Territory filmmaker Rachel Perkins wins InStyle and Audi Women of Style Awards Entertainment award

TERRITORY filmmaker Rachel Perkins has taken out a gong for her passion and drive in her craft

Territory filmmaker Rachel Perkins won the InStyle & Audi Women of Style Award for Entertainment in Sydney on Wednesday night. PICTURE: Hugh Stewart for InStyle

TERRITORY filmmaker Rachel Perkins was honoured at last night’s InStyle and Audi Women of Style Awards by winning the hotly contested Entertainment category.

Perkins, 47, beat out actors Elizabeth Debicki and Kerry Armstrong to take the gong.

InStyle editor Emily Taylor said Perkins was well deserving of the award and the national recognition.

“This InStyle and Audi Women of Style accolade is a testament to Rachel’s passion, drive, creativity and courage — she thoroughly deserves this win,” she said.

At just 18 years of age, Perkins found herself doing a traineeship in Alice Springs with the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association.

She admitted she stumbled into filmmaking but it wasn’t long before she knew it was her true calling.

“The way that cinema can capture and communicate to millions of people … that was the idea I found really intoxicating,” she told InStyle.

Since then she hasn’t looked back and started Blackfella Films in 1992 which had a focus on stories of indigenous Australians.

“As an indigenous person, we’ve been left to the margins of society and storytelling, so cinema and television felt to me like a way (to) get our fellow Australians to understand our indigenous people.”

A full list of winners is in InStyle out today.