Schuyler Weiss accepts the AACTA Award for Best Film during the 2022 AACTA Awards. (Photo by James Gourley/Getty Images for AFI)
A five-day festival will accompany next February’s AACTA Awards on the Gold Coast, with the dates for the 2024 ceremonies now confirmed.
Spanning February 7-11, the “celebration of film, TV, streaming, music, and digital content” will include a day devoted exclusively to First Nations content and creatives, networking hubs, and a Screen Careers Expo for those curious about pursuing a career in film or television.
The events will coincide with the AACTA Industry Awards on February 8 and the main ceremony on February 10, both of which will take place at the Home of the Arts (HOTA).
AACTA CEO Damian Trewhella said the academy looked forward to bringing the industry on the Gold Coast to celebrate the achievements of filmmakers, storytellers, and screen practitioners.
“It’s been an exciting year for the Australian screen industry with an abundance of original and innovative productions growing loyal fanbases here and increasingly engaging massive audiences overseas,” he said.
“As we approach the next AACTA Awards, the excitement is palpable.”
Screen Queensland CEO, Jacqui Feeney said the accompanying festival was an opportunity for local practitioners to connect with their peers and become closer to a “dynamic and creative industry that employs so many local people”.
“Screen Queensland looks forward to welcoming the wider screen sector to the Gold Coast in February — to the state’s most vibrant screen production location and the ideal place to celebrate excellence in our industry,” she said.
Tickets for the awards and festival events will go on sale in November to coincide with the announcement of the full program of activity.
The nominees will be announced in early December. Find out more information about the 2024 awards here.
Pay the people what they’re worth, and protect our creatives at all costs.
Hollywood’s labor wants a fair wage. As the WGA walks the picket lines outside the major studios, demanding the studio executives meet some kind of labor agreement that protects the livelihood of all writers in Hollywood, the Directors Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA are entering negotiations on new contracts with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
Similar to the WGA demands, the DGA and SAG-AFTRA are looking to strike a deal on streaming residuals. If you are curious about how much actors are currently making from streaming, check out our coverage on streaming residuals. With both contracts expiring on June 30th, there is a lot that creatives are going to fight for as the entire industry adjusts to the new landscape.
While the actors’ fight is important to the industry, it is the DGA that could help resolve the writers’ strike.
Let me explain.
When the WGA went on strike 15 years ago, the DGA went into contract negotiations, leveraging the pressure on the industry-wide lockout that was in its third month. The DGA was able to find agreements that the WGA and AMPTP couldn’t agree on. The jurisdiction over the internet and a residual formula that was then known as “new media” helped end the exploitation of movies and TV shows for directors.
The WGA used many of the same terms the DGA used in its 2008 contract, uniting and creating equality among the WGA, DGA, and SAG-AFTRA.
However, this year’s strike is different.
Could a Deal with the DGA End the Writers’ Strike?
According to Variety, WGA members met on May 6th, 2023, and were told by union leaders that they should not expect a repeat of 2008 even if the DGA reaches an agreement.
The reason why is simple: the WGA and DGA have very different agendas. Many of the issues the DGA is facing do not address the concerns of the WGA. This year, the DGA is focused on getting a better deal on international streaming residuals.
“The bigger the SVOD platform domestically, the higher the residual,” the guild stated. “However, under our current formula, no matter how many millions of global subscribers a service might have, the Studios only pay you a fraction of the domestic residual to compensate you for all of the global audiences that enjoy your work. This effectively cuts you out of your fair share of the worldwide distribution and success of your work abroad.”
Variety reports that AMPTP president Carol Lombardini has already made an offer to writers on that issue, which could be a launching point for the DGA’s negotiations.
“If I were in Carol’s shoes, I’d say ‘Let’s do DGA,’” said John McLean, former CBS labor relations executive, and a former WGA executive director. “If we can give them something in international, you go to the actors and then make a deal with them. That does put the Writers Guild in a tough spot.”
However, the DGA and SAG-AFTRA have gone out of their way to express solidarity with the writers, with the DGA’s Jon Avnet appearing on stage with WGA leaders at a unity rally on May 3rd.
You might be wondering what would happen if the DGA went on strike, which is something we’ve been thinking a lot about, too. A DGA strike could shutter all scripted productions immediately – including film and TV – which could give writers more leverage. The likelihood of this strike happening is unlikely, with the DGA striking only once in 1987 for three hours and five minutes on the East Coast and just twelve minutes on the West Coast.
With the DGA’s unity and solidarity with the WGA, I hope that the DGA uses its leverage in the industry to push for fair rights across the board for all creatives. The DGA should always put their guild-specific issues first, like on-set safety, diversity, and protecting directors’ creative control, but aiding other creatives who are essential pieces to creating entertainment and media should be supported at all times.
“I think they understand that all of labor has to stand up and fight against these companies that really do want to minimize us as much as possible,” Ellen Stutzman, the WGA’s chief negotiator, told Variety while picketing outside Netflix in Hollywood on May 8. “And the fact is, they can’t make the content without any of us or all of us.”
This is the summer of strikes. Whether the DGA or SAG-AFTRA strike is up to the people who control the wealth of the industry. We creatives just want a fair slice of the pie so we can live and create work that inspires and protects the next generation of filmmakers like you.
New documentary uses hundreds of clips to show how even the most acclaimed classics of cinema have encouraged a culture of sexual harassment of women
Anna Smith The Guardian Fri 21 Apr 2023 19.00 AEST
“I get letters every day from people around the world, saying, ‘Oh my God, thank you for making this’,” says Nina Menkes. “But one woman told me, ‘You’ve ruined all my favourite films’.”
