St Kilda Film Festival (SKFF) returns on Thursday, June 1 for 12 days, presenting a series of films, workshops, panels, special events, and premieres from filmmakers across Australia.

The Filmmaker Development Day on June 3 is designed to help budding creatives hone their craft at JMC Academy’s Park Street Campus. Audiences can upskill with a series of hands-on workshops, forums, panels, exhibitions, screenings, and Q&As on a diverse range of filmmaking topics with some of Australia’s top emerging and established film talents. Saturday 3 June

Highlights include Danger is my Business: Working with Practical FX, featuring panelist Philli Anderson. There is also Firearm safety for Actors, an opportunity to learn about firearm safety, and is a must for anyone intending to work with firearms on a production.

The festival program also includes the Australian Comedy Showcase on June 2, which includes surreal mind-benders, absurdist masterpieces, friendly banter, arthouse hysterics, and catastrophic slapstick. Friday 2 June, The Astor Theatre.

Among the titles premiering at the event are Walter Smithers’ The Outside Dunny – the history of Australia’s iconic outside dunny is explored through the lifespan of one alfresco loo and the tenants who’ve used it.

Other titles include Anita Lee’s Butter: A Love Story, which tells the story of an artificial, margarine-obsessed world, where lonely Agatha Green has her world turned upside down when she finds love in butter; and Gergory Kelly’s Just Alright, which follows Dan, a man who is desperate for a fresh start, only to have his former housemate, Scott, move into his new unit uninvited and befriend a dead salmon he dubs ‘Craig’.

The Australian Comedy Showcase will be followed by Australian Documentary Showcase on Sunday, June 4 at The Astor Theatre, featuring the premieres of Rowena Potts’ Requiem, an imagining of the last remaining astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) bidding farewell to their vessel before it is deorbited and crashes into the remote Pacific Ocean; and Ankit Mishra Helicopter Tjungurrayi, which tells the 1957 story of chopper pilot Jim Ferguson landing in the isolated area of Natawalu, where indigenous family approached him with their desperately ill 10-year-old son Tjungurrayi, who after receiving urgent medical care, went on to become an acclaimed artist.

The 39th St Kilda Film Festival will run June 1– 12.