• It has been a sensational year for Australian filmmakers at Cannes. The AFC is delighted to announce that two films it has funded for development and production - Jewboy and Yellow Fella - have been invited to screen in Official Selection; an Australian animated short film (Clara) has been selected to screen in the Shorts Competition; the short drama Blue Tongue will screen in Critics' Week; and Wolf Creek will feature in the Directors' Fortnight.



• The completion of the first four projects in the federally funded AFC/ABC Broadband Production Initiative (BPI) has highlighted the importance of developing Australian digital interactive content, particularly in the burgeoning educational market. The projects UsMob, The Dog and Cat News and The Life, Times and Travels of the Extraordinary Vice-Admiral William Bligh are now online on the ABC's broadband service. Dust on My Shoes will be up by the end of May.



• The Message Sticks Film Festival will be held at the Sydney Opera House, 27-29 May. The festival will showcase Indigenous films from Australia and around the world in two days of free screenings. The Indigenous Unit is launching the four 'Dramatically Black' short dramas on opening night, 27 May, and the National Indigenous Documentary Series 6 on 29 May, which includes Ivan Sen's Yellow Fella. The Black Book, a new directory of Indigenous artists and resources (in book form and online), will also be launched at the festival.



• The AFC will be the Presenting Partner of the third feature film finance market - SPAAmart 05 - to be held alongside the 20th Annual SPAA Conference, 13-16 August, at the Sheraton Mirage on the Gold Coast in Queensland. Duncan Thompson has been appointed SPAAmart's Market Director and will be responsible for the selection of projects.



• A monograph focusing on Australian World War One feature films has been released by the National Film and Sound Archive to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing. The monograph, The Hero of the Dardanelles and Other World War One Silent Dramas, discusses all the war-related feature films known to have been produced from 1914 to 1930, paying special attention to the footage that has survived and been preserved in the Archive.



• The Archive has announced the applicants selected for its new radio initiative Ten Minutes of Passion. The successful sound artists and radio producers will meld recordings from the Archive's collection with contemporary sound to create 10-minute mini-features, documentaries and soundscapes that explore the emotion of passion.

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• Applications are now open for the Bob Maza Fellowship, awarded to an established Indigenous actor to further their professional development. Deadline 20 May. The successful applicant will be announced, along with the Tudawali Awards, at the Message Sticks Film Festival launch at the Sydney Opera House on 27 May. Contact indigenous@afc.gov.au if you would like to attend or receive a festival program.



• The second round of recipients for the AFC Fellowship Program has been announced. The program provides funding for established Australian filmmakers to develop their careers through high-level attachments, specified programs of study or an individual program designed to enhance or significantly alter the course of a career. Producer Anthony Anderson (Somersault), writer/director/cinematographer Vince Monton (Point of No Return, The Hit), and documentary and new media practitioner Heather Croall (UsMob) have been selected to take part in 2005.



• AFC Internship Program recipient Sotiris Dounoukos recently completed a director's attachment in New York with Giada Colagrande and Willem Dafoe on Giada's second feature film Before it Had a Name. Sotiris graduated from the VCA with the Award for Outstanding Post-graduate Student. His graduating production, Mona Lisa, won Best Student Production at the Melbourne International Film Festival and the Bronze Remi at the World Film Festival in Houston, and will be screening at the Seattle International Film Festival and the Wordwide Short Film Festival in Toronto later in the year. He is currently working on the feature film script Irini with another VCA graduate, Louise Petre.



• The AFC/AFTRS SPARK feature film script development program has a third project on the road to production. Home Song Stories (w/d: Tony Ayres, p: Michael McMahon, Liz Watts) has received a funding commitment from the FFC and will soon go into production.



• AFC funding approvals



• The following AFC funding round deadlines are coming up in May/June:
  
  Film Development
  13 May: Internships
  20 May: Strand V - Early Development Funding
  27 May: Strand L - Shooting Time-Critical Material; Strand N - Documentary Production
  17 Jun: Strand A1 - Draft Funding; Strand A2 - Draft Funding; Strand D - Draft Funding



• Guidelines and deadlines for Film Development for the next financial year will be available on the AFC website in early July. July 2005 deadlines will be posted in June.