Menkes is the director of Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power, a documentary arguing that even the most acclaimed classics of cinema have encouraged a culture of sexual harassment of women. Using hundreds of clips, Menkes shows how female characters are consistently framed as the object by the male subject.
We see sex scenes full of fragmented female bodies, shown part by part. Women’s behinds being ogled by the leading man. Endless passive, even unconscious objectified women. At the movies, sexualisation doesn’t always stop once you’ve breathed your last.
“I’m dead in bed,” says Rosanna Arquette of her role in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, “and the camera goes slowly down my body. I look back on that now and go wow, what was I [thinking]? … It was just part of what you did.”
I host a feminist film podcast, and I’m also a fan of Blade Runner – which can be hard to reconcile. There’s a scene in which Harrison Ford aggressively refuses to accept Rachael turning down his advances. She eventually relents, soundtracked by Vangelis’ seductive Love Theme. This is just one of the myriad examples Menkes came across of a lack of consent being brushed off, or even glamourised. Their cumulative influence on “rape culture” is less easy to dismiss.
“Everybody knows that women tend to be objectified in advertisements and music videos,” says Menkes. Less well known is its ubiquity in the canon. “The great directors that everyone reveres. These films that many people consider to be their favourites reinforce a way of seeing women that’s detrimental to our lives.”
Talking heads analyse the effects of such imagery, from academics such as Laura Mulvey to directors including Julie Dash and Catherine Hardwicke. The absence of white, male, heterosexual speakers was accidental, says Menkes. “We were kind of shocked because it was not our plan.”
Menkes does include discussions with a mixed group of film students, one a young man who says he now realises how much movies have trained him to treat women. “It makes us think we can just have whichever one we want.” Major male directors are absent. “We reached out to a lot of the big directors whose clips we included, including Scorsese and Spike Lee,” says Menkes. “Denis Villeneuve, because we use his clips quite a few times. And we got the brush off.‘Busy, sorry’. Without trying, we ended up with a group of people who were very powerfully reinforcing the message.”
Yet Menkes also uses incriminating examples of objectification from films by female directors – from Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation to Julia Ducournau’s Titane. “Patriarchy has no gender,” says Menkes. “We’re not saying, if you have a male body, you make this kind of movie. It doesn’t break down like that.”
Menkes took suggestions for films to include from her students. One felt Magic Mike – with audiences encouraged to ogle an oiled-up Channing Tatum et al – was a good reverse example. “So I went back to check it and it supports my thesis. When men are sexualised, they are sexualised completely differently, as subjects.”
Menkes was raised in California, by Jewish parents who had fled Europe as children. “It’s in my family, this idea that power structures can be corrupt,” she says. “You don’t have to bow down to existing laws, as those laws might be corrupt.”
Her mother encouraged Nina to examine her own relationship with gender. “I remember when I was 15 or something, I came home and I was like: ‘Oh, Mom, guess what? David told me that I’m the most wonderful woman in the world and he really likes me!’ And I was all excited. And she said, ‘OK, but do you think he’s the most wonderful man in the world?’ I never forgot that. It was such a shock. It was like: ‘Oh, what do I think?’”
Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power is in UK and Irish cinemas on 12 May. Nina Menkes is in conversation at BFI Southbank on 10 May as part of the film season Cinematic Sorceress: The Films of Nina Menkes running 6-31 May.
Writer-director Noora Niasari’s Shayda has been hailed by reviewers at the Sundance Film Festival as a powerful, gripping and affecting debut.
Shayda premiered over the weekend in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition, with critics making special mention of the performances of lead actress Zar Amir-Ebrahimi, who won best actress at last year’s Cannes for Holy Spider, Osamah Sami, and young newcomer Selina Zahednia.
Inspired by Niasari’s own childhood, Shayda is set in 1995 and follows a young Iranian mother (Amir-Ebrahimi in the titular role) who finds refuge with her six-year-old daughter Mona (Zahednia) in an Australian women’s shelter during the two weeks of Iranian New Year (Nowrooz).
Aided by the strong community of women at the refuge, they seek their freedom in this new world of possibilities, only to find themselves facing the violence they tried so hard to escape – namely Hossein, Shayda’s domineering and abusive husband (Sami), who seeks to be reunited with his daughter.
Vincent Sheehan produced Shayda through his new production venture Origma 45, with Dirty Films’ Cate Blanchett, Andrew Upton and Coco Francini the execuitve producers.
Writing for Screen Daily, Tim Grierson said that strong reviews, Blanchett as an EP, and the growing global awareness of the women’s rights movement in Iran “should help spark interest” in the Australian drama.
He noted a “palpable sense of dread hangs heavy over the film”, as the audience waits for the inevitable moment that Shayda’s husband will seek to separate her from her child.
“A story like this could lend itself to manipulative melodrama, but Niasari gives the material a pared-down simplicity, resisting big emotional twists or forced dramatic stakes. The muted approach only adds to the taut mood: Shayda is such a vivid presence that we keep fearing the moment when her resilient buoyancy may be destroyed by Hossein,” he wrote.
“Shayda is a tale of a woman who chooses hope over fear, which is all the more inspiring because the film shows us the many reasons why she should be afraid.”
In Variety, Tomris Laffly praised Ebrahimi’s “deceptively simple, even regal” performance, as she conveys her character’s “internalized battles through understated moments with nothing more than a delicate look or a pregnant silence.”
