A Contagious Deficit?

The Sydney Film Festival has posted an operating deficit of $131,000 in stark contrast to last year's stronger than expected $32,000 surplus.

However, in a press release distributed yesterday, "the net overall position of the SFF stayed steady with the strong performance of the organisation’s reserves resulting in a reduction in net assets of less than $1k".

The SFF, in the same release also stated that "the two main factors contributing to the 2006-07 operating deficit were unforeseen structural changes in the film industry, in particular the introduction by distributors of film hire charges for titles to be commercially released subsequent to the festival; and the impact of extreme weather conditions on performance in the first week of the festival..."

It should be pointed out that the introduction by distributors of 'film hire charges' has been in the making for a number of years on a global level so should not have been unexpected by the SFF Board.

The press release also claims that one of the highlights of the 2007 results is that "the 2007 program was substantially more ambitious in scope, resulting in a 5.6% audience growth
with a total of 129,672 admissions".

However, this isn't as good as it first appears. What the release doesn't mention is that the program increased in size by 30% this year - which means the average audience per screening dropped considerably compared to the previous year.

This is not a good result for the festival especially after they had managed to turn around their fortunes last year under the directorship of Lynden Barber and Tony Grierson. In 2007 the Board replaced Barber and Grierson with Clare Stewart from the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, where she also ran into financial difficulties.

Next year looks a little brighter for the festival with an additional $1.8 million from the NSW State Government over four years, and the City of Sydney has also committed an additional $450,000 over the same period. It will be interesting however to see whether the costly expansion in programming will be reigned in a little by a board renowned for micro-managing the event.


Declaration: I am a member of the SFF and worked at the 2006 festival.