News

Jub Clerc and Aaron Pedersen.

Fans of Aaron Pedersen’s Detective Jay Swan can look forward to more Mystery Road adventures on the big and small screens.

Ivan Sen has written the first draft of the script for the third movie in Bunya Productions’ franchise, the follow-up to Goldstone, and Pedersen hopes to shoot in Coober Pedy, with Sen again directing.

In Jub Clerc’s first Deadly Yarns webinar for Australians in Film yesterday, Pedersen also said he is in discussions with Bunya’s David Jowsey for a third series of Mystery Road.

Wayne Blair and Warwick Thornton co-directed the second season, which rated strongly for the ABC.

The series was sold widely by All3Media International, including to BBC2 in the UK, Arte in France/Germany and Acorn TV in North America

Jowsey tells If a third movie had long been planned, observing: “Jay Swan is a great character and...

Penny Smallacombe.

The Australian screen industry is on the “precipice of change” in giving more – and long overdue – recognition to Indigenous people and People of Colour creatives and stories, according to Penny Smallacombe.

As the head of Indigenous at Screen Australia, the Maramanindji woman who hails from the Northern Territory herself is an agent of change via a number of ongoing programs and upcoming new initiatives.

“This is both a scary and an exciting time,” she told Lowanna Grant in Media Ring’s The Yarning webinar. “There is a huge responsibility to do a large scale shift to bring more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders into the industry and provide more opportunities for People of Colour to tell their stories.

“I’m deeply saddened that it took the murder of George Floyd in order to be in a place where the industry is finally ready to listen to conversations about racism,...

The St Kilda Film Festival, running over ten days from May19-28, will program four specialty programs unveiled before the full program launch later this month.

A specially curated program direct from the 2015 Palm Springs International ShortFest will be showcased on May 28.

In addition, the chief content officer of online platform Fandor Jonathan Marlow will join this year.s festival, co-curating a program of Fandor's films.

Taking a step-back in time, the festival is showcasing a collection of vintage comedy with the Nostalgia program in partnership with the National Sound and Film Archive (Nsfa)..

The festival will also host an indigenous retrospective, featuring short films by directors such as Tracey Moffatt, Warwick Thornton and Richard Frankland..

.It.s important to highlight our indigenous and overseas contributors among our emerging and established talent", City of Port Phillip Mayor Bernadene Voss said..

"Each year the Festival goes from strength to strength, and...

Cinematographer Don McAlpine, documentary director Jennifer Peedom, producer Helen Bowden and actor/director Damian Walshe-Howling are among the members of the jury announced for the Cockatoo Island Film Festival.

The announcement:

A number of Australia’s award-winning movie heavyweights have been confirmed for the three juries of the Cockatoo Island International Film Festival starting next week.

The juries will be for the Dramatic Feature competition, Documentary section and for Short Films.

The Golden Feather Awards, in six categories, will be presented at a major red carpet event on the island on Saturday night, 27 October. The Festival opens with acclaimed Us film The Master, on Wednesday 24 October.

Veteran cinematographer, Don McAlpine (Predator, Wolverine, Moulin Rouge) will chair the feature jury, award winning documentary film-maker Jennifer Peedom (Miracle on Everest and Solo) the documentary section and actor/director/producer Jeremy Hartley Sims will head the Shorts jury.

Other members of the juries...

Three filmmakers, Darren Dale, Richard Frankland and Pauline Clague, chosen because they are indigenous, will decide who should be the inaugural winner of a new $20,000 fellowship.

The new Young Indigenous Documentary Fellowship is for an Australian indigenous filmmaker with a hot documentary project. Applicants must be aged less than 35 years and have experience in filmmaking and an impressive portfolio of creative work.

They must also have an ambitious documentary project that captures an indigenous Australian point of view.

The deadline for applications is July 31. The expectation is that the winner will be announced at the inaugural Cockatoo Island Film Festival, and that the film will be developed and produced in time to premiere at the following festival.

It is hoped that the fellowship with continue in perpetuity. This first one has been made possible through Nsw Mining and the Cockatoo Institute, a not-for-profit arts and education organisation that hosts the...

A film institute and a mining association have teamed to help young indigenous film-makers turn their stories into documentaries.

The Nsw Mining Young Indigneous Documentary Fellowship is a partnership between Nsw Mining and the Cockatoo Institute, which is the team behind both the Cockatoo Film Festival and the Dungog Film Festival.

The fellowship is worth $20,000 and is now calling for entries.

Nsw Mining was the presenting sponsor of the Dungog Film Festival and is a strategic partner of Cockatoo Island Film Festival.

The fellowship aims to support the development or production of a documentary project by a film-maker 35 years or under that aims to capture their point of view as an Indigenous Australian.

The recipient of the fellowship will be awarded at the inaugural Cockatoo Island Film Festival from 24-28 October, with the film shown at the 2013 event.

The successful applicant will be selected by three leading Indigenous film-makers, Darren Dale,...

Margaret Pomeranz delivered a powerful keynote speech at the opening of the Spaa Conference yesterday in Sydney, and Encore has the full transcript of her meditation on the state of Australian film and television – and why Government and audiences should appreciate the arts a little more.

I’m extremely grateful to Spaa for inviting me to give this keynote speech today. It is the Hector Crawford Memorial Lecture and I want to honour the man today. Hector put Australian television on the map, he made Australian accents acceptable in the media. Do you remember when we could only stomach New Zealanders reading our news because they sounded more English than us? Brian Henderson was a prime example. But more than that Hector validated Australian writers, Australian actors, directors, designers, a whole Australian infrastructure, Some of those people are still working today. In a very significant way Hector created an industry,...