BFI FUTURE FILM FESTIVAL 2025
Georgia Brogan
Period Party
FESTIVAL SCREENING
Sat 22 February 2025 15:00
FEB, 17, 2025
With the help of her family, Bee puts on a period party to celebrate the return of her period after a battle with anorexia. Mum's neurotic, Dad's embarrassing and Gran doesn't quite get it. Plus little sibling Lou is a wee bit scarred. While the vagina cake melts and the uterus piñata awaits a beating, Bee comes to terms with the messiness of family and womanhood.
Hi Georgia, how does it feel to be at BFI Future Film Festival with your debut short film Period Party?
Thrilling! BFI Future Film Festival has been on my radar for some time and it is a delight to have my short feature in the program. British Film Institute clearly has genuine investment and interest in the work of emerging filmmakers so I am really grateful to have this opportunity to have my work in proximity with BFI.
Period Party was part of several festivals including SXSW SYDNEY 2024, what was that experience like for you?
It was a rollicking time! Attending festivals like SXSW Sydney showed me how rewarding it can be to really throw yourself into the experience. I attended events and screenings everyday and met and reconnected with old and new collaborators who ended up working on my most recent short film Koan. Attending festivals has really helped me in finding new collaborators, and is just a wonderful opportunity to witness the diverse work people are making.
You’re also an award-winning photographer, the youngest ever winner of the Australian Life Photo Prize in 2021 and you’ve been nominated for Young Australian Filmmaker of the Year Award. What has it meant to you to see see you work get such prestigious recognition?
I see the recognition as a lovely nudge forwards. In the past year or so I have been focused on cultivating an inherent sense of worthiness in terms of pursuing directing and general art-making. Nowadays, I feel like I have a much stronger internal foundation and any external recognition is just an added benefit.
Nevertheless, winning the 2021 prize was really instrumental for me as a 19-year-old trying to find my creative footing. I saw it as a sign that I should keep going.
How important are festivals like BFI Future Film Festival, in creating a platform for short films and filmmakers?
BFI Future Film Festival is crucial for younger, emerging filmmakers. Anyone making a short film, especially from a place of obscurity in the industry, knows that it is a mammoth task. A lot of this is just the practical struggle of finding the money to make a short film and then after it’s wrapped, wondering where to go from there and how it can take you forward in your career. BFI Future Film Festival recognises these struggles and offers a lot of support to emerging filmmakers so that we keep on creating. To have someone or something place faith in you and validate your work when you’re starting out is so important.
Short films are a vital medium in the film industry, yet there are few opportunities for the public, outside of festivals, to see them. What more can be done to make short films more visible and accessible to the wider cinema audiences?
I really appreciate sites such as Short of the Week and Vimeo‘s Staff Picks section for short film viewing. It is amazing to have designated spaces online that celebrate the specificity of the short film medium and I hope we see more of these. In this way, short films are not lost amongst shorter, faster work in larger, more cluttered online spaces, but are celebrated in their own right.
Can you tell me a little bit about how Period Party came about. What was the inspiration behind your debut short?
Period Party was my final project for my degree – it stemmed from my struggle with anorexia for several years and how, during that time, I imagined having a party to celebrate regaining my period.
I was inspired to make a film that explored eating disorders within the comedy genre, where the eating disorder itself is an undercurrent to the story rather than this overpowering, dark entity. The film is very much about family gathering dynamics and the hilarity that ensues when a motley crew comes together for a shared purpose.
I write from life and completely drew upon my own family dynamics when I conceptualised the characters. A fun detail was that Joe, who plays the dad, wore the same red Hawaiian ‚party‘ shirt my father religiously wears to my sister and I’s birthday parties.
Did you have any apprehensions about making a film that uses comedy to unpack such a salient story?
I hold the belief that there is comedy to be found in the most tragic moments and amongst our personal struggles. Period Party is not a film that laughs at or invalidates anorexia, it’s a film that reiterates that levity and joy can be found in or after dark times. My hope was that the comedy comes from the family dynamic; from their awkward attempts to deliver a great party experience and ultimately express their love.
What were the biggest challenges you faced making this film and how much did your background as a photographer help you visualise what you wanted to shoot?
I think the biggest challenge was that everything was a first for me, and I didn’t have foresight regarding certain things, such as gathering enough coverage for the edit, or running more takes. We also had only two days for the shoot and I definitely would have liked to have planned certain things more meticulously in pre-production, which was also rushed. But I learnt so much from it all! That is the best thing!
I think my sensibility as a photographer informed the location choice and we just went from there – I was a big fan of the old house we rented for the weekend with its patterned wallpaper, pink bathroom walls, lush garden, all of those things. It’s amazing when the location already has so much to offer in terms of textures and colour tones. I could not have fathomed a place with white walls.
What would you say has been the most valuable lesson you discovered about yourself as a filmmaker during the making of Period Party and what one thing wont you do on your next short Koan?
The main lesson from Period Party was that I confirmed that I love directing and I really see it in my future long-term. I think I had a hunch that it was for me through my experience directing people in my photos but after Period Party I just had this wonderful gut feeling. I just felt I had to go through that experience to be sure of it, which makes sense.
We just wrapped Koan, and what I made sure to do was to have a strong handle on how I saw it coming together in the edit. We got a lot of coverage and have a lot to play with now.
Where did your passion for filmmaking come from?
I think it came from my love for so many aspects that are inherent to the process; all the different facets of visual imagery like colour and composition, storytelling and writing, playfulness and performance, music, creative collaboration with inspiring people!
There’s a lot to love. It’s play and you can’t plan it to a tee – there is always something that pops out in the moment in production that makes the process incredibly special. Even the unfortunate last minute occurrences somehow seem to offer a new opportunity or creative constraint that you didn’t realise you needed…
"I plan to continue telling stories that situate the climate crisis as a frame for people’s experiences, especially as we are experiencing its manifestations more and more intensely as time goes on."
What have the biggest changes to your filmmaking approach been since your debut short?
PLANNING! Much more planning, preparation and taking my time to think. More reference-gathering when screenwriting. Just a lot more percolating of things in the old noggin.
Is there any advice you wish you had been given when you started your filmmaking journey?
Not exactly. I think I might reflect on this more in a year’s time and have an answer. For now I’m just continuing to practice and keep learning and consolidating all of this new information.
Moving forward, what themes and subjects are you looking to explore with future films?
My recent short film Koan looks at a woman’s experience of eco-anxiety while on an idyllic meditation retreat in the Aussie bush in the height of summer.
I plan to continue telling stories that situate the climate crisis as a frame for people’s experiences, especially as we are experiencing its manifestations more and more intensely as time goes on. It feels like a crucial artistic responsibility. I think that storytelling is one of the strongest ways we can motivate change for our environment. I didn’t get to attend writer Jessie Keyt’s Sundance Collab masterclass but she provided a wealth of resources which you can find on the Sundance Collab website that I really recommend for anyone interested in climate-related storytelling.
And finally, what message would you want your audiences to take away from Period Party?
Life is unbelievably more rewarding when you do the terrifying thing of recovering from an ED and this does mean letting go of control and of an illusion of perfection. But there is so darn much to look forward to on the other side – absurdity, messiness, new discoveries, new connections, it’s all there waiting for you.