Written and directed by S. Shakthidharan, “The Laugh of Lakshmi” is told in English and Tamil and features Bharathanatyam (classical Indian dance) and Carnatic music. Shakthi's epic Sri Lankan-Australian play “Counting and Cracking” won 7 Helpmann Awards including Best New Australian Work in 2019 while "The Jungle and the Sea" won 4 Sydney Theatre Awards in 2023, including Best Mainstage Work. The film is produced by John Maynard and Vivek Rangachari.
Shakthi describes "The Laugh of Lakshmi" as a story of a mother and a son separated by war. The mother, a celebrated classical Indian dancer, sends her young son, also a brilliant dancer, to the care of her brother in Sydney. Despite twenty-five years of separation and vastly different communities; her's a Tamil women farming co-operative and IDP camps; and his in corporate Australia with a forbidden love; each slowly finds the courage to offer themselves to each other. Mother and son discover before it’s too late, that there is greater strength in being vulnerable and compassionate than being successful.
Community Partner - Palmera
Developed with Support from Screen Australia.
Yuwu, Yuwu!
Waligarra ngayu
Waligarra nyamba gudirrgudirr
Nyamba wubardu bandarlmarra guwayi
Gala wanggabula jayida wangal jarrangu
Marlu buru, marlu wula, marlu ngarrungunil
Gawu minanyan jiya
Wirdu wangal
Wirdu nagula
Manyja wula
Yuwu, Yuwu!
Don’t muck around!
Look out!
Listen to me
Listen to this warning bird
This little bird ‘guwayi’
Big cyclone going to come for us
No country, no water, no people
Big wind
Big tides
Lots of rain
You better watch out! (1)
“Gudirr Gudirr” is an invitation to listen.
This immersive 3-channel video and sound installation was developed from Dalisa Pigram’s solo performance of the same name. It was first realised in 2013 with Marrugeku – the intercultural dance company based between Sydney and Broome – where Pigram is choreographer and co-artistic director alongside director and dramaturg Rachael Swain. Richly layered and deeply personal, Pigram’s dynamic movement and spoken word in Yawuru, English and the local vernacular of Broome Aboriginal/English represents an embodiment of the past, encounter with the present and redetermining of the future. Gudirr Gudirr is directed by Queensland-based visual artist Vernon Ah Kee who brings his particular aesthetic of text-based imagery, portraiture and hand-held footage, natural extensions of the stripped-back set design and video installation he created for the original stage production. This iteration of the work was shot on location in Broome during 2019.
For thousands of years the call of the guwayi signalling the change in tide kept the Aboriginal people of the region safe from the dangers of the ocean. In Gudirr Gudirr the call urges us to listen to the rhythms embedded in nature, and to the knowledge passed on by Elders. The call is a cry for the devastating impact of colonisation on the Aboriginal people of this Country – of massacres, forced separation and intergenerational trauma – and an alarm to warn of the dangers still present. Pigram embodies the anger and exhaustion of a community where the rates of suicide among Aboriginal people are seven times higher than the national average. (2) The complex history of the Kimberley and the exchange between Aboriginal people and Asian migrants who settled in the region is also a crucial element of this work. The stories of Aboriginal and Asian relationships in northern Australia have rarely been told as European colonisers controlled the legal status and rights of these people and systematically organised the separation of families, deportation of Asian men in relationships with Aboriginal women and denied a generation of children their cultural heritage. (3)
Through Gudirr Gudirr, Pigram responds to this call. Her choreographic language is a hybrid drawn from her ancestry; traditional Aboriginal movement (her family come from the Yawuru people of Broome and Bardi people of the Dampier Peninsula) is combined with the martial art silat (from her Malay heritage), as well as gymnastics, the observation of animal movements, and contemporary culture such as breakdance. Pigram enables this array of rich and complex movement to take new form through her body. There is a similar sense of unbroken tradition and resilience in Pigram’s use of Yawuru; at home in Broome, another of her roles is as a language teacher, having worked alongside and studied Yawuru from one of the few remaining Elders who speak the language fluently.
