John Maynard

John is well known as a producer with an eye for talent, producing the debut feature films of Jane Campion, Vincent Ward, Rowan Woods, Robert Connolly, Richard Roxburgh and Kasimir Burgess.

John has produced three films that have premiered In Competition in Cannes: Jane Campion’s Sweetie (1989) and Vincent Ward’s Vigil (1984) and The Navigator (1988). He co-produced Jane Campion’s An Angel At My Table, winner of the Silver Lion in Venice in 1990, with partner Bridget Ikin.

For many years, he was in partnership in Arenafilm with Robert Connolly. John and Robert produced Rowan Woods’ first feature The Boys (1998) (In Competition, Berlin). In 2007 John co-produced Richard Roxburgh’s Romulus My Father, with Robert Connolly, and received the Australian Film Institute Award (AFI) for Best Film, a follow up to the six AFI Awards for The Navigator, including Best Director and Film, in 1989.

John produced Jirga (2018) from 38 hours of footage that director Benjamin Gilmour wrote and filmed with a micro crew in Afghanistan in 2016. Jirga premiered In Competition at the Sydney Film Festival; in Discovery at TIFF; won the 2018 CinefestOz Film Prize, AACTA Award for best Indie Film and was Australia’s nominee for the Foreign Language Academy Award. Jirga was released in cinemas in Australia and the US and has been sold to various territories including China.

In 2012 he produced Coral: Rekindling Venus, Lynette Wallworth’s one-of-a-kind video work for full-dome cinema, fusing art and science. John launched the work in forty planetariums on six continents in one week to celebrate the transit of Venus. Coral: Rekindling Venus went on to screen with great success at Sundance New Frontiers; Sundance USA and the World Economic Forum.

John’s career as a distinguished producer of arthouse cinema is punctuated by documentaries in New Zealand and Australia, including Geoff Steven’s Gung Ho-Rewi Alley of China (1979), Leon Narbey’s Man of the Trees (1981) and Samantha Lang’s first feature documentary, about the Kaldor Public Art Projects, It All Started With a Stale Sandwich (2019).

In 2013 he restored John Weiley’s 1968 documentary An Autopsy on a Dream, a BBC documentary that had been destroyed and thought lost for 40 years. Together with its retrospective prologue, The Dream of Perfection (2013), it launched the 40th celebrations of the Sydney Opera House.

John has been an active independent distributor in Australia and New Zealand for more than 35 years with his company Footprint Films having a reputation for creating innovative and cost effective marketing campaigns. John has distributed an average of a film each year in Australia for the last 25 years, mainly those produced by himself or partner Bridget Ikin. Thirteen of these films are first features, of which four are recipients of best feature awards plus a host of other awards for key creatives.

Awards

In 2003 John was awarded an Honorary Masters Degree at the Australian Film Television and Radio School for his “commitment, as a creative producer, to ground breaking independent cinema; for nurturing new Australian talent and reflecting diverse themes of social and cultural relevance”.

In 2005 the Australian Directors Guild awarded their highest honour to John, The Cecil Holmes Memorial Award for his support of directors and the ADG.