“Equally impressive are Zahednia as the wordlessly traumatized Mona — Niasari clearly has a special way with child actors — and Sami, a villain both blood-curdling and disturbingly familiar. The greatest asset of Shayda, however, is its unmistakably feminine spirit of perseverance, one that runs wild and free in this promising debut,” she wrote.
While conceding the film may skew towards the predictable at times, Laffly counters that this is as “the male abuser’s playbook is often predictable too”. She described Niasari’s filmmaking style as carrying “traces of a documentarian’s off-the-cuff alertness, braiding it with qualities akin to a thriller”.
“Through DP Sherwin Akbarzadeh’s fluid and immersive camera movements, the film’s opening is a perfect example of this verité-style intensity,” she wrote.
In The Hollywood Reporter, Shari Linden similarly commended the “quiet ferocity” of Amir-Ebrahimi’s performance and her chemistry with Zahednia.
“Amir Ebrahimi…. [is] quietly riveting, embodying a refusal to retreat into prescribed roles. And Sami, in what might have been a merely thankless, one-note part, makes the sanctimonious Hossein both monstrous and pathetic, overwhelmed by the threat he perceives in Shayda’s strength,” she wrote.
Linden also praised Niasari and Akbarzadeh’s collaboration, and the editing of Elika Rezaee.
“Throughout the film, Niasari and cinematographer Sherwin Akbarzadeh move the action between a realm of the secretive and fraught and one of brightness and play,” she wrote.
Shayda received major production investment from Screen Australia in association with The 51 Fund and was financed with support from VicScreen and the Melbourne International Film Festival Premiere Fund.
Executive producers from the 51 Fund, which provides financing to feature films of any genre that are directed by women, include Caitlin Gold, Lindsay Lanzillotta, Naomi McDougall Jones, Lois Scott, and Nivedita Kulkarni.
In Australia, an Iranian immigrant fights for her life and her daughter in Noora Niasari’s powerful, semi-autobiographical debut
SOURCE: SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
‘SHAYDA’
Dir/scr: Noora Niasari. Australia. 2023. 117mins
Making her feature debut, writer-director Noora Niasari has crafted a gripping drama about one Iranian woman’s struggle to extricate herself from her husband — an ordeal that could also mean losing her daughter. Named for its weary but resilient protagonist, Shayda is inspired by Niasari’s own childhood and stars Zar Amir Ebrahimi as a mother hiding out in a women’s shelter in Australia as she attempts to remake her life and process the abuse she endured in her marriage. A palpable sense of dread hangs heavy over the film, the audience bracing for the inevitable moment that her domineering husband tries to separate her from her child.
Amir Ebrahimi gives a remarkable performance that’s a smart mixture of fiery and openhearted
Shayda premieres in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition, its theatrical prospects bolstered by the presence of Amir Ebrahimi, who won Best Actress at last year’s Cannes for Holy Spider. Cate Blanchett serves as an executive producer, and strong reviews — not to mention the growing global awareness of the women’s rights movement in Iran — should help spark interest.
The story takes place in 1995, when Shayda (Amir Ebrahimi) is raising six-year-old Mona (Selina Zahednia), her loving, ebullient parenting style belying the anxiety underneath her warm smile. She has moved to Australia with her husband Hossein (Osamah Sami), but his abuse— including rape — has driven her to seek refuge in an undisclosed women’s shelter as she seeks to divorce him. But Hossein has been permitted visitation rights with Mona, and he fully intends to bring their daughter back with him to Iran.
Home movies of a young Niasari during the end credits signal the semi-autobiographical nature of the material: like Mona, the writer-director grew up in Australia after being born in Tehran. (Shayda is dedicated to “my mother and the brave women of Iran”.) And while the film isn’t quite a thriller, viewers will feel the lingering unease surrounding Shayda, who must contend with a nearly impossible set of circumstances. Refusing to let her husband know where she now lives, she grapples with the constant uncertainty of what might happen if the location of the women’s shelter is compromised. (The appearance of a mysterious car stationed outside the house is enough to make Shayda and the other residents nervous.) But there’s also Shayda’s thorny legal situation: as the bullying Hossein puts it, “You can’t stay here, get your divorce and keep the child.” Will Shayda have to choose between her freedom and Mona?
Amir Ebrahimi gives a remarkable performance that’s a smart mixture of fiery and openhearted. The film never lets us forget that although Shayda is mindful of the danger she faces from her violent husband, she isn’t willing to cower from life. After all, by rejecting customs like wearing a hijab, Shayda has already separated herself from an old existence she no longer desires. Shayda nicely balances the character’s understandable worry with a thirst to live — which includes the possibility of a new romantic relationship with sensitive, handsome Farhad (Mojean Aria), who is not aware that she is still married.
Occasionally, Shayda meets Hossein at a mall so he can pick up Mona, and Sami is convincing as this conniving husband, who schemes to turn his daughter against Shayda while trying to determine if his wife is dating anyone. But it’s not just Hossein applying pressure on Shayda: her own mother, still living in Iran, calls to tell Shayda to forgive him, insisting that’s he a good man. In the Iranian community in which she finds herself in Australia, Shayda encounters plenty of patriarchal attitudes about marriage – a tension that will come to a head near the film’s end when Hossein confronts her in public.
A story like this could lend itself to manipulative melodrama, but Niasari gives the material a pared-down simplicity, resisting big emotional twists or forced dramatic stakes. The muted approach only adds to the taut mood: Shayda is such a vivid presence that we keep fearing the moment when her resilient buoyancy may be destroyed by Hossein. But Shayda also takes time to focus on the offhand, happy moments between her and Mona, and newcomer Zahednia is endearing without being cutesy. (The child actor is especially effective once Mona starts to grasp her father’s cruelty.) Shayda is a tale of a woman who chooses hope over fear, which is all the more inspiring because the film shows us the many reasons why she should be afraid.
Five years ago, Noora Niasari asked her mother to write a memoir in order to fill in the gaps of some fuzzy childhood memories. The Iranian Australian director had been just five years old when her mother fled an abusive relationship and left her entire community to raise Niasari on her own in a foreign country.
An early draft of “Shayda,” which opens the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance on Friday, was based on that memoir and tracks Niasari’s mother’s life from her arranged marriage in Iran as a teenager to finding independence in Australia with her child. The resulting film stars “Holy Spider” breakout Zar Amir-Ebrahimi as Shayda, and Selina Zahednia as her daughter, Mona.
“There are a lot of fictional elements within the current version of the film, but it’s very much grounded in the emotional truth of our experience,” the Melbourne-based Niasari tells Variety.
Backed by Screen Australia and produced by Cate Blanchett’s Dirty Films, “Shayda” is the helmer’s first feature film and follows a number of acclaimed shorts, including “Tâm,” “17 Years and a Day” and “Simorgh.” The director says she had to work up to “Shayda,” both technically as an artist, and emotionally as a daughter who’s still processing her past trauma.
That pain, however, would only deepen in the fall when, as “Shayda” was being edited, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody in Iran, after having been arrested by Tehran’s morality police for wearing a hijab “improperly.”
Amini’s death sparked a revolution in Iran, now coined the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, which has seen women forgoing their hijabs in public, and even destroying them in protest, only to be faced with violent and sometime deadly rebukes from the regime. More than 500 people have so far died as part of the street protests, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.
Niasari hopes that “Shayda” — one of three films from directors of Iranian descent that are playing at Sundance (the others are “The Persian Version” and “Joonam”) — will be a “drop in an ocean of change.” While any sort of demonstration hasn’t yet been planned for Park City, the director says industry panels will address the situation and its impact on human rights as well as filmmaking.
“I don’t see it as something that’s going to be creating a monumental shift — I’m really realistic about the situation — I just hope that it’s a way to amplify and support what’s happening in Iran.”
Read on for Niasari’s full interview.
You’ve made a number of shorts ahead of this feature. Why was this the right moment to make this film?
I didn’t feel ready. I felt we were making the shorts, documentaries, traveling, working, being in writers rooms, doing directors attachments. All of these things were stepping stones to make my feature. And at the same time, I needed to process some things in my personal life in order to be ready to make this film, because it was very challenging, emotionally and psychologically. I don’t know if I would have had the ability to do it any sooner.
When exactly did you shoot?
In July and August of 2022.
Oh, wow. So you had seen Zar in “Holy Spider” then?
Well, actually, I hadn’t. I saw the film before filming, but when I cast Zar, it was before Cannes. It was in February 2022. I was introduced to her as a potential candidate for Shayda. We searched far and wide, and I’m very grateful that I met Zar because, as soon as I saw her first audition, I just knew she epitomized the character. The duality of her vulnerability and strength really blew me away and I knew that she was Shayda.
When did Cate Blanchett and her production company come on board?
They became involved toward the end of this development stage, just before we went to market with the script. One of the producers sent the script to [Blanchett] because he’d worked on a film called “Little Fish” with her some years ago. They read the script and loved it, and then we had a Zoom meeting. They were champions of the project from then on. It’s wonderful to have her in my corner.
This is such a personal story. What did you find the most challenging in terms of the shoot?
Anything that involves the father character, Hossein, was particularly challenging. At the same time, the actor that I cast [Osamah Sami] has been a good friend for 10 years. We both live in Melbourne, and I have a lot of respect for him. He’s also very funny guy who does a lot of stand-up comedy. He has a charisma, presence, humor and lightness that I loved, and it just allowed his character to have this other side that the audience could access. He’s not just a black and white character. As an actor, he made me laugh every time I was on set, which really helped with what I was going through.
There must have been some crossover, too, between your edit on the film and the revolution in Iran, right?
The first couple of weeks of the edit is around the time when Mahsa Amini was detained and murdered by the regime. It was very difficult for my editor [who is Iranian American] and me to concentrate because we were following the news every night, not sleeping, stressed out, trying to call family and not getting through. But at the same time, we found a new motivation to finish it, to make it the best we could because Shayda’s fight is also a fight for freedom and independence, and breaking away from these cultural norms and laws that restrict her from living a life on her own terms. It gave me a renewed motivation to finish the film, because I had a depressive episode after finishing the shoot where I found it very difficult to be productive due to the emotional toll of the filming process. I needed one or two weeks off. I’d cry a lot and process, but my editor was so beautiful in creating a safe space and creating a light energy. When the revolution started in Iran, we were very unified by this situation, and we felt helpless. But in finishing the film, we found a renewed purpose.
When it’s so easy for people to turn off the news and block out what’s going on, how do you think films like yours can change perceptions of these world events? Could there be a change in the collective consciousness and how we discuss what’s happening in Iran?
In the instance of what’s happening in Iran, and the kinds of films that we’re making, it’s important to highlight a subjective, intimate experience — a personal one. One that takes you into the journey of a character, what they’re going through on a day to day basis. Because obviously with headlines and in Instagram posts, you only get a glimpse of something. My main hope for “Shayda” is that it’s a drop in this ocean of change. I don’t see it as something that’s going to be creating a monumental shift. I’m really realistic about the situation. I just hope that it’s a way to amplify and support what’s happening in Iran. I don’t think it can be more than that, but at the same time, I think that’s valuable and I’m very grateful to be able to contribute in that way.
