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Phillip Adams today called on filmmakers, writers, painters and other creative types to rally to support the Australian film industry.

Delivering the Hector Crawford Memorial lecture, the ABC radio broadcaster and columnist for The Australian declared the industry.s advocates must not be .fooled into collaborating with the bureaucracies by arguing in their terms..

A former producer and chairman of the Australian Film Commission and the AFI, Adams told the Screen Forever conference, .It is time to form another Team Australia. Based not on dog whistle calls to bigotry but on expressing the sort of cultural and political idealism that was so exhilarating in the glory days of Whitlam.

.It is time to call upon the pantheon of Australia.s creative producers, filmmakers, writers, painters, pundits, public intellectuals and sympathetic pollies . anyone and everyone who can be recruited to the cause..

Adams recalled that the campaigns to properly finance and...

Phillip Adams will deliver. the Hector Crawford Memorial Lecture at the Screen Forever conference at Melbourne.s Crown Conference Centre on Monday November 17..

For half a century Adams has been an imposing figure as a broadcaster, filmmaker, social commentator, satirist and author of more than 20 books.

Gough Whitlam once described him as Australia.s .most perceptive social critic... Some regard him as a godfather of the Australian film industry for his contributions to the renaissance of the industry in the 1970s and 80s.

His producing credits include The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, Don.s Party,. The Getting of Wisdom and Abra Cadabra, and he was Ep on Lonely Hearts and We of the Never Never.

Recognising Adams. 21 years as presenter of Radio National.s Late Night Live, Professor Robert Manne described him as .perhaps the most remarkable broadcaster in the history of this country..

Screen Producers Australia exec director Matt...

This article was originally published in If Magazine #132 (June 2010).

Bruce Beresford When I was going to do Driving Miss Daisy, I offered it to Don McAlpine, but he turned it down. And then I offered it to Russell Boyd but he was doing something else. And then I remembered Peter and I thought .Hang on, I like that bloke Peter James. and said .Do you want to come over here and shoot this low-budget film?. And he did. That was the first.

I did enjoy working with him but we never thought it was anything special. In fact, when we finished the film they were planning not to release it.

We had very similar ideas on lighting and he had tremendously good taste . his lighting was always exqusite. Also, the thing I liked about him (and for that matter Don McAlpine) was that he would vary his style to suit the subject matter,...

MELBOURNE, Australia -- U.S.-based film producer Brian Rosen has been named CEO of Film Finance Corp. Australia, the country's principal government-funded screen investment agency. The appointment ends a protracted recruitment process that lasted more than a year. Rosen, who in recent weeks emerged as a strong contender for the job, is managing director of Rosen Harper Entertainment, Australia, and president of Classic Films U.S. His credits include We of the Never Never, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest and James and the Giant Peach. He also has been CEO of Hoyts Prods. Australia. He will assume his new role at the beginning of next month. By far the most important of Australia's screen funding sources, the FFC receives about $AUS60 million ($37 million) a year to invest in fiction features, TV programs and documentaries.