Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) is South Australia’s premier screen event and one of Australia’s leading film festivals. It’s an annual celebration of courageous cinema where filmmakers and audiences come together for two weeks of local and international film premieres, parties and experiences each October.
From 2022 – 2024, The Balnaves Foundation was the principal partner of Adelaide Film Festival Expand Lab, a collaborative development initiative where filmmakers, artists and screen-based practitioners come together to expand their practices and create bold new moving image works.
In 2022, the inaugural AFF Expand Lab saw 30 of Australia’s most daring creative thinkers participated in the development lab and commissioning process. The 2022 Expand Lab commission was awarded to Susan Norrie (NSW), Emmaline Zanelli (SA) and Matthew Thorne (SA) for a new moving image work to be presented at Samstag Museum of Art during Adelaide Film Festival 2024.
In 2023, a further 30 emerging and established creative practitioners convened in Adelaide for the second AFF Expand Lab. The 2023 commission was awarded to Anna Lindner (SA), Nisa East (NSW) and Yasemin Sabuncu (SA), whose project will premiere at Samstag Museum of Art during Adelaide Film Festival 2025.
The Expand Lab for the 2024 Adelaide Film Festival, continued to bring together talented artists and film practitioners from across the country, taking place from 1 – 8 November 2024. Excitingly, this was the first Lab for which a commissioned project (from the 2022 Lab) was presented in the same year. Three experimental docu-fiction videos linked through the subject of fly-In, fly-Out (FIFO) work were presented at Samstag Museum of Art throughout the 2024 Festival, one by each of the 2022 Commission winners – I take care of what’s mine by Emmaline Zanelli, Extraction by Matthew Thorne and FALLOUT by Suan Norrie.
AFF Expand Lab is an initiative of Adelaide Film Festival with Principal Partner The Balnaves Foundation, and the Government of South Australia and support from Samstag Museum of Art, Art Gallery of South Australia and Illuminate Adelaide.