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Tributes are flowing for Chris Chamberlin, one of the media and entertainment industry.s most popular and respected publicists who died yesterday, 10 days before his 40th birthday.

A senior national publicist for the ABC since 2014, Chamberlin was on holidays in India. The cause of death has not been revealed.

.Chris was highly regarded and respected by everyone who was lucky enough to have known him,. Leisa Bacon, the ABC.s director of audiences, said in an email to staff.

.Chris has managed campaigns for projects across all TV genres - news, factual, entertainment and children.s programs. The list of credits is enormous and Chris knew everything there was to know about developing publicity opportunities for marketing campaigns. He built strong relationships with on-air talent, through to production teams and key media outlets.

.Chris was incredibly committed, working tirelessly to ensure the best possible outcome on every single program and project he was involved with.

Luke Davies.

Screenwriter Luke Davies is back in Sydney for the Australian premiere of his new film Lion, taking place tonight at the State Theatre..

Directed by Top of the Lake.s Garth Davis and produced by Aquarius Films. Angie Fielder and See-Saw.s Emile Sherman, the moving film is already gaining buzz as an Oscar prospect..

Davies. career in film began when he volunteered to write the screenplay adaptation of his novel, Candy, for producers Sherman and Margaret Fink..

After that film was released in 2006, he moved to La, where he now lives in a share-house with Animal Kingdom.s David Michôd and Oyster Farmer.s Alex O.Loughlin and their partners.

Davies has just delivered a script and bible for a six-episode miniseries adaptation of Catch-22, set to be directed by Michôd, who has just finished post-production in London on Netflix Original.War Machine, starring Brad Pitt.

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Luke Davies.

Screenwriter Luke Davies is back in Sydney for the Australian premiere of his new film Lion, taking place tonight at the State Theatre..

Directed by Top of the Lake.s Garth Davis and produced by Aquarius Films. Angie Fielder and See-Saw.s Emile Sherman, the moving film is already gaining buzz as an Oscar prospect..

Davies. career in film began when he volunteered to write the screenplay adaptation of his novel, Candy, for producers Sherman and Margaret Fink..

After that film was released in 2006, Davies moved to La, where he now lives in a share-house with Animal Kingdom.s David Michôd and Oyster Farmer.s Alex O.Loughlin and their partners.

Speaking to If last week in Bondi, the screenwriter had just delivered a script and bible for a six-episode miniseries adaptation of Catch-22, set to be directed by Michôd, who has just finished post-production in London on Netflix Original.War Machine,...

Sam Neill, Sue Milliken, Anthony Buckley (Photo credit: Peter Jackson).

The 71st Australian International Movie Convention wrapped last week, with a delegation of just over 1,000 converging on the Gold Coast for the five-night-four-day convention.

Seven features screened at Aimc, including three Australian films: Don.t Tell — attended by cast members Jack Thompson Am, Rachel Griffiths, Sara West, Gyton Grantley, Martin Sacks and Robert Coleby; Jasper Jones — introduced by director Rachel Perkins; and Transmission's Oscar contender Lion — attended by mother and son Sue and Saroo Brierley, on whose story the film is based.

Sam Neill followed in the footsteps of Jack Thompson, winning the Aimc Lifetime Achievement award, and used the occassion to read out amusing testimonials from the likes of Bryan Brown, Rob Sitch and John Cleese congratulating him on his award..

Neill.s Hunt for the Wilderpeople director Taika Waititi watched on, fresh from the set of Thor: Ragnarok,...

Sam Neill, Sue Milliken, Anthony Buckley (Photo credit: Peter Jackson).

The 71st Australian International Movie Convention wrapped last week, with a delegation of just over 1,000 converging on the Gold Coast for the five-night-four-day convention.

Seven features screened at Aimc, including three Australian films: Don.t Tell — attended by cast members Jack Thompson Am, Rachel Griffiths, Sara West, Gyton Grantley, Martin Sacks and Robert Coleby; Jasper Jones — introduced by director Rachel Perkins; and Transmission's Oscar contender Lion — attended by mother and son Sue and Saroo Brierley, on whose story the film is based.

Sam Neill followed in the footsteps of Jack Thompson, winning the Aimc Lifetime Achievement award, and used the occassion to read out amusing testimonials from the likes of Bryan Brown, Rob Sitch and John Cleese congratulating him on his award..

Neill.s Hunt for the Wilderpeople director Taika Waititi watched on, fresh from the set of Thor: Ragnarok,...