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• In May, the National Cinémathèque screenings in Melbourne (11-25 May), Hobart (16-30 May) and Adelaide (23 May - June 3) will feature a retrospective of the sublime, funny and wonderfully talkative films of the veteran French director Eric Rohmer. Often compared to Woody Allen (and undoubtedly an influence on the American comedian and director), Rohmer is acknowledged by film critics as probably even more able than Allen to span the gulf between serious philosophical concepts and comedy of the everyday. The retrospective will travel to Perth in early June. The Rohmer season is presented in association with the French Embassy.
  
  Hobart opened their 2005 Cinémathèque calendar with Roman Polanski's macabre comedy Cul-de-sac on 2 May at the FTI Cinema. The full year's screening programs for Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide are now available at Cinémathèque on the AFC website. Hobart will be added soon.



• The Big Screen tour has so far reached Mildura, Wilcannia, Menindee, Broken Hill and Briagolong. The new AFC Big Screen website will be launched before the tour hits Coober Pedy on 20 May. The site will feature regular blogs by director Peter Castaldi, details of all the films in each town, resources for students and media, and info on special guests like Sophie Lee, Sam Worthington and Claudia Karvan.



• The AFC, in partnership with the Australia International Cultural Council, will present a film festival in Singapore in June as part of an Australian arts festival ozmosis, with a strong design focus. The festival, Raise the Red Curtain, will be held at the multi-purpose arts centre The Artshouse. A full retrospective program of films by Baz Luhrmann will be screened including the ABC TV production of the Australian Opera's La Boheme, Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo+Juliet, Moulin Rouge, the recent Chanel No 5 advertisement and a documentary about the making of this ad. Find out more at ozmosis and The Artshouse



• The London Australian Film Festival was held from March 3 to 13 at the Barbican Centre. The event showcased 18 new features, nine new documentaries, 21 new shorts and three children's features to a broad audience. A selection of films from the festival will now tour to eight cities in the UK. A screening of films from the festival was also held in Dublin on 20 April.
  



• Congratulations to Curtis Levy and Bentley Dean whose film The President versus David Hicks won Most Outstanding Documentary at this year's Logie Awards.



• The Dendy Awards finalists have been announced. Congratulations to all the nominees including the AFC-supported films Green Bush, Jewboy, My Sister, I Dream of Augustine, Azadi, Medusa First Date and The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello. Jewboy is also a finalist in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and is screening at the Jerusalem International Film Festival.



• Embassy Roadshow events in March/April included Kuala Lumpur and Copenhagen, Bangkok and Brunei. Reports from the New Delhi and Kolkata events prove that Indians love their movies, with a 50 per cent increase in numbers and strong interest in seeing even more Aussie films. Abu Dhabi pitched their event at school kids and over 1500 kids came, saw and wondered about the Magic Pudding. Events coming up in May include a three-city tour of the United States (Atlanta, Washington, San Francisco) and a return trip to Beirut, Lebanon.
  
  The schedule for 2005/06 is still being finalised but it is likely the Roadshow will make its first appearances in Accra (Ghana) where our diplomatic post advises "they have never seen an Australian film", Athens and Kuwait. Several cities have asked for return seasons including Cairo, Lisbon, Taipei, Budapest and Ho Chi Minh City. As the Roadshow moves into its fifth year, it is good to see it still finding audiences in new territories as well as retaining links with established friends.
  
  The Embassy Roadshow is a travelling film festival that showcases contemporary Australian films to international audiences, facilitated through Australian embassies and posts abroad, It is an initiative of the Australia International Cultural Council through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and is coordinated by DFAT and the AFC.
  



• OPENChannel has announced the winner of its Short & Sharp Pitching Competition, held on 27 April. Short & Sharp offers new and emerging filmmakers the opportunity to learn and practise the art of pitching to gain support for their film project. AFC Project Manager Karin Altmann attended the event to judge the finalists, and congrats to Brook Hely who won for The Record.



• May/June deadlines are coming up for the Videobrasil, Margaret Mead, Impakt, IDFA, Venice, Valladolid, Uppsala, Toronto, Sheffield, Montreal and Locarno film festivals. See Festival Profiles for more information.

