Directors Guild calls for funding quota for female filmmakers

The Australian Directors Guild’s Ray Argall says federal funding for the sector isn’t shared ‘in a representative way’.

Tom Hardy in Mad Max: Fury Road, which will likely be nominated in the AACTA awards.

The Australian Directors Guild has proposed a quota for half the projects receiving subsidies from Screen Australia Production Funding to be directed by women. The proposal, which is unlikely to be adopted, comes because ADG president Ray Argall says federal government funding of the sector “for reasons of cultural representation, economic stimulus, and professional development and innovation” has not been shared across these criteria “in a representative way”. He says Screen Australia’s research on dramatic features across a five-year average (2009-14) shows 15 per cent featured female directors, 23 per cent female writers and 28 per cent female protagonists. He says an initiative by the Swedish national screen agency showed immediate success, although Screen Australia says that initiative applies only to a discretionary “production fund” and not to bigger budget projects with distributors attached. Screen Australia chief operating officer Fiona Cameron says the agency is aware of the inequity and is “investigating options for addressing issues of gender balance in Australia’s screen industry, with options to go to the next board meeting in late November. Analysis to date has shown that Screen Australia’s support for projects with women in key creative roles has been allocated in very close correlation to the number of projects coming in with women in these positions. We see strong female representation at the early career stages of feature films, with a drop-off in higher end, signalling the challenge of moving from shorts to features, or from first features into a more sustained career. This trend is seen across writers and producers as well as directors. Any interventions are likely to require a range of initiatives to address a complex issue, and one which is not confined to the screen industries.”

The nominations for the fifth AACTA Awards will be announced tomorrow ahead of the two awards ceremonies in Sydney on November 30 and December 9. The eligible features are: Alex & Eve; Blinky Bill the Movie; Cut Snake; The Dressmaker; Force of Destiny; Holding the Man; Infini; John Doe: Vigilante; Kill Me Three Times; Last Cab to Darwin; Love is Now; Mad Max: Fury Road; Now Add Honey; Oddball; One Eyed Girl; The Pack; Paper Planes; Partisan; RISE; Ruben Guthrie; Strangerland; Touch; and unINDIAN. That is quite the mixed bag, so Reel Time won’t go out on a limb picking favourites just yet other than predicting Last Cab to Darwin, Strangerland and Holding the Man to pick up acting nominations and Mad Max: Fury Road to infuriate or be infuriated. And there will be no tie this year.

Entries are open for features, documentaries and shorts for the 63rd Sydney Film Festival, which runs June 8-19 next year. Submissions can be made through FilmFestivalLife and close on February 26. And Dana Brunetti, president of Kevin Spacey’s Trigger Street Productions and producer of pay-TV series House of Cards and the films The Social Network, Captain Philips and Fifty Shades of Grey, has been confirmed as a keynote guests for Screen Producers Australia’s conference in Melbourne (November 17-19), Screen Forever.

Brazilian feature film Neon Bull won the Foxtel Movies International Award for best feature film at the Adelaide Film Festival, which concluded on Sunday. Speed Sisters won the documentary award. Neon Bull director and screenwriter Gabriel Mascaro was awarded a $25,000 cash prize for being judged the best of 10 international features competing for the award. The International Feature Award Jury also made special mention of young Australian actress Odessa Young for her role in Looking for Grace, noting her “her natural presence in a film that strikes a very particular tone”.

Congratulations to the ABC’s kids television series Nowhere Boys, which is nominated for a BAFTA Children’s Award. The Matchbox Pictures ABC3 teen drama is nominated for the international award beside Cartoon Network’s Clarence and Adventure Time and Disney XD’s Gravity Falls. Congratulations also to Australian filmmaker Jennifer Peedom, whose documentary Sherpa won the Grierson Award as best documentary at last week’s 59th BFI London Film Festival. The doco about the tragedy and mayhem on Mount Everest during a shocking climbing season focuses on the Sherpas. The LFF jury said: “We applaud this impressive film for giving voice to a previously voiceless community, and we hope it reaches the wide, general audience that it deserves.” Sherpa, which is nominated for an AACTA Award as best feature length documentary, is due for release on February 25.