Ah Kee is best known for his searing text works that expose the systemic racism in Australian culture as well as remarkable large-scale charcoal portraits of his family. His direction tempers Pigram’s words and movement with text on screen and frequent freezes of the frame on her face or body in states of contortion. The incorporation of hand-held footage of young Aboriginal men street fighting in Broome and a lizard desperately trying to free its head from a discarded beer can provides a stark contrast to Pigram’s absolute physical control on screen. Gudirr Gudirr is the result of a long collaboration between two of the most important artistic voices working in Australia today with a message that must be heard.
——- Text by Beatrice Gralton - Curator visual arts, Carriageworks.
(1) Dalisa Pigram, translation from Yawuru to English of the opening monologue from Gudirr Gudirr, 2013.
(2) Nathan Hondros, ‘If the Kimberley was a country, it would have the worst suicide rate in the world’, WA Today, 3 Aug 2018, at com.au/national/western-australia/if-the-kimberley-was-a-country-it-would-have-the-worst-suicide-rate-in-the-world-20180802-p4zv3s.html, accessed 1 Feb 2021.
(3) See Regina Ganter, Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Perth, 2006.
Images: Gudirr Gudirr (video still) 2020-2021 3-channel digital video, colour image courtesy the artists, Marrugeku Inc and Felix Media Pty Ltd (c) the artists. Photograph: Emma Paine
“Darling Darling” is a two-channel video installation exploring hierarchies of care, romanticism and the enduring colonial gaze upon the Australian landscape and the devastation of Australia’s third largest waterway, the Barka Darling River.
The installation presents two contrasting perspectives of the same body of water: the detailed work by art conservators to restore the 19th century painting, “The flood in the Darling”, 1890, by colonial painter WC Piguenit, and the environmental crisis facing the Barka Darling today, as a result of drought, climate change, and severe water mis-management. Presented simultaneously, the sounds from these two contrasting locations leak into one another, blurring the boundaries between these two seemingly distinct treatments of care and implicating the viewer in the contradictions of the Gallery. The film is a timely investigation into the nature of environmental care and neglect, scrutinising the colonial gaze on Country and the relationship between pictorial framing and ecological destruction.
“Darling Darling” was filmed at various sites on Barkindji Country, under the guidance of Barkindji Elder Uncle Badger Bates, and on the sovereign lands of the Gadigal at the Art Gallery of NSW.
Darling Darling is the result of Australia's most significant commission for moving image art, the Ian Potter Moving Image Commission (IPMIC), an initiative of the Ian Potter Cultural Trust and ACMI.
images: Gabriella Hirst "Darling Darling" 2021 (c) the artist
We Need To Talk About Fire brings into focus critical issues that the devastation of the catastrophic Black Summer Bushfires brought to the front of the national consciousness and international media: climate change, fire management and practices, and the role of fire in regeneration. In NSW, the last week of November 2020 set the record for the two hottest days during the month of November in 160 years of record-keeping. Bushfires are, and will always be, a part of living in Australia, and keeping these conversations active is critical as we live with fire as an impact of ongoing climate change.
Australia’s 2019 representation for the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is the work ASSEMBLY by Angelica Mesiti, produced by Bridget Ikin.
Angelica Mesiti’s ASSEMBLY is a three-channel video inspired by the historical shape of the community circle and amphitheatre. ASSEMBLY establishes as an evolving set of translations from the written word to stenographic codes then music, and performance. Filmed in the Senate chambers of Italy and Australia, the three screens of ASSEMBLY travel through the corridors, meeting rooms and parliaments of government while performers, representing the multitude of ancestries that constitute cosmopolitan Australia, gather, disassemble and re-unite, demonstrating the strength and creativity of a plural community.
Based between Sydney and Paris, Angelica worked with more than 40 Australian arts professionals to realise the work. “Collaboration is an important part of my practice, and a central element in the work itself. ASSEMBLY draws on a need to come together, to exchange and to learn from each other. So I thank and acknowledge the dancers, singers, musicians, film and sound practitioners, the designers, architect, installation and project team who helped me bring this work to fruition,” she said.
Artist Angelica Mesiti said, “Translation has been a particular enquiry and methodology for me for a number of years. In ASSEMBLY, I explore the space where communication moves from verbal and written forms to non-verbal, gestural and musical forms. The latter creates a sort of code upon which meaning, memory and imagination can be overlaid.”
ASSEMBLY was acquired by the National Gallery of Australia, where it will be presented from 29th October 2022 - 29th January 2023.
