Here is a simple django template filter that will format a date according to the DATETIME_FORMAT variable in the settings file.

from django import template
from settings import DATETIME_FORMAT
from django.template.defaultfilters import date

register = template.Library()

@register.filter
def default_datetime(value):
    try:
        v = date(value, DATETIME_FORMAT)
    except:
        return value

    return v

Save this in a file named default_date_filters.py and place it in a directory called templatetags in your application directory (along with a file named init.py.

You can then use the filter in a template like so: