Following five amazing years after launching and kicking off Rough Cut, it is with a heavy heart the Rough Cut OG team and founders—Andre Shannon, Claire White, Debbie Zhou, Eliza Janssen, Ivana Brehas, Samuel Harris and Valerie Ng—have decided to step down from the RC editorial team. In lieu, this comes with very exciting news that there is a new team who is ready to pick up the reins, led by managing editor Indigo Bailey, who will be bringing fresh new life to the site.

Rough Cut came about from the 2018 cohort of MIFF Critics Campus feeling the burn to write after experiencing one of the best weeks of learning, collaboration and film criticism wonder with one another and our brilliant, brilliant mentors. The website was partly modelled off the tone, style and feel of a mixture of film and culture websites: locally, that was the v inspiring 4:3, but also sites that were very passionate about the art of filmmaking, and had incredibly unique styles and coverage, including Vulture, Little White Lies and MUBI to some degree. So we were very proud when we were mentioned in Criterion Daily upon the first week of launching our little site. At the heart of it, it was about encouraging and promoting more accessible and experimental forms of film writing and criticism styles, whether that came about in the format & style of interviews, poetic personal reflections, columns, video essays and longform pieces. 

In terms of coverage, this meant differentiating what ‘traditional’/mainstream publications would typically publish, and covering a more diverse selection of pieces that wouldn’t normally be picked up by the outlets (which were difficult to pitch into and limited the choices of film coverage that would be accepted in Australia). As such, Rough Cut’s ethos was always driven from an angle of empowering new perspectives on Australian and international films, from both mainstream releases down to film festival indies—big and small. It melded nicely with the generous publicity opportunities that were offered to us as emerging critics, and we covered film and conducted interviews from high profile directors down to short film filmmakers, and wrote widely across all different types of films, the weird and the wonderful. 

Of course, this flowed through to who we were, and the types of writers that we were keen to publish as well—a more representative, diverse and younger cohort who were ready to refresh and shake the Australian film criticism space in whatever way possible. We hope we achieved even a little bit of that goal. We were very proud to edit and publish a lot of future MIFF Critics Campus alum (thank you to mother bear Luke Goodsell), and work closely with so many promising, exciting writers. We formed incredibly beautiful friendships with one another that started off in that very intense first week together, through to us dancing in a cute circle at the MIFF Closing Night Party in 2018, and all the way up till now—5 years later—feeling like no time has passed at all. Here is a little pic of us (sans Andre) having a cute dinner at Eliza’s place (ofc watching Grease 2 in the background).

We couldn’t be prouder of the new team taking care of Rough Cut, and will be keenly following this new era of the site. Films have a way of bringing people together, and it would be amiss for us to not acknowledge that for us, the best films are the friends we made along the way. Nothing can accurately explain how fulfilling, loving, supportive, and enduring this friendship has been. We were brought together by passion, we rule together by passion, and that’s the best way to be. We look forward to seeing you all around soon. 

LONG LIVE ROUGH CUT.

Signing off one last time,

Andre Shannon, Claire White, Debbie Zhou, Eliza Janssen Ivana Brehas, Samuel Harris & Valerie Ng