Australia Council for the Arts
Images: Angelica Mesiti, ASSEMBLY, 2019 (production still) three-channel video installation in architectural amphitheater. HD video projections, colour, six-channel mono sound, 25 mins, dimensions variable. © Photography: Bonnie Elliot.
Commissioned by the Australia Council for the Arts on the occasion of the 58th International Art Exhibition-La Biennale di Venezia, courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Australia and Galerie Allen, Paris.
Available to watch on Vimeo
A savvy celebration of the inspirational artworks created for Kaldor Public Art Projects over 50 years, with artists including Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Marina Abramović, Jeff Koons, and Gilbert & George.
50 years ago, Sydneysiders were shocked and the art world astonished by Christo's wrapping of the Little Bay coastline. Hungarian migrant and entrepreneur John Kaldor, who initiated this monumental work, has said “it all started with a stale sandwich, in Christo's studio in 1968 New York.” Now, Project 34 (by Asad Raza) is about to be unveiled, and UK artist Michael Landy is designing the exhibition to celebrate 50 years of Kaldor Public Art Projects.
It All Started With a Stale Sandwich is the third recipient of the Documentary Feature Fund initiative. Each film funded through the initiative premieres at the Sydney Film Festival and a 60 minute version broadcasts on ABC.
itallstartedwithastalesandwich.com
SCREEN AUSTRALIA and THE AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION present, in association with CREATE NSW a FELIX MEDIA PRODUCTION.
Cinematography JUSTINE KERRIGAN
Editor ELLIOTT MAGEN
Sound Designer LIAM EGAN
Composer MUNRO MELANO
Executive producers BRIDGET IKIN, DAVID GROSS
Producer JOHN MAYNARD
Writer and Director SAMANTHA LANG
© 2019 Felix Media and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Directed by Kate Blackmore.
Kate Blackmore looks at motherhood and mobility, film and feminism, through the prism of Margaret Dodd’s classic short THIS WOMAN IS NOT A CAR (1982).
Blackmore and Dodd are both Adelaide-born artists, making films a generation apart. Sitting in an FX Holden, Blackmore talks to Dodd, and her friends, about the context in which her film was made. Like many of her generation, Dodd yearned for a Holden. For suburban women in the 1960s, owning a car was a form of liberation not often realised. Shaped by her experiences, Dodd’s film is a nightmarish vision of a young mother trapped in suburbia. Dodd is best known for her ceramic Holdens, which also feature in the film.
The conversations between the two artists are intercut with footage of 70s Adelaide, interviews with Holden enthusiasts and ex-factory workers, and a car procession at Adelaide's last-remaining drive-in cinema.
Blackmore's film, THE WOMAN AND THE CAR is a close-up look at how Dodd, Adelaide and, more broadly, the Australian national identity have been influenced by the presence of the car. The recent closure of the Holden factory in Adelaide marks the end of an era for the ‘all-Australian’ vehicle – and adds an extra layer of poignancy when considering the resonances of Dodd’s work on the way we see ourselves.
Duration: 27 mins 55 seconds
Sound: 5.1
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Australian theatrical premiere: Adelaide Film Festival, 14 October 2018 Australian broadcast: ABC 11th February 2020 10:20pm
KEY CREDITS
Written and Directed by KATE BLACKMORE
Produced by BRIDGET IKIN
Cinematographer EMMA PAINE
Editor ELLIOTT MAGEN
Sound Designer LIAM EGAN
Composer CHUN YIN RAINBOW CHAN
Financed with the assistance of SCREEN AUSTRALIA
Financed with the assistance of the SOUTH AUSTRALIAN FILM CORPORATION
Produced in association with the AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION Manager of Arts RICHARD BUCKHAM | Executive Producer KALITA CORRIGAN
Produced with the assistance of DEFINITION STUDIOS Produced with the assistance of the ADELAIDE FILM FESTIVAL Produced with the assistance of the HIVE FUND
Produced by FELIX MEDIA
Taking the Danish tradition of communal group singing as a starting point, Angelica Mesiti’s Mother Tongue explores the way diverse communities in and around Aarhus connect to their cultural heritage through music, dance and song.
