history

Wild Spaces started back in 1993 as public meeting on wood-chipping, organised for the Wilderness Society by filmmaker Gary Caganoff. It was held at the Teacher’s Federation in Sydney and consisted of speakers such as Bob Brown (the then TAS Greens MP), Clover Moore (Independent NSW MP), Peter Thompson (Radio National) and Peter Treseder (a well-known adventurer). The night launched “Tarkiner Paner”. A film Gary Caganoff created for the World Heritage proposal of the Tarkine Wilderness in northwest Tasmania.

A similar meeting was organised the following year at the National Maritime Museum in Sydney, with guest speakers Milo Dunphy and Lisa Dobby (NSW Greens) among others.

These two public meetings were named Wild Spaces. It was only after the second meeting that the idea of a film festival began to take shape. Organisers realised the need for a vehicle that would carry all the environmental and social justice films that weren't making it into the mainstream media. Gary contacted festivals in Sydney and around the world, gathering information and sourcing films. It eventually took a year and a half to see the first `Wild Spaces Environmental Film Festival’, screened in a converted Warehouse in Newtown, Sydney in June 1996. It attracted almost 600 people.

Word of the festival travelled around the country and within six months Wild Spaces had screened in Melbourne, Byron Bay and Newcastle. The1998 Festival was held in Sydney at the Australian Museum and attracted over a thousand people.

The festival continued to grow and in 2000, Friends of the Earth Australia became the national co-ordinating organisation. The national Wild Spaces organising committee co-ordinates with other environmental and social justice groups, student networks and like-minded individuals who take on the role of directing the Wild Spaces events in their own regions. Production of Wild Spaces relies almost entirely on volunteers and in 2003 it screened in 28 locations around Australia, many of them regional.

Wild Spaces continues to provide a valuable forum for the exhibition of moving images dedicated to the stimulation of discussion and debate of key issues facing different cultures, societies and environments. The Wild Spaces experience has proven to be enlightening, challenging and heartening, with the result that the festival - due to increasing demand – is expanding, reaching more and more people and screening in a greater number of Australian locations every year.