Producer Tony Buckley has challenged the Government to verify the economic benefits it claims will be generated by the Walt Disney Co. shooting 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo in Australia.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Arts Minister Tony Burke said the production would create up to 2,000 jobs and utilise goods and services from nearly 1,000 local businesses when they announced a $21.6 million incentive to Disney in April.

Buckley, who has produced more than 30 films, telemovies, miniseries and documentaries in a career spanning 50 years, describes those claims as .absolute arrant nonsense..

He said the biggest offshore production in Australia, Steven Spielberg.s HBO miniseries The Pacific, employed approximately 480 contractors and freelance workers. He estimates that no more than 40 or 50 businesses, including post production houses, benefit from any single production.

"I believe the figures just don.t add up and this places a question mark over the validity of the information being circulated,...

HollywoodNews.com: Clay Epstein, VP of Sales & Acquisitions of The Little Film Company announced today that the company’s new label Accelerator will be presenting the World premiere of the Australian thriller The Clinic at this year’s 14th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival in Korea.

Starring Andy Whitfield, best known to worldwide audiences as Spartacus in Sam Raimi’s “Spartacus: Blood and Sand,” The Clinic is a frighteningly real story inspired by true events that asks just how far will a mother go to save her child?

Written and directed by James Rabbitts, the film also stars Tabrett Bethell, (“Legend of the Seeker”) alongside Whitfield as Beth his pregnant Fiancé who is kidnapped while traveling across country. She wakes alone in an isolated clinic to a mother’s worst nightmare. Her child has been abducted. Trapped and facing an unknown enemy, Beth struggles to piece together the clinic’s deadly secret.

The low budget Australian film Black Water, about a crocodile terrorising a group of tourists in Northern Australia has just been released in Australia via iTunes.   The film, which stars Diana Glenn (Satisfaction, Oyster Farmer) and Maeve Dermody (Beautiful Kate, the upcoming Griff the Invisible), and which was sold in 76 countries and released theatrically in the UK, Mexico, Japan, Poland and Malaysia, was almost impossible to see in an Australian cinema, apart from select screenings. It has been available on DVD for a while now, but has finally hit iTunes, where its target audience may discover this unfairly neglected, innovative gem.

Yet again, Hollywood thinks that it's cute to insult women and those who love romance by offering up films like The Back-up Plan, starring Jennifer Lopez (Gigli, Monster in Law) and Alex O'Loughlin (Moonlight, Oyster Farmer, Feed).

The opening credits warn the audience this is a two-dimensional fairy tale, with a vapid fashionsita walking around seeing everything turn into baby references. Then we get to meet Zoe (Lopez), who likes baby-doll dresses and nosebleed stilettos and while dressing like a model, just can't find The One. Zoe opts to go solo and have a baby on her own ... and then has an improbable "meet cute" in a cab with Stan (O'Loughlin), the guy of her dreams. You can imagine the rest.

The Back-up Plan feels like a sitcom, and it's not surprising; writer Kate Angelo was a producer on Will & Grace. Director Alan Poul (Swingtown, Six Feet Under) may have some decent TV credits,...

  For the crew behind the seminal Australian classic Wake in Fright, to have their film screen again in cinemas must have seemed impossible. A box office flop on its original release, the film was thought to have been lost forever. The original negative was eventually located in the United States in Pittsburgh marked for destruction. After a decade long search by Wake in Fright's producer Tony Buckley (Caddie, Oyster Farmer) the film has now been digitally restored as a pristine print, a painstaking process which took two years.

Alex O’Loughlin had been working as an actor long before I became aware of him. He was born in Australia and started his acting career there with movies such as "The Oyster Farmer," "Feed" and "The Invisible". He also did the Australian miniseries "The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant" playing her husband. Alex made his way to the American shores in the 6th season of FX’s "The Shield" as a new member of the strike team, "The Holiday" starring Kate Winslet and Jude Law in 2006 and the 2007 movie "August Rush" with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Keri Russell. But I found Alex on CBS’ "Moonlight". When I saw the ads for "Moonlight" in September of 2007, I knew I would watch because Alex caught my attention and I can’t resist a vampire story! At its heart, "Moonlight" was about drama, romance and adventure. As we were seeing the world through his eyes,...