The work was produced with the participation of a range of performers from Aarhus including school children, employee’s of Aarhus Kommune, the Ramallah Boy Scouts troupe, the Jaffra Dancers, Gellerup Circus School and residents of the housing development, Gellerupparken. From popular radio hits to traditional folk songs, Somali blues, marching drills and wedding dances, Mother Tongue explores a series of communal, creative activities shared across the urban, civic and residential spaces of one European city.
Mother Tongue uses music as a way to sketch a portrait of society as we see it today, where individuals and groups seek ways to maintain their own cultural values while integrating into a new place rather than assimilating. Musical tropes like synchronicity, harmony, dissonance and discordant associations build to generate an image of juxtaposed realities. Mesiti has created a complex new melody where traditional and newer unexpected rhythms can evolve.
Commissioned by Aarhus 2017- European Capital of Culture with additional funds from the Adelaide Biennale.
Credits and technical specifications
Images: Installation view O space Aarhus, presented as a part of the European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017 programme. Photos by Lucas Adler.
Written and directed by Benjamin Gilmour and produced by John Maynard, Jirga is a feature drama about former Australian soldier, Mike Wheeler (Sam Smith), who returns to Afghanistan to find the family of a man he killed in combat.
Duration: 78 mins
Sound: 5.1
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Languages: Pashto and English with English subtitles
Directed by Kate Blackmore.
The Glass Bedroom is a six part series profiling six Australian artists who use Instagram to create bold new works to share with their thousands of followers. The series will take viewers inside the ‘glass bedrooms’ of these Instagram artists, to explore the relationship between authenticity, identity, and social media in their work. The series was commissioned for Art Bites a joint initiative from ABC Television and Screen Australia, with Screen NSW finance to encourage new arts content from early career filmmakers.
Duration: 6 x 5 min episodes
Sound: 5.1
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Australian premiere: ABC iView 16 January 2017
KEY CREDITS
SCREEN AUSTRALIA, AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION and SCREEN NSW presents a FELIX MEDIA PRODUCTION
Director KATE BLACKMORE
Producer BETHANY BRUCE
Executive producer BRIDGET IKIN
Cinematography BONNIE ELLIOTT, CHRISTINE NG, SKY DAVIES
Sound recordists DANIEL MIAU, GILLIAN ARTHUR, NICK BATTERHAM
Editor ELLIOTT MAGEN
Sound designer LIAM EGAN
Music CHUN YIN RAINBOW CHAN
Stanley (James Rolleston), a naive first year drama student meets Isolde and begins a sweet, first love affair. Goaded by Hannah (Kerry Fox), the charismatic, domineering Head of Acting, Stanley uncovers a talent and ambition he didn’t know he had. When his group hits on a sex scandal that involves Isolde’s tennis prodigy sister as fertile material for their end-of-year show, Stanley finds himself profoundly torn.
The Rehearsal, directed by Alison Maclean and written by Maclean and author Emily Perkins, is based on the novel by Man Booker award-winner Eleanor Catton, and produced by Bridget Ikin and Trevor Haysom.
The Rehearsal was financed by New Zealand film commission and NZ Lottery Grants Board, in association with ANZ Bank of New Zealand Limited, Park Pictures Media Partners, Definition Limited, and Film Buff Pty Ltd.
International sales: Mongrel Media
Australasia: Footprint Films
A video installation by Hossein Valamanesh.
Char Soo places us in a four-sided Iranian bazaar to contemplate movement, human interaction and the passing of time. Char Soo is a metaphor for Iran, a country which has been subject to invasion, religious and cultural interaction for centuries. This immersive four-screen video projection aims to place the audience at its centre.
