Producers close in on funding to tell Charmian Clift’s story

Her life reads like a movie script, and with the help of ‘average people’ two film-makers are hopeful of starting on a Charmian Clift documentary.

Authors Charmian Clift and George Johnston in 1964.

Her life has the hallmarks of a Hollywood blockbuster, yet attempts to bring Australian writer Charmian Clift’s story to the screen have met with obstacles at every stage.

“She was friends with movie stars, she had good looks, an incredible life force, a creative and tumultuous marriage to writer ­George Johnston, and an incredible bohemian lifestyle searching for that creative Nirvana,” says film producer Rachel Lane.

“She was ahead of her time … yet everybody we’ve spoken to has said ‘look, that’s a wonderful story, but we don’t want to put the money into it’.”

With pioneering film producer Sue Milliken, Lane, whose previous works include Faithfully Me (2020) and Australian feature film Bilched (2019), has been working overtime to persuade industry members to fund their documentary on Clift who died in 1969 at the age of just 45.

But the venture, called Life Burns High, has been knocked back at every turn.

Which was a surprise to both Milliken and Lane.

Clift who wrote novels, essays and a long-running newspaper column, is among the best-known and loved of the group of Australian artists and writers who fled Australia in the 1950s in search of a bigger intellectual life in Europe.

Clift and her husband, novelist George Johnston, have legendary status among Australians of many generations, thanks to the romance of their years spent living on the Greek island of Hydra.

Their lives and their links to a Hydra colony of expats – who included the singer and poet Leonard Cohen – have been chronicled extensively in several books in ­recent years.

Charmian Clift and George Johnston with son Jason, Leonard Cohen and Cohen’s lover Marianne Ihlen on Hydra in 1960. Picture: James Burke/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Says Lane: “Ever since reading The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift by Nadia Wheatley in 2001, I’ve had it in my head that I want to make a film about this incredible woman.

“I reached out to Sue when the film evolved into a documentary because, once again, I thought it would be easier to find the money by making it into a documentary.”

Milliken, who has produced many films, most recently the Bruce Beresford-directed Ladies in Black, knows the Charmian story well. As a young ABC production assistant she once worked with Clift and Johnston, and many years later co-produced a TV mini-­series of Johnston’s classic novel, My Brother Jack.

Undeterred by their failure to raise funding from conventional sources, Lane and Milliken turned to a “crowdsourcing” approach via advertisements in The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald. It has proved a lifeline with an overwhelming response from donors promising anything from $20 to more than $5000. The duo are delighted but have not released the total raised so far.

The response has also reaffirmed what Lane and Milliken knew all along.

Says Lane: “Not one of the ­donations has come from members of the industry.

“These are just your average people out in the wider community who have a very keen interest in this story.”

Milliken and Beresford spent 20 years badgering funders for finance for Ladies In Black, based on the novel by another expat, Madeleine St John, and Milliken says she has witnessed many failed endeavours to bring Clift and Johnston to life on the big screen.

“There were attempts in the 80s and 90s to make a feature film about the story but they never quite came off,” she says.

“But when Rachel came to me about a documentary I thought it was a fantastic idea because this really wonderful Australian writer has such a great story.”

Film producer Sue Milliken. Picture: Hollie Adams

Life Burns High will focus on the essays Clift wrote for the SMH from 1964 to 1969, her tempestuous marriage to Johnston and the couple’s life on Hydra. And it will document her later years when she returned to Australia, beset by serious illness and poverty, and her tragic suicide.

Clift’s columns and essays continue to attract new legions of readers. Biographies, a theatre production and the republication of her autobiographical works Peel Me a Lotus (1959) and Mermaid Singing (1956) have all fed an enduring passion for the writer.

Next year, a volume of her essays will be published – a nice ­coincidence with the hoped-for production of the documentary.

“Everything she wrote about still holds weight today,” Lane says. “The things she was writing about with such passion are things this country is still dealing with.”

One of the main agencies which rejected the documentary, Screen Australia, declined to ­comment directly on the project but noted that in 2019-20 it provided more than $73m in direct funding to the sector.

This includes money for drama development and production, documentaries, talent development, distribution, international marketing, and festivals.

“In addition, commonwealth support through the Producer Offset contributed nearly $200m in rebates for approved Australian project,” a spokesperson said.

“Private sector investment is also extremely important and philanthropy and crowd-funding have played a key part in raising ­finance for screen projects for many years.”

Milliken and Lane are confident they will raise enough money to make a preliminary version of the film, enough to attract the attention of industry funding bodies.

“There are people coming out of the woodwork throwing their actual money in support behind it, so we’re at a point now where we can start planning the rough cut,” Lane says.