KOTA SAMARAHAN: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak’s (Unimas) longest running short film festival, Mini Film Festival (MFF), will meet audiences online from July 17 to 25.
Organised by students and lecturers from the Cinematography Programme, Faculty of Applied and Creative Arts, it offers 47 carefully curated short films and three webinars featuring filmmakers and juries from Malaysia, Southeast Asia and Germany.
The festival migrated online in 2020, making it the first onsite festival to do so in Malaysia.
Last year, it recorded the highest number of viewers — more than 5,000 — throughout the week.
The festival has carefully handpicked the best 20 nominated films, which will be in competition for Best Short Film Awards for both Students and Open Category.
Among these nominated films, four are made by filmmakers from Borneo with one film inspired by the folklore of sape.
Unimas cited that “unlike its past years with very little participation from female filmmakers, this year, MFF has managed to spotlight six films directed by female filmmakers whose voices are strong, exciting and filled with surprises.”
“This is in line with our motto to showcase the voices of the underrepresented groups, be they women or the natives of Borneo,” added 17th MFF festival director Yow Chong Lee.
Apart from its competition films, the 17th MFF is working closely via the festival’s network, by collaborating with partners such as SeaShorts Film Festival (Jacky Yeap), UCIFEST (Lulu, Universitas Multimedia Nusantara) and Kurz.Film.Tour (Goethe-Institut Malaysia) to bring in 17 award-winning short films which have been touring around the globe in prestigious film festivals such as Cannes International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival.
The climax of the festival is the awards announcement night, during which the winners will be walking away with cash prizes of up to RM2,400.
There will be a webinar featuring a great line-up of panellists, namely Lorna Tee (a pan-Asian film producer and festival curator/ organiser), Lulu Ratna (an Indonesian film lecturer and curator), Bernard Chauly (an iconic Malaysian film director who directed Instanbul Aku Datang and Gol and Gincu), Kong Pahurak (a Thai director and cinematographer) and Maike Mia Höhne (a German film director, film curator and professor).
Two other webinars will also be conducted at 8.30pm separately on July 18 and 20.
Those interested are encouraged to register at https://bit.ly/17thMFF. For further enquiries, contact Mina at 010–590 6628.
