Welcome to the first ISFC news bulletin for 2003.

As those of you will know who attended the annual general assembly at Clermont Ferrand in February this year the ISFC has undergone a number of changes. Many of these changes are discussed in the minutes for this meeting attached.

As the working committee formed out of this meeting we would like to elaborate on a few of these changes and inform you of other information that has come out of the issues discussed.

Firstly we are very pleased to have the opportunity to continue to grow and nurture the ISFC over the coming year and look forward to all of your comments and input during this time.

We hope that this year will be a very fruitful one for the ISFC, with
our organisation furthering our vision of providing a strong information network for all of us involved in the short film community worldwide.

In this vein there were some very essential tools that were outlined at this meeting that we will be employing to further this aim.

One of the key areas that we hope will be of value to you all is a ISFC List serv. The List serv will enable you to contact each other, and give or indeed find information about short film festivals, programming and news
worldwide.

The list serv will be attached to the website and will work in such a way that whenever you send an email to the address it will be sent out to the general community.

The other area that was outlined as important for our profile and members needs was an update of our current ISFC website. Both the website update and the list serv will be created by Australian company Creative Engine who also sponsor Flickerfest. They have agreed because of this association to create the site for the very reasonable price of Euros 1452.

The new site will include a profile and history of the ISFC, section on the ethics of the ISFC, a membership list with links to members websites and a list of dates of members festivals worldwide. It will also include a membership form for new members.

We want to make this new site fresh, attractive and visually appealing, in line with the industry in which we all work.

In order to keep the site updated we would request that you all send us back any changes to your web address or email address and your festival entry deadlines and dates for the coming year. We request this information by the 10th of May and we will be able to link all webaddresses sent to us to this site. The website and list serv will have a four week construction process. The new address for the site will be www.isfc.com.au

Unfortunately isfc.org, isfc.com and isfc.net were already registered and so it was impossible to register any of these addresses.

Currently the ISFC has $15,934.55 swiss francs in the bank. We feel that the small amount of money to be spent on the website and list serv will truly add value to everyone's membership of the ISFC as we will have a way of communicating with each other. Finally we will truly be a short film community.

One area that should be of interest to you all is that there will be no
membership fee for the ISFC in 2003. This year will be about building up what the ISFC has to offer and its value for members for the years to come.

We hope that through our newlist serv, website and regular bulletins that you will all feel that the ISFC is once again an essential organisation for you and your organisation to be a part of.

We have purposely included all of the email addresses of all members in this first email for you records, so that you may be able to directly contact each other if you require, prior to the list serv being up and running.

Finally we would love to get an email from you regarding your priorities for the ISFC as this will really help us to plan for the future of the organisation in the coming year

All of us have agreed to work this year as volunteers for the ISFC in order to ensure that our organisations role in providing an essential network for the world of short film continues and prospers.

We look forward to your comments,suggestions and to receiving the information that you want to share with other members during the year. I have listed all of our bios below so that you will know a little bit more about us and our work in the film industry. Each of us will be taking it in turn to get a news bulletin out to you every 8 weeks, with the next bulletin being composed by Kirsi followed by Shane. All of our website addresses are listed below

Yours in Short film

Bronwyn Kidd, Shane Smith, Kirsi Kinnunen,
THE ISFC Organising Committee