He should know. He’s been doing it for several years as former director of the increasingly  successful Canberra International Film Festival.

Now he’s embarking on a kind of boutique festival for the National Gallery, a suite of 6 films to play on Wednesdays at the James O. Fairfax Theatre from this week.

But it still wasn’t easy. Weaving estimate that about 3,000 new mainstream films come on the market each year and that his little festival competes with a horde of specialist festivals like horror film festivals, nature film festivals and so on.

But on the way of canny festival directors, he’s come up with a theme and a selection of films to match it.

All, in some way or other, deal with the pursuit of beauty, a “no brainer” when you’re putting on an event in a place like the NGA, a haven of beauty and, as he says, “a kind of sanctuary where I can escape the ordinary realities.”

All of his films bear on the quest for the sublime, whether it be having the knack of seeing if something looks “right”, finding beauty in a cheekbone, withstanding the or rediscovering the beauty of one’s all-too-familiar country.

In Weaving’s view, the films he’s chosen are all “filled with this sense of awe.”
And his favourite? He doesn’t mind admitting, since it was so hard to get the rights, that it’s an improbable “love story” put together by editor Gyorky Palfi taking bits from 500 movies, including ‘Shrek”, “The Life of Brian” and “A Clockwork Orange”.

Here’s the rundown on the films to be screened:

Wednesday, June 5, “Marina Abramovic: the artist is present,” (2012, rated MA15+, 104mins) follows Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic as she prepares for a major retrospective exhibition at New York’s Museum Of Modern Art.

Wednesday, June 12, “Italy: love it or leave it,” (2012, rated PG, 75mins) is a cheeky trip through Italy in a Fiat 500, as two friends decide if they can fall in love with their country again.

Wednesday, June 19, “Diana Vreeland: the eye has to travel,” (2012, rated G, 77mins) looks at the glamour and eccentricity that surrounds the reputation of fashonista Diana Vreeland, editor of Harpers Bazaar from 1937-1962 and then Vogue until 1971 and definer of the way we look at couture.

Wednesday, June 26, “Final cut” (2012, rating TBA, 84mins) by editor Gyorky Palfi. You probably won’t ge tot see this on in your corner cinema. Palfi takes short moments from over 500 classic films and presents them as the archetypal love story.

Wednesday, July 3, “About face: supermodels, then and now,” (2012, rated M, 72mins) is a documentary shot and directed by celeb photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, looking at the definition of beauty, the nature of ageing and the perils of the fashion industry, offering insights from top models such as Jerry Hall, Isabella Rossellini, Christie Brinkley and Christy Turlington.

Wednesday, July 10, “Gregory Crewdson: brief encounters” (2012, rating TBA, 113mins) is a documentary looking at the life, art and working methods of Brooklyn-born photographer Gregory Crewdson, who creates extraordinarily staged tableaux of everyday life.