How do you feel about the film likely being prohibited from screening in Iran?
I’ve never thought that that was very realistic. The film is not political, per se. It’s about social issues and women’s rights and women seeking freedom in the West, so I’ve never really had a hope that it would screen in Iran. One of my actors, when the revolution was happening, said, “How amazing would it be if we were able to go back one day and actually screen the film?” And that was really the first time that I had a little vision about it. It was very beautiful. But no, I’ve never had a hope that I would screen there, just because I know about all the censorship in Iran. If I was to go back today, I think I’d be in prison. I don’t think I would be allowed to leave the country because of the film and the people that I made the film with.
“Shayda” has its world premiere in Park City on Jan. 20, with additional screenings from Jan. 21-27.
I acknowledge that we meet here today on the Wangal land of the Eora nation – and pay my respects to elders past and present and all First nation people here today. I recognise that their sovereignty was never ceded. I’m sincerely grateful to Rowan Woods and to the Australian Directors’ Guild. So it is going to be hard to adequately put into words what receiving the Cecil Holmes award, and from a cherished peer and community, means to me. I want to give it a go by framing it through the prism of what it means to be Australian and what it means to be a filmmaker – and how the two intersect in meaningful ways.I am a migrant to this country from the UK. My partner, Andrew is also a migrant or refugee, from Myanmar. The father of my children is European and the mother of Andrew’s children is a Butchulla women from K,gari or Fraser Island – Our blended family is a complex amalgam of skin colour and cultures. So the only way it functions – when it does – is that everyone has a voice, and is encouraged to express it, even when opinions differ. And they do – often and vociferously. In a reductive way, perhaps, this is how I think about what it means to be Australian – to live in a complicated place, with some painful histories, ample contradictions and uncomfortable intersections. To thrive in it – requires a curiosity about others and involves a responsibility to get comfortable with that which may not be familiar. To be Australian and live in Australia requires a capacity for re-imagining what community, family and identity might look like. Acquiring a sense of belonging in Australia demands that we consider what we want to belong to.To be a filmmaker also requires a curiosity about others, implies a responsibility to consider that which is unfamiliar and insists upon an infinite capacity for re-imagining. It also carries with it the individual and social privilege of telling one’s story – of being given a voice. The privilege I refer to – is contingent upon having support to sustain that voice.From a relatively young age – because of the ecologies of care, kindness and patience that I encountered in Australia – I was supported to become a filmmaker – public high school, public healthcare, including mental health, publicly funded university and film school. When I became a filmmaker I was supported by government funded film finance policies and, significantly, I was welcomed into the ‘non-profit’ community of film and television directors known as the Australian Directors Guild.If it had not been for the founding film directors, amongst them, Gillian Armstrong, Phil Noyce and Stephen Wallace, and their establishment of a guild and, then later, directors Graham Thorburn, Donald Crombie, Ray Argall further nourishing a community of directors I would not have had something to belong to… My identity as a filmmaker would have not meant as much because it would not be connected to a history of filmmakers sustaining each other as they interrogate the stories that need to be told about the place in which they live. The other communities I have belonged to, are those of producers, amongst them John Maynard, Bridget Ikin and Sandra Levy. And then of course, as a student at AFTRS, Rowan Woods, Robert Connolly, Dan Nettheim, Tony McNamara – quite a lot of men actually…nonetheless…Cecil Holmes understood that to interrogate what it is to be Australian, as a filmmaker, required not only that he compose his own narratives, but that he support other filmmakers to create multiple perspectives on what it meant to them to live in Australia. He understood that there is an intrinsic responsibility that accompanies the privilege of having a voice – and that is to create space for other voices to co-exist and create – to give light to the multiplicity of stories – that make up our national identity. My great privilege and small contribution has been to participate in the ecology of care that is the Australian Directors’ Guild and to take part in sustaining our wonderful, brilliant, contradictory, diverse, eclectic community of filmmakers. This community has been evidenced recently in the work of Ana Tiwary at the guild – with her program of forty directors. She brings to light – just how complex and diverse Australian directors are. And this diversity has been supported by all of the guilds Executive directors over the last decade – Richard Harris, Kingston Anderson, Diana Burnett, Alaric McAusland and the many directors who have given their time freely to participate on the board. When Ana posted a few days ago an NYT article about Freudenfreude – I thought to myself this is what the guild and the Cecil Holmes Award is all about… The definition of Freuden freude being … Finding pleasure in another person’s good fortune, Viewing individual success as a communal effort. Showing active interest in someone else’s happiness. Sharing credit for your successes with others. Turning oneself into a spectator of other’s joy. It’s what at its best, a family can be, a community can be, and being part of a national identity can be… It is also what the current campaign to parliament for filmmakers has been about….Making it Australian.
The Steve Jaggi Company (SJc) is rounding out 2022 with another Brisbane-shot romance, this time working with director Jo-Anne Brechin.
After filming Colin Budds’ Love By the Glass in the city during October, the Queensland-based business has begun production on When Love Springs, starring Rhiannon Fish and James O’Halloran.
Fish, who acted in SJc’s A Royal in Paradise earlier this year, plays Rory Richards, a junior PR professional that heads to a quaint B&B on Lily Lake for her parent’s vow renewal.
