 is a unique format and cinema experience. It turns the conventional cinema screen 90 degrees so audiences are watching a tall screen. Content is specially made and 9:16 is a format that encourages diverse film practitioners to work in a new way — to experiment, rip apart the old hierarchies, push themselves and innovate.

Adelaide Film Festival and 9:16 are inviting filmmakers to create and submit short works up to 9 minutes in duration to be a part of this unique format. Submitted films selected by 9:16 will be presented at a showcase event at the Flour Shed at Hart’s Mill, Port Adelaide during this year’s Adelaide Film Festival (15–25 October 2015).

The Port Adelaide screening event, supported by Our Port and Renewal SA, will also incorporate the presentation of exclusively commissioned works and a curated selection of the best “Vertical Cinema” works from around the world.

Mike Retter said, “Cinema has to continually reinvent itself to stay relevant and nothing better captures a person’s portrait than Vertical Cinema. Port Adelaide has such a rich and interesting history of cinema and it’s great that such a leap into the cinematic unknown can be taken here.”

Chris Luscri added, “We are looking for a wide variety of films in a diverse number of forms and genres — from documentaries and animations to genre films, musicals and performance pieces, short dramas, physical comedies, gallery and installation work.”

The deadline for 9:16 entries is 1 July 2015. For more information, including entry guidelines and how to submit a 9:16 film, visit the Adelaide Film Festival website.