Screens: 4
Duration: 27 minutes
Sound: stereo
Credits
Director: Hossein Valamanesh, in collaboration with Nassiem Valamanesh
Producer: Bridget Ikin
Cinematographer: Nassiem Valamanesh and Mohammad Reza Jahanpanah
First Camera Assistant: Hadi Manoochehrpanah
Second Camera Assistant: Alireza Izadi
Editor: Nassiem Valamanesh
Line Producer: Mohammad Reza Jahanpanah
Sound Designer: Liam Egan
Production Manager Iran: Mohammad Reza Moradi
Production Co-ordinator Australia: Bethany Bruce
Screenings
Adelaide Film Festival 2015 - Samstag Museum – University of South Australia
Friday 9th October – Friday 4th December 2015
Carriageworks
9th June – 17th July 2016
William Yang: Blood Links examines the Chinese diaspora and how family bonds endure. Both William Yang’s paternal and maternal grandfathers came to Australia from the south of China in the 1880s to dig for gold. Both his parents were born here. William grew up on a tobacco farm in Dimbulah in North Queensland and was brought up as an assimilated Australian with his Chinese side denied and unacknowledged. In his mid-life William claimed his Chinese heritage. This led him to research his own family. He travelled around Australia and the USA piecing together a family history. He probably has met more relatives than anyone else in the family. He has scores of relatives from all walks of life in these two countries, some rich, but most are ordinary folk with menial jobs, and most cannot speak a word of Chinese.
For The Calling, artist Angelica Mesiti has travelled to the village of Kuskoy in Northern Turkey, the island of La Gomera in The Canary Islands and the Island of Evia in Greece where whistling languages are all still in use. For these communities, whistling languages are in a process of transformation from their traditional use as tools for communication across vast lands into tourist attractions and cultural artefacts and are being taught to local school children. The Calling is a poignant exploration of ancient human traditions evolving and adapting to the modern world. Mesiti’s work speaks to the tenacity and creativity of traditional cultures in the face of technical progress and environmental flux.
Angelica Mesiti is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery. The Calling was Produced by Felix Media - Bridget Ikin and Jodie Passmore. The inaugural Ian Potter Moving Image Commission: a collaboration between The Ian Potter Cultural Trust and ACMI.
Photographer William Yang came out in Sydney in the early 70s, a period of great social change. “I never consciously came out as a gay man, I was swept out by events at the time.” He has seen the formation of a gay activist culture in the 70s, the commercialisation of the gay scene in the 80s, and lived through the devastating effects of AIDS in the early 90s. With myriad images and his trademark candid narration, in Friends of Dorothy Yang leads us though this beguiling era of sexual discovery, politics, love and loss.
Produced by Donna Chang; directed by Martin Fox.
In the Ear of the Tyrant is a three-screen video installation by Angelica Mesiti. In collaboration with Italian vocalist Enza Pagliara, Mesiti re-imagines the grieving ritual, depicting a vocal performance on location at the Ear of Dionysius, an ancient limestone cave carved out of the Temenites Hill in the Sicilian city of Syracuse.
The Dream of Perfection is as extraordinary as its provocative subject matter, the dramatic story of the building of the Sydney Opera House, culminating in Utzon’s departure from the project. Director John Weiley was commissioned in 1968 to make the documentary Autopsy on a Dream by then BBC2 controller David Attenborough, and following its only screening on the BBC, it was destroyed – literally chopped to pieces on the chopping block. Miraculously, a mute print of Autopsy on a Dream was rediscovered in a BBC vault this year, and has now been restored with sound saved by John Weiley, and with a new prologue.
In the 70s and 80s, photographer William Yang captured Sydney’s emerging artistic, literary, theatrical and queer circles, as well as his friendships with artists, filmmakers, writers and fashion designers such as Brett Whiteley, Patrick White, Jim Sharman, Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee. With myriad images and his trademark candid narration, Yang leads us though this beguilingly decadent and creative era. Through the lens of his dynamic friendships, William documents the impact of the AIDS crisis, the outrageous fashion, the drug and party culture, and the bohemian social scene.Nothing was off limits; William was always where the action was.
Coral: Rekindling Venus is an immersive dome-installation by Lynette Wallworth; an extraordinary journey into a mysterious realm of fluorescent coral reefs, bioluminescent sea creatures and rare marine life, revealing a complex community living in the oceans most threatened by climate change.
A video installation by Angelica Mesiti.
Mesiti’s ‘band’ is made up of four individual films, which document the performances of musicians who work outside official structures of presentation. Cameroon, Geraldine Zongo drums the water in a Parisian public pool. Algerian, Mohammed Lamourie sings and plays his Casio keyboard in the Paris Metro system. Sudanese, Asim Goreshi whistles in his Brisbane taxi cab. And Mongolian, Bukhchuluun Ganburged (Bukhu) plays the Mongolian morin khuur (horse head fiddle) and throat sings on a Newtown corner. Each player delivers a distinct sound with a particularity of technique that is inflected with its cultural origin.