Before she can relax, Rory runs into Jason (Callan Colley), the ex who broke her heart, and his new girlfriend. Panicked, Rory convinces the B&B’s future owner Noah (O’Halloran), to be her fake new boyfriend and in exchange, she’ll help Noah save his family’s B&B. Before they know it, sparks begin to fly between the unlikely pair.
The cast also Renee Herbert, Erin Connor, Steve Nation, and Francesca Savige.
When Love Springs is being produced by Steve Jaggi and Kelly Son Hing, with Vanessa Shapiro, Michael Gray, and Jip Panosot on board as executive producers.
It’s not the first time Brechin has collaborated with Jaggi, with the pair having worked together on 2017 coming-of-age dramedy Zelos.
Jaggi said his company was pleased to once again be producing a film with the “talented and experienced” director.
“It has been a huge year for SJc, and we’re keeping the pedal down right till the end,” he said.
“It’s fantastic to be teaming up again with director Jo-Anne Brechin, five years after working together on Zelos.”
Brechin commended the cast and crew for already being “amazing and so hardworking”, noting they had been able to find their groove “pretty quickly” on-set.
“We’ve created a beautiful setting full of old-school charm for this romantic story, and I’m excited for audiences to see the final result,” she said.
Athabasca Film will manage the domestic distribution of When Love Springs, which is being financed with the assistance of Xcelerate Action, while international sales and distribution will be handled by Nicely Entertainment.
A procession of successful single women has been travelling from the United States to Australia lately.
Laura Price, a San Francisco lawyer, went to a tropical island to convince her childhood best friend to inherit a billion-dollar business. On arriving, she found he was now a hunky beach bum who preferred charity work … but might just be a better match than her questionable fiancé back home.
Then there was Caroline Wilson, a New York chef, who went to a coastal town after discovering her late aunt had left her a café. On arrival, she met the hunky cook … who just might be a better match than her dodgy ex-fiancé back home.
And Amelia Hart, a Chicago florist, went to a country town to salvage her little sister’s wedding. But as she spent time planning with the hunky best man, she realised – you guessed it – he just might be a better match than her dubious boyfriend back home.
They are all characters in romantic films that have been shot in Australia recently: Christine Luby’s This Little Love Of Mine, Rosie Lourde’s Romance On The Menu and Rogue Rubin’s Love In Bloom. And they’re part of the latest trend in Australian films: “uplifting, positive, female-driven stories set in idyllic locations”.
The Australian romance film boom
Romance on the Menu (2020) – Released on Hallmark in the US, Netflix in the rest of the world
This Little Love of Mine (2021) – Released in cinemas, then on Netflix
Christmas On The Farm (2021) – Released on Stan*
Sit. Stay. Love (2021) – Released in cinemas
A Perfect Pairing (2022) – Released on Netflix
Mistletoe Ranch (2022) – In cinemas from November 17
Love In Bloom (2022) – Releasing in February next year
You, Me And The Penguins (2023) – Releasing next year
A Royal In Paradise (2023) – In post-production
Love By The Glass (2023) – In production
In other words, romances in which career women – often in their thirties and with bad boyfriends – find love with a caring and ruggedly handsome guy. Often a laid-back Australian.https://www.youtube.com/embed/WR21TH-6LfY
Demand surged so much during the pandemic that Brisbane-based producer Steve Jaggi (Rip Tide, Dive Club) has shot eight romantic films in Queensland, including the ones above, since just before COVID-19 closed borders.Advertisement
The best title: Sit. Stay. Love, which is about an American aid worker who, on heading home to snowy Vermont for Christmas, has to save an animal shelter with a handsome vet. It’s also from the popular sub-genre of Christmas romances.
Another Brisbane production company, Hoodlum Entertainment, has made two romantic comedies along the same lines: Stuart McDonald’s A Perfect Pairing (a wine expert from Los Angeles heads to rural Australia to land a new client) and Christopher Weekes’ Christmas On The Farm (a successful author heads from New York to an Australian farm to cover up the lie behind her book).
In a way, they are (much) lower-budget versions of the Hollywood romcom, Ticket To Paradisethat Julia Roberts and George Clooney shot in Queensland during the pandemic.
Sometimes, the female stars are Australian or made their name here, including Rhiannon Fish (Home and Away), Tammin Sursok (Home and Away), Georgia Flood (Wentworth) and Mercy Cornwall (Dive Club). But Canadian Cindy Busby (Supernatural) and American Susie Abromeit (Jessica Jones) have both shot two of these films.
The next one off the production line, Mistletoe Ranch, opens in Australian cinemas next week. It centres on a rising twentysomething photographer who heads back to the small American town she grew up in to save Christmas celebrations … and finds a spark with her handsome ex-fiance.
Like Sit. Stay. Love, it was shot in Queensland using snow machines to create a wintry landscape.
Jaggi, a prolific producer of young adult and romance projects, says the demand for romances has exploded in the past two years. “COVID undoubtedly made a huge difference,” he says. “More and more people wanted to watch uplifting content.”
The expansion of streaming services has meant there are also new buyers for these optimistic PG-rated films.
“Before COVID, as an Australian company, you tried to make a film that would work for as broad an audience as possible to make money,” Jaggi says. “Now it’s the reverse: if you want to be successful as a business, you make more and more niche content.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/MFNKHY86oFk
The market includes the American cable channels Hallmark and Lifetime, more sophisticated romances for streaming services led by Netflix, and even more sophisticated versions for cinema release. Largely appealing to an aspirational female audience interested in adventure, Jaggi’s films are set either in Australia, the US or an exotic “generic” location.
