Welcome to the first edition of Antenna! - Australia’s International Documentary Film Festival.

The idea for Antenna was born nearly two years ago with the ambition of creating an inspiring platform that will further foster the already strong documentary film culture in Australia.

Recognising the enormous amount of quality documentary films currently being made across the globe, we felt it was time to create a documentary festival in Australia. We want to celebrate the importance of documentary as a genre giving audiences, documentary makers, and the wider industry the opportunity to experience, enjoy and discuss excellent films.

Being a brand new festival, we were very excited to receive over 400 film submissions from Australia and all over the world. This year’s program showcases a wide range of documentaries created by young and emerging as well as established filmmakers. We have curated a program that reflects what is happening in contemporary documentary cinema and have chosen a collection of challenging, entertaining and compelling films that we believe presents the complexities of the world we live in and the strong vision of documentary filmmakers.

Forty two films feature in this year’s line up coming from a diversity of countries, such as - Russia, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Australia, Japan and Ireland. Seventeen feature length films are participating in this year’s competitions, with generous cash prizes given in two categories; the SBS Award for Best International Documentary ($5,000) and Best Australian Documentary Award ($2,500). There will also be a special competition for student films with a prize package valued at $2,000 provided by Metro Screen, Australian Directors Guild and Adobe.

The program also features a range of special events including a screening of Sans Soleil to pay tribute to iconic documentary maker Chris Marker on his 90th birthday, our Doc_Next initiative which aims to encourage young audiences to become the next generation of documentary film lovers, as well as panel discussions. We are also excited to partner with the Walkley Foundation to host special screenings of the 2011 Walkley Documentary Finalists.

 We thank all of our partners and sponsors for their support and most importantly, for believing in our festival. As an independent festival in its formative year, we have relied on the generosity and hard work of our small but dedicated team – all of whom worked on a volunteer basis. For this we can’t thank or praise the Antenna crew enough. Last but not least we thank our friends and family for the incredible support and faith they have given us.

We hope that you will be stimulated, challenged and entertained by this year’s festival and look forward to seeing you at the cinema.

David Rokach & Alejandra Canales