Arranged as a video ensemble of four screens facing inwards, Mesiti syncopates all performances and compresses the audiences’ concentration. We witness each performer individually, before a cacophony is produced by playing the four soundtracks together.
Technical specifications and credits
Read some reviews:
Artist Angelica Mesiti brings Hurstville to life after dark. The Begin-Again is a dynamic, vibrant contemporary art tour which runs from dusk to midnight.
The Begin-Again featured four large-scale video installations and a live performance in Hurstville’s laneways and shopping centre. Involving over 90 local residents aged between five and 88 years old, it is a showcase of vivid imagery: dancers waltz across a lantern-lit skyline; children stage a historic pantomime; a local tenor sings an ode to the river; neon coloured cars pulsate with smoke and music; a Chinese New Year dragon moves fluidly to beating drums on a high rise building. Through a deliberate remix of sub-cultures and traditions, this unique public art event transformed the local landscape into images of striking beauty Across two nights on 1 and 2 April 2011.
Angelica Mesiti (2011), for C3West Project and the MCA. Multi Channel Installation in Hurstville. Produced by Bridget Ikin and Jodie Passmore.
Read some reviews: RealTime, The Australian, and Sydney Morning Herald.
Technical specifications and credits.
The Begin-Again publication (Museum of Contemporary Art Australia)
Featured in Civic Actions: Artists Practices Beyond the Museum
art + soul is a three-part 1 hr documentary series made by Warwick Thornton & Hetti Perkins.
art + soul is the powerful and emotionally engaging television series about contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, and the artists that create it.
Hetti Perkins, the writer and presenter of art + soul, is an Eastern Arrernte and Kalkadoon desert woman, Senior Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), daughter of political activist Charles Perkins and sister of filmmaker Rachel Perkins (First Australians, Bran Nue Dae).
Directed by Warwick Thornton; written and presented by Hetti Perkins; produced by Bridget Ikin and Jo-anne McGowan.
Funded by Screen Australia in association with Screen NSW, Art Gallery of New South Wales, and with the assistance of the Australia Council for the Arts. Developed and produced in association with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
My Year Without Sex is a kind of a love story about all the big questions, and even more of the small ones. Over one messy year, Ross and Natalie navigate their children, nits, housework, birthdays, Christmas, faith, football, job insecurity, more nits, and whether they will ever have sex again.
Written and directed by Sarah Watt; produced by Bridget Ikin; associated producer Barbara Masel.
East Timor, 1975. As Indonesia prepares to invade the tiny nation of East Timor, five Australian based journalists go missing.
Four weeks later, veteran foreign correspondent Roger East is lured to East Timor by the young and charismatic Jose Ramos-Horta to tell the story of his country and investigate the fate of the missing men. As East's determination to uncover the truth grows, the threat of invasion intensifies and an unlikely friendship develops between the last foreign correspondent in East Timor and the man who will become President.
Balibo is a political thriller that tells the true story of crimes that have been covered up for over thirty years.
Directed by Robert Connolly; written by David Williamson and Robert Connolly; produced by John Maynard.
Romulus, My Father is based on Raimond Gaita's critically acclaimed memoir and won the AFI Award for Best Film, 2007.
It tells the story of Romulus (Eric Bana), his wife Christina (Franka Potente) and their struggle in the face of great adversity to bring up their son, Raimond. It is a story of impossible love that celebrates the unbreakable bond between father and son.
Meryl imagines disaster coming from every direction – train crashes, man-eating sharks, baby-eating killer whales … and then there’s Nick.
The most critically acclaimed Australian film of 2005, Look Both Ways is an innovative mix of animation and live action, set over a scorchingly hot weekend, when people dealing with unexpected events find their lives intersecting. Nick visits a doctor for a routine medical and is given a devastating diagnosis but has to wait until Monday for specialist advice. Meryl, returning from a funeral, has until Monday to finish her project or lose her job. Andy is thrown by his girlfriend's ultimatum and has to consider the news of her unplanned pregnancy. The convergence of their paths creates an intriguing picture; intimate, universal and uplifting.
Written and directed by Sarah Watt; produced by Bridget Ikin; associate producer Barbara Masel.