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• The Women Working in Television Project will host a cocktail party networking event in Melbourne on 14 June, with guest speaker Sandra Levy (director of television, ABC TV). The event will commence at 6.00pm at The Apartment, 401 Little Bourke Street Melbourne. AFC Chair Maureen Barron will launch the latest project publication Tuned Into Leadership for the Melbourne audience. For further information contact Penny Chai on p.chai@afc.gov.au or 02 9321 6461.



• The Australian Film, Television and Radio School and the AFC are presenting a half-day seminar in Brisbane on 10 May, aimed at television producers and program makers who want to keep up to date with the latest developments in the production of interactive and multi-platform television, and the potential for greater engagement with audiences offered by these new technologies. The seminar will feature Gary Hayes, who pioneered many of the BBC's interactive TV successes, discussing past iTV case studies and future services for interactive and IPTV, and a session by Tracey Robertson and Nathan Mayfield of Hoodlum Active, presenting a case study of their experience with the Australian interactive drama Fat Cow Motel and their current interactive TV and SMS project Housemates. For bookings contact Charlotte Cutting on 07 3257 7646 or charlotte.cutting@aftrs.edu.au



• The Screen Producers' Association of Australia (SPAA) has announced a new initiative to assist in the development of digital media in feature film. digiSPAA is a session of competitive screenings for the best Australian or New Zealand feature-length project shot digitally, and developed with a clear plan on how to exploit the project using a range of digital platforms. Projects must be complete, or near complete, and with content suitable for public screenings. Deadline 10 June.

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• The government has announced an extension of the refundable film tax offset to big-budget television series. Qualifying television series will now be eligible for a 12.5 per cent refund of Australian production expenditure.



• The AFC has made a submission to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee Inquiry into Australia's relations with China. On 18 April, Prime Minister John Howard and China's Premier Wen Jiabao announced that their two governments would commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA).



• The 2005 OzeCulture Conference: Magic Money and Myth was held at Byron Bay, 7-8 April. AFC Chief Executive Kim Dalton gave a speech discussing the necessity of public and private partnerships in the financing of broadband production.

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• Read about the success of AFC-supported projects. This month we feature The Audience, Dog and Cat News, Dreams for Life, Dust on My Shoes and Piñata .



• After discussing the implications of the CER Trade Agreement for official co-productions last year, officials from the NZFC and AFC have now met to consider potential changes to the way existing film and television co-production guidelines relating to nationality are interpreted in each country. The two bodies have reached agreement that for a trial period of 12 months (from 1 April 2005 to 31 March 2006) Australian nationals will be treated as New Zealand nationals and vice versa for all official New Zealand or Australian film and television co-productions.



• Are you looking for details of a particular Australian film title - feature, short, TV drama or documentary? The Searchable Film Database includes Australian and co-produced features, TV drama and documentaries from 1990 and shorts from 1998. It is updated on the AFC website each month.



• Upcoming Production Report.



• Latest updates to Get the Picture Online industry statistics, including new data on Australian share of video releases, cinema distributor market share and employment patterns back to 1971.

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• Welcome to film development administrative assistant Imogen Semmler, Cinémathèque project coordinator Gordana Bacic and assistant Nicole Steven, SPAAmart coordinator Dale Fairbairn and marketing events assistant Tilly Heald.



• Positions vacant: Chief Projectionist - deadline 12 May.

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• The Australian films Land Mines - A Love Story, Dreams for Life, The Extra, Three Dollars, Peaches, Oyster Farmer and You and Your Stupid Mate are screening in May/June so keep an eye out for them at your local cinema.



• The PAW Remote Video Festival is a travelling program of Indigenous films touring to remote communities in the central western desert of Australia. The program was curated by Warlpiri Media and is a celebration of the diversity and skill of Indigenous filmmakers.



• The Down Under Film Festival embraces the youth and multiculturalism of Darwin, celebrates the tropical lifestyle of the Top End and markets its vibrant arts scene to the world. For the first time, Down Under will be based in Palmerston with its screenings at the Cmax Cinemas.