“Escapist destinations tend to work well with the audience,” he says. “What we find works really well is if one of the protagonists is American and one is Australian. The ‘Australian hunk’ is a good formula.”
Jaggi is now planning 10 to 12 more romance films in the next two years. He is considering diversifying into having a thirtysomething man finding love, same-sex couples, and possibly “steamier” storylines.
While none of his films have Screen Australia funding, they are all supported by Screen Queensland – either logistically or through regional grants. And most use the country’s 30 per cent tax incentive (called the producer offset), while giving a break to rising (often female) directors.
“Australia is a huge entertainment exporter,” Jaggi says. And while that has traditionally been family and children’s shows watched by millions around the world, it now includes romances.
Anna Torv and Robert Taylor in The Newsreader, courtesy ABC.SHARE
In 1986, when screenwriter and producer Michael Lucas was eight years old, his dad got picked up from the local oval by the Ten Eyewitness News helicopter. ‘It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me,’ Lucas says, laughing on the phone to Screenhub.
‘My father was an infectious diseases doctor and AIDS specialist,’ he explains, ‘and because of that – much like in this past year when medical professionals and epidemiologists have appeared in the media a lot – he went on news shows. I have these really vivid memories of the helicopter taking him away, and I’ve still got the videotape of him being interviewed by David Johnson and Jo Pearson.’
1986 was also the year NASA’s Space Shuttle ‘Challenger’ exploded just moments after launch. Lucas remembers seeing it on TV. ‘My mum was crying, and that made a big impression on me, as it does when you’re little and you see mum crying which doesn’t happen very often.’
These experiences helped inspire the creation and writing ofThe Newsreader, the ABC drama set in the high-stakes world of an 80s nightly newsroom. Created and produced by Lucas and Joanna Werner, with all six episodes directed by Emma Freeman, the series has lots of big hair and some giant shoulder pads (costume designer Marion Boyce has a ball). It’s fun period drama, in all the ways that period dramas are fun (‘look at the racism! Look at the sexism! Those cars…), while speaking to contemporary Australian cultural debates, and presenting a complex but very recognisable species of romantically charged work friendship.
Anna Torv stars as the ambitious female newsreader, battling sexism (particularly that of her boss, a magnificently monstrous William McInnes) and her own internal panic attacks. Sam Reid plays her junior co-worker, a sensitive but diligent young journalist who’s still unsure of his voice. As they work together covering the events of an intense three-month period, including the AIDS crisis and Lindy Chamberlin’s release, they form a unique bond.https://www.youtube.com/embed/k_0kxdPnEWg?feature=oembed
Writing relationship dramas and rom-coms is Lucas’s specialty. Nominated four times for the AWGIE for Best TV Screenplay, his credits include being a core writer and script editor on the hit series Offspring (2010 – 2014), Wentworth, Rosehaven, producing on Party Tricks and creating contemporary relationship drama Five Bedrooms, which sold to the UK and is now in production on its third season. (Season 2 begins on new streamer Paramount+ on August 11.) Lucas was also the writer of the 2012 unconventional romantic comedy feature film Not Suitable for Children, directed by Peter Templeman and starring Sarah Snook and Ryan Kwanten.
Lucas says that, when he started work on it in 2015, the kernel of the idea for The Newsreader actually had nothing to do with the politics of the newsroom, and everything to do with a particular kind of relationship dynamic.
‘I was writing a relationship drama between the characters of Dale and Helen, and it was set in the 80s. I wanted to look at a male character that was sort of struggling to be the masculine ideal that the world wanted him to be. And conversely, I wanted a female character who had those sort of alpha traits and she was punished for it. About a year and a half later I set it in the newsroom.’
As difficult as COVID was, there was this massive silver lining to all these remarkable people being home in Australia and there was not much other production happening. So, in normal circumstances, Anna Torv would have been in LA and Sam Reid would have been in London and we still would have offered it to them, but God knows what we might have been competing with. But they were back in their family homes.
Michael Lucas
‘I thought, well, if he wants to be this masculine ideal, what does he want to be? A politician? A sportsman? And then once I thought of a newsreader, it lit up for me.’
It should be noted too, that Lucas is a self-confessed news junkie. He finds looking through news archives ‘exhilarating’, and also loves any kind of film or TV show set in a newsroom. ‘From Broadcast News, to Press Gang, Frontline, Tootsie and Network, I love them all,’ he says. ‘But particularly Broadcast News, and there are some very specific moments of homage to that movie in our series.’
Screenhub: What kind of research did you do to write this script?
Michael Lucas: I spoke to a lot of people. I was so lucky that people were incredibly generous, but also, a lot of the people that were working in news in the 80s are just on retirement age at the moment and It felt like I was hitting them up at a good time. They were ready to unload about what the workplace culture was like back then.
I built up a big Bible and I spoke to people that were on camera, off-camera, producers, people in as many different roles as I could to build up a portrait. I very quickly found that even though I was speaking to people from different networks, some commercial, and some ABC, there were definite hallmarks of those kinds of workplaces no matter who you were speaking to.
The newsroom you present here is quite diverse, with actors like Michelle Lim Davidson, Chai Hansen and Chum Ehelepola given key roles. Was it really like that?
I think undoubtedly newsrooms at that time were very male-dominated and very white. And so that was a real conversation in terms of casting it in 2021. There are so many different approaches you can take. There’s Bridgerton, which is almost set in a in a different version of history, and then there are shows where you’re colourblind or colour conscious. We spoke about it endlessly.