Festivals
Opening night, Adelaide Film Festival 2005.
Discovery Award: Toronto Film Festival, 2005.
FIPRESCI Award, Brisbane film Festival, 2005.
Special Screening: Critics’ Week, Cannes 2006.
Queensland Literary Awards 2004: Best Film Script.
Awards
4 AFI Awards, 2005: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Tony Hayes)
5 Film Critics Circle awards, 2005: Best Film, Director, Actor (William McInnes), Screenplay, Editing
3 IF Awards, 2005: Best Director, Screenplay, Editing
Most Popular Film: Adelaide Film Festival, 2005, Brisbane Film Festival, 2005
Best Screenplay: Mar del Plata Film Festival, 2006
Best Actress (Justine Clarke): Mar del Plata Film Festival, 2006
Critics Award: Rotterdam Film Festival 2006; NatFilm Festival (Denmark) 2006
Audience Award: Best Narrative Feature: San Francisco Film Festival 2006
Best Actress (Justine Clarke): Vladivostock Film Festival, 2006
Audience Award: Womens’ Film Festival, Dortmund, Cologne, Germany 2006
Nominated European Film Academy: Non-European Film Award category 2005
Three Dollars is the story of Eddie (David Wenham), an honest, compassionate man who finds himself with a wife, a child, and three dollars.
Eddie's world revolves around the three women in his life: his brilliant wife Tanya (Frances O'Connor), a passionate academic, their six year old daughter Abby (Joanna Hunt-Prokhovnik), who heightens the stakes on every decision Eddie makes, and his childhood sweetheart, the beautiful, privileged Amanda (Sarah Wynter), who re-appears in his life with mathematical certainty every nine and a half years.
At any other time the world would have smiled on Eddie. But times have changed and the world values other things.
Surviving with a blend of self-depreciating wit, spirited sensitivity and a big heart, Eddie's life is rich with the pleasures and pains of love, family, friendship and marriage.
But with only three dollars to his name Eddie will be faced with a choice that will change the direction of his life forever.
Directed by Robert Connolly; produced by John Maynard.
"I'm like God but with a better suit," declares Centabank CEO, Simon O'Reilly (Anthony LaPaglia) with pride. Welcome to the world of The Bank, ripe with avarice and corruption, where O'Reilly and his ilk can thrive and honest Aussie battlers lose everything.
Enter Jim Doyle (David Wenham) a maverick mathematician who has devised a formula to predict the fluctuations of the stock market. When he joins O'Reilly's fold, he must first prove his loyalty to the "greed is good" ethos. Which way will he go? What does he have to hide?
A heady, exciting thriller where imagination, genius and humanity collide with unabashed greed.
Written and directed by Robert Connolly; produced by John Maynard.
'No evidence, just a smell of sex and violence'
Lesbian private investigator Jill Fitzpatrick (Susie Porter - Mullet, Better Than Sex) is between jobs and between partners, when she gets a call to take on a missing person case.
The case is a literature student called Mickey (Abbie Cornish) who frequents poetry readings and hero worships Sydney's senior poets, to whom she also pens her own, highly emotive and sexually confronting poems.
Jill interviews Mickey's lecturer, Diana (Kelly McGillis - Witness, Top Gun) but finds herself instantly attracted to this sensuous, mysterious - and married - woman. Will passion get in the way of her profession as Diana becomes a suspect? And can Jill risk her own life on the way to discovering the awful truth?
Written by Anne Kennedy; directed by Samantha Lang; produced by John Maynard.
Brett Sprague returns to his family home after twelve months in jail. Things have changed while he has been away: his brother Glenn has moved out with his girlfriend; Stevie's pregnant girlfriend Nola now lives with the family; and his mother Sandra has taken on a Maori drifter. Reunited with his brothers, Brett uses his first day back to restore order.
Directed by Rowan Woods; produced by John Maynard.
Moving East to West has turned their lives … upside down. Floating Life is a poignant and funny film about a Chinese family that falls apart after moving from Hong Kong to Australia. Gradually they find a way of coming together again.
Winner of the Silver Leopard award, Locarno Film Festival 1996.
Written Eddie L. C. Fong and Clara Law; directed by Clara Law; produced by Bridget Ikin.
We are very grateful to the NFSA who recognised the cultural significance of Floating Life and restored the film in 2019.