• St Kilda Film Festival includes Australia's top 100 short films, the SoundKILDA music video competition, international programs from Interfilm Berlin, Aspen ShortsFest and Almost Famous - early shorts by now famous filmmakers. The full festival program was announced on 6 May with the launch of the festival website.



• QPIX is holding a seminar on 'Making Movies' at Warner Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast, 26-29 May. The intensive four-day workshop, presented by feature and television writer, producer and director Bruce Redman, is designed to give novice and up-and-coming filmmakers an introduction to the technical and creative aspects of filmmaking from concept to the production of a three-minute drama. Numbers are limited for this class. Please book early by contacting lisa@qpix.org.au



• Convergence Jam is a one and half day workshop, 30-31 May, that brings working industry players together to create concepts for converging projects. Teams of games developers, filmmakers, animators, digital media practitioners and new media artists are invited to join Convergence Jam and create the concepts that challenge the concept of 'spare time'.



• Experimenta is calling for completed interactive media projects, new media projects and short films/videos/animations, embracing the theme of enchantment and illusion, to be included in an exhibition held at the Arts Centre and screening programs at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, in September 2005. Email charity@experimenta.org for more information.



• The 20th anniversary of the SPAA Conference on the Gold Coast, 13-16 August, will have practical emphasis on developing original content for film and TV. The focus will be on the 'creative producer'. This year the AFC presents SPAAmart, a feature film finance market.



• ScreenWest and PAC Screen Workshops are pleased to announce a new initiative PAC Script Lab, monthly rehearsed readings of West Australian feature film scripts on the last Sunday of each month. The ultimate aim is for a honing of West Australian scripts and an increase in the profile, quality and awareness of West Australian film projects.



• Popcorn Taxi has weekly screenings and Q&A sessions in Sydney and Melbourne. See their website or join their mailing list for details of upcoming events.



• IF magazine's What's On in Film January to June 2005 guide to screen events is sponsored by the AFC.



• Other AFC-supported activities and events.

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• Sarah Runcie, AFC Film Development Administrative Officer, speaks to writer/director Wayne Blair about his award-winning short film The Djarn Djarns.
  
  Wayne Blair has distinguished himself as an actor for stage and screen with his wit and natural warmth. This same sensibility has also informed his work as a writer/director and his latest film The Djarn Djarns is no exception.
  
  Winner of the Kinderfilmfest Crystal Bear prize at this year's Berlin Film Festival, The Djarn Djarns was developed through the AFC Indigenous Unit initiative, 'Dramatically Black'. Soon to screen at the Sydney Opera House in the Message Sticks Indigenous Arts Festival, The Djarn Djarns will also screen later this year on SBS as part of a collection of half-hour dramas written and directed by Indigenous filmmakers.
  
  The Djarn Djarns is the story of a young Aboriginal boy who, in the course of one day, negotiates grief and friendship, loyalty and betrayal. Hunter Page-Lochard, who plays the lead role of Frankie, manages this challenging mix of emotions with charm and strength. Frankie's journey is set against contrasting worlds: the razzle-dazzle showbiz of the Dreamtime Centre where Frankie is a traditional dancer - or djarn djarn - and the dark domestic history of the death of Frankie's father, the absence of his mother and Frankie's subsequent sexual abuse by his mother's white boyfriend. The link between these worlds in Frankie's life is the love of his fellow djarn djarns. It is that mateship between boys that makes The Djarn Djarns, despite its difficult dramatic terrain, a hopeful film that is, by turns, poignant, disturbing, satirical and funny.
  
  SR: How is the story of The Djarn Djarns based on your own experience growing up in Rockhampton, Queensland?
  
  When I was about 17 I worked at Dreamtime [in Rockhampton] as a tour guide. Then for three or four years I was a djarn djarn. I was much older than the boys in the film but there were young boys. There were five or six of us that had to dance for tourists. It was fun. The interaction, the dialogue that we had everyday, was funny. There were different personalities within the group, as there is with any group. I sort of enjoyed that actually. It was a good time in my life because I was playing rugby league and cricket in Rockhampton and then, at night or weekends or during the day, I'd do traditional dance. It was a bit of a juxtaposition but I really enjoyed it.
  
  Read the full interview.

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