And I would say that with a mix of particular characters, they were conceived to really tell a story of what it would be like to be sort of a first-generation immigrant coming into a workplace. That was really something that was happening in Australian culture in the 80s.
In other cases, there would be a spectacular performer that really was perfect for that character and so we cast them. Our newsroom is a little bit more diverse than it would have been, but that’s where we landed.
In the first two episodes I’ve watched, there’s a lovely ambiguity and subtlety between the two leads. Nothing is over-explained.
I have to give a huge amount of credit for that to both the director Emma Freeman and the actors, Anna Torv and Sam Reid, who, if they could act it with subtlety, didn’t want to state it [in words]. They had such beautiful instincts. And I feel like I should say that, because they may have protected me from myself a few times! They’ve really made me look good.
The show also really captures some of that ambiguity around homosexuality that we had in the 80s, where there was a lot of very camp pop culture, but to be gay in real life was still very difficult and secret.
It was such contradiction, wasn’t it? You turn on TV, and you’ll get Culture Club. But then in the wider world, there’s this intense homophobia and repression. It was really strange even now to go back to that and try and get your head around what was the real attitude?
Was it difficult to get the rights to all the archival footage you’ve used?
It was maddeningly complex! There’s a very good reason the ABC was the perfect place to make this story, because they have those expansive news archives and the ABC News owns so much footage, which was fantastic. But it was more complex than I could have imagined, depending on which show the footage came from.
Like, if it was on an ABC news bulletin, then they could give us the right to that and we could use it. But if it was on Four Corners, that’s a different rights situation. We had to be a little bit crafty, for example, in the opening episode, the footage of the Challenger explosion had to be purchased from the US.
Literally every frame has a different rights situation. I don’t know if we’ll get a season two, but if we do I want to change the process and start with all the material we have access to first.
When did you go into production and how did COVID affect you?
We started shooting in Melbourne in November 2020. We were lucky to sort of land in a relatively calm time although we still had massive curveballs, things like sending the cast home for Christmas and then the Northern Beaches outbreak happens and then we have to say to some of them, ‘I’m sorry. You’re not going to have a family Christmas. You’re packing up your car. You coming to Victoria right now.’ Those sort of things happened.
We also had plans to shoot in different parts of the country at various points, but it all had to be Victorian-based.
As difficult as COVID was, there was this massive silver lining to all these remarkable people being home in Australia and there was not much other production happening. So, in normal circumstances, Anna Torv would have been in LA and Sam Reid would have been in London and we still would have offered it to them, but God knows what we might have been competing with. But they were back in their family homes.
Not just the actors, but amazing heads of department like production designer Melinda Doring, who doesn’t usually do recurring series, she usually does feature films. We were one of the first productions to go back into shooting and I feel like we got some amazing coups in casting crew that that were probably the product of 2020 being such a weird year.
What can you tell us about the excellent cringe 80s costuming?
Costume Designer Marion Boyce [The Dressmaker, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries] is amazing, and that was another thing that came out of Melbourne’s lockdown. She was online the whole time going to deceased estates that were auctioning off 80s clothes, and a lot of the things that Anna Torv in particular wears are real vintage outfits from the 80s. On a normal production, there’s no way the designer would have months and months to sit there online going to auctions because of a pandemic.
When did Emma Freeman come on as director and did you always envisage her doing all six episodes?
Basically, as soon as I got together with Jo [Werner], we discussed Emma. We had to wait until the date firmed up before it could become a formal offer, But I’ve worked with her for so long and so has Jo, and we kept dropping it into conversation to get her interest. I thought we were in with a real shot because I knew she would love to do something in the 80s, knowing what she loves. She’s done the 70s and Puberty Blues but she hadn’t ever really gone into the 80s. She’s so respected and has so many offers from overseas, we were lucky to get her
In terms of Emma directing at all, that was partially because we had to shoot it all as one sort of block. We didn’t shoot in discrete episodes, we shot all six episodes all at once. So there were practical elements, but also we had a really particular tone we were trying to hit. And I just knew that Emma intuitively understood it.
When she directs my stuff, I always feel like she is in contact with both the comedy and also the sort of darker underlying or more dramatic elements. She manages to bring both of them out so skillfully. I wanted her to be able to be a core storyteller and really put her stamp on it.
Do you have advice for emerging screenwriters?
I know a lot of people always say this, but write. Write an awful lot. I just wrote and wrote and wrote. I’d been writing for 10 years before anything of mine was professionally produced. I wrote a lot of things that are tucked in a bottom drawer for a very good reason. And I think you have to go through that. I certainly come in contact with a lot of aspiring screenwriters, who really want to get into it, but haven’t really spent that time.
The other thing is if you can try and balance that with real experience of film or TV productions. I was an assistant for Bazmark, [Baz Luhrmann’s company], and I was a script assistant for John Edwards, and Imogen Banks and, and that was really essential to witness the process of scripts being made, how production works and how to how to interpret notes and all those sorts of things.
Try to write as much as you can and seek out opportunities, whether it be doing placements, or whether even just starting as a runner. I was a runner in my very early days. It’s all really valuable.
The Newsreader premieres on Sunday 15 August at 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
Production Credit:The Newsreader is a Werner Films Production for the ABC. Major production investment from Screen Australia and the ABC and financed with support from Film Victoria. Worldwide distribution is managed by Entertainment One (eOne). Created by Michael Lucas. Directed by Emma Freeman. Produced by Lucas and Joanna Werner. Executive Producers Werner and Stuart Menzies. ABC Executive Producers Brett Sleigh and Sally Riley.