Buy DVD (unrestored version)
In far North Queensland, 17-year-old boys do not dress up in women's clothing unless they have a very good reason!
In an attempt to reunite his family, which has fallen apart over a hocked piano, sensitive 17-year-old Mick O'Brien joins the all-girl "Total Fire Band" to earn some extra cash. He falls in love with the lead singer, Angela, who's been jilted by one too many lying men. She's hot for Mick too, but not just because he's cute and talented, but being a woman, he's sure to be honest!
Written and directed by Gerard Lee; produced by John Maynard.
A group of seven sharp-minded English school leavers spend the weekend in a remote country house making their own horror video. Six return.
Written and directed by Anna Campion. Produced by Bridget Ikin and David Hazlitt.
Alison Maclean's debut feature film, Crush is an unnerving psychological thriller, focusing on the jealousy and hatred aroused by the dark side of sexuality and passion. It is a darkly comic tale of seduction, betrayal and revenge.
Co-written by Anne Kennedy and Alison Maclean; produced by Bridget Ikin and Trevor Haysom.
In competition, Cannes Film Festival 1992.
With An Angel at My Table, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Jane Campion brings to the screen the harrowing true-life story of Janet Frame, New Zealand’s most distinguished author. The film follows Frame along her inspiring journey, from a poverty-stricken childhood to a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia and electroshock therapy to, finally, international literary fame. Beautifully capturing the colour and power of the New Zealand landscape, the film earned Campion a sweep of her country’s film awards and the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Written by Laura Jones; directed by Jane Campion; produced by Bridget Ikin and John Maynard.
Key festivals (1990)
Venice (In Competition), Sydney, New York, Melbourne, NZ, Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle, Valladolid.
Key Awards
Special jury Prize (Silver Lion), Venice Film Festival 1990
Most Popular film, Sydney Film Festival 1990
International Critics Award, Toronto Film Festival 1990
Best Actress, Valladolid Film Festival 1990
6 New Zealand Film Awards 1990 - Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor
Best Film, Belgian Film Critics Awards 1992
Best Foreign Film, Chicago Film Critics Awards 1992
Best Foreign Film, IEP / West Independent Spirit Awards 1992
Best Screenplay: NSW Premier’s Prize for screenwriting (1990)
Jane Campion's stunning debut feature, Sweetie, focuses on the hazardous relationship between the buttoned-down, superstitious Kay and her rampaging, devil-may-care sister, "Sweetie”, and by extension, their entire family's rotten roots.
A feast of colourful photography and captivating, idiosyncratic characters, the tough and tender Sweetie heralded the emergence of this gifted director as well as the breakthrough of Australian cinema, which would take the international film world by storm in the nineties.
From the bowels of the kitchen sink comes a dark and tender love. A nightmare come true. Kitchen Sink is beloved 14-minute short film about fear and desire.
In competition, Cannes Film Festival 1989.
Written and directed by Alison Maclean; produced by Bridget Ikin.
Watch (AUS/NZ only)
Griffin is nine years old. He's haunted by fragments of a dream. He sees a journey - a celestial city, a great cathedral, and a figure roped to a steeple, about to fall....
It is Cumbria 1348, the year of the Black Death. A medieval mining town lives in fear of the advancing plague. Griffin's older brother Connor returns from the outside world in a state of despair, until Griffin tells of his dream and reveals their only source of survival. Make tribute to God. Place a spire on a distant cathedral. Do it before dawn or the village will be lost.
Griffin sets out on a bizarre journey with Connor, Searle the pragmatist, Searle's naive brother Ulf, Martin the philosopher and Arno the one-handed ferryman. Together they tunnel through the earth to a new world - New Zealand, the antipodes, 1988. But Griffin has a chilling new premonition... one of them will die at the cathedral.
Directed by Vincent Ward; produced by John Maynard.
Jonah becomes the talkback host for a night, when her sometime lover Roger, the regular host, walks out. An original 50-minute drama by Alison Maclean. Produced by Bridget Ikin.
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Filled with the misty gray light and ghostly blue-green grass which have become signature of many New Zealand Films, VIGIL is the quietly powerful coming-of-age story of a young girl isolated by loss and environment. A film by Vincent Ward with Penelope Stewart.