SYDNEY -- Reflecting a trend in earlier awards nominations, members of the Australian Film Institute on Friday favored Rowan's Woods' Little Fish, John Hillcoat's The Proposition and Sarah Watt's Look Both Ways, which dominated the noms in all major categories. Unlike the selections announced earlier this week for the Inside Film Awards and the Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards (HR 10/19), Greg McLean's hit Wolf Creek, while scoring a best director nomination, failed to earn an AFI nom for best film, nor did lead actor John Jarratt get a nod. Instead, Alun Bollinger's drama Oyster Farmer took the fourth nomination for best film, although helmer Anna Reeves wasn't nominated for best director.

SYDNEY -- Two much-anticipated Australian feature films -- Rowan Woods' Little Fish, starring Cate Blanchett, and John Hillcoat's Australian Outback tale The Proposition -- will be the first to screen for Australian Film Institute members in the run-up to November's AFI Awards. The AFI announced Friday that 17 feature films are in contention for the 41-year-old AFI Awards. AFI members determine the winners following screenings that will commence Sept. 7 in Sydney. Other movies up for gongs include such audience favorites as Robert Connolly's Three Dollars, which stars David Wenham, Frances O'Connor and Sarah Wynter, and Anna Reeves' rural drama The Oyster Farmer.

• The Sydney Film Festival is in its last stretch finishing this Saturday and it barely drops the quality in its second week. The festival, and its team of organizers and sponsors carry themselves in prestige by providing the very best of films that otherwise may never get screened here. Films that Australians have been waiting for are finally hitting our shores. The ‘Red Hot Docs’ has finally brought down the hotly anticipated Rock School and Tarnation.The largest strand of the festival’s program, ‘Contemporary World Cinema’, has brought films from numerous nations whose cinema typically isn’t imported here. The second week has had films from nations that range from Mexico, including Duck Season, through to Denmark, most notably Brothers and even to films within our own borders including this year’s answer to Somersault and Oyster Farmer.Duck SeasonBefore the feature of Duck Season, a short entitled

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LONDON -- The Cinema Guild has picked up North American distribution rights to Anna Reeves' Oyster Farmer, Australia- and U.K- based movie sales and financing house Beyond Films said Thursday. Cinema Guild plans to give the movie a platform release this summer, Beyond said. No further details were disclosed. The film, which stars Kerry Armstrong, David Field, Jim Norton, Alex O'Lachlan, Diana Glenn and Jack Thompson, tells the story of an inept thief who finds salvation by going to work in an isolated community of oyster farmers. Shot entirely on location on the Hawkesbury River in Australia, the movie is a U.K. and Australian co-production. The deal was hammered out by Beyond Films' head of sales and acquisitions Hilary Davis and Ryan Krivoshey at the Cinema Guild. Australia's Dendy Films will release Oyster in Australia and New Zealand.

The film section of Australia Week, an annual initiative of the Australian Consulate-General of Los Angeles to promote Australian trade, kicks off today with the U.S. premiere of Anna Reeves' Oyster Farmer at the Egyptian Theater. Other film events include a screening of recent Australian shorts and Somersault, winner of 13 Australian Film Institute Awards in 2004. On Saturday, 1,200 guests attended a dinner to honor the achievements of Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, and country music artist Keith Urban. Australia Week targets film, music, dance and art; food and wine; tourism sports and fashion; and culture and history. Associated events include the Rosemount Australian Film and Style Festival.

TORONTO -- The Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday announced world premieres for U.S. filmmaker David Gordon Green's Undertow and U.K. helmer Michael Winterbottom's Nine Songs and a North American premiere for Claire Denis' L'intrus. In all, 62 titles were announced as Toronto programmers unveiled film bookings for the Discovery sidebar for emerging talent, the Vision program for experimental film and the Wavelengths forum for video artists. Toronto's Discovery lineup will present 28 features from 23 countries, including German director Hendrik Holzemann's feature film debut, Off Beat; Xiao Jiang's Electric Shadows, from China; U.S. filmmakers Lori Silverbush and Michael Skolnik's On the Outs, which portrays three Latino girls in New Jersey; Oyster Farmer, an Australia/United Kingdom romantic comedy by Anna Reeves; French director Lucile Hadzihalilovic's coming-of-age tale Innocence; Saving Face, which stars Joan Chen and comes from U.S. filmmaker Alice Wu; Macedonian filmmaker Svetozar Ristovski's Mirage; Ra'up McGee's thriller Autumn, a French-American film; Pete Travis' Omagh, an Ireland-United Kingdom co-production looking at a tragic 1998 IRA bombing in Ireland; and from Germany, Marco Kreuzpaintner's Summer Storm.