Who's Who

Australian Guests

Judy Adamson
worked at Film Australia between 1950-52 and 1968-81. She is a long-time film history and film society activist and life member of the M.E.A.A. (Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance).

Karin Altmann
is a graduate of the National Film School of Great Britain. Her films as writer/director include the AFI award winning "Raoul Wallenberg: Between the Lines (also an Awgie winner)", "Holding On To What Is Real", runner-up in the 1994 Prix Jeunesse (both documentaries), and, as a writer, "War and Puss", (an Awgie nominee in children's drama). She was Program Director of the 1991 Screenwriters' Conference and has been a member of its board since then. She is currently a part-time Project Consultant for the Australian Film Commission, a writer and script editor.

Sonja Armstrong
has been with the Australian Film Commission for three years. Documentaries, low budget drama production and nurturing new talent have been the focus of her work in Film Development. Documentary productions for which she has been Project Co-ordinator include the " Microdocs series", "Eternity", "Hell Bento!", "Islands of Humanity" and "The Miniskirted Dynamo". Prior to joining the AFC Sonja spent three years in London working in film distribution as Business Affairs and Finance Manager with Enterprise Pictures, in film development with Milsom Associates, and as a consultant to the European Script Fund.

Fiona Baker
is the Executive Producer for the Nine Network's RPA. She is also currently working as EP on another Nine project Looking Good. Fiona began her television career after completing her Bachelor of Arts Degree majoring in Drama and Psychology. Her television career started with a job researched for Simon Townsend's Wonderworld. She has subsequently worked at Channels 10, 9 and 7. In 1990, she went to the ABC as producer for the 7.30 Report. before returning to Channel 9 to join the team at A Current Affair as producer. In 1992 Fiona explored the realm of series reality television producing Street Stories for the Nine Network.

Wayne Barker
is a director and musician born from the Yawuru and Jabirr Jabirr people on the north-west coast of Australia. He worked with Wayee radio, and trained in ethnomusicology, photography, film and video at the AIATSIS in Canberra and on film shoots. He studied the broadcast system with the Inuit in Canada then trained other young people in the Kimberley communities. Having created his own production house he made documentaries, participated in the photographic exhibition 'Inside black Australia' and was invited to present his films in several festivals in France. His 53 minute documentary on the Kimberley Aboriginal people Milli Milli won several awards in international festivals, was broadcasted on television in Australia, China, Estonia etc. He is currently writing music and script for a short drama and a feature.

Peter Beilby
is an Investment Manager for the Australian Film Finance Corporation. He joined the production industry in 1973 as an editor and sound recordist at the Media Centre at LaTrobe University working on documentaries. he is one of the founding publishers of the film magazine Cinema Papers which he edited on and off between 1969 and 1981. He has produced a number of documentaries including Australian Movies to the World, a recent history of the Austrlaian film industry.

Chris Berry
teaches Chinese cinema at La Trobe University in Melbourne. He has extensive knowledge of Asian cinema and is the Australian co-ordinator of NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema). He is the curator of the NETPAC Asian Discovery Selection and a contributing editor to their journal Cinemaya

Neil Bethune
is one of the owners of Australia OnLine, an Internet service provider started in May 1994. Prior to that, he worked in television as a floor manager and camera operator, first at Channel 9 and later Channel 7 in Melbourne. In 1983, he co-produced and directed a documentary "The Whale Savers", about rescuing whales from Australian beaches, which sold around the world and won a Penguin commendation.

Annette Blonski
is a freelance script editor, policy consultant and writer who has worked with a number of film and arts organisations. As a script editor she works in feature films, documentary and short drama and she has written both fiction and film criticism.

Simon Britton
is Project Co-ordinator, New Media/New Technology at AFTRS Melbourne, where he runs a series of courses for filmmakers at the AFTRS' New Media Studio. He has written articles and spoken on the new media and new technologies at a number of forums over the last five years.

Mick Broderick
has been pondering the nuclear sublime and the apocalyptic for too long. He is the author of Nuclear Movies and the editor of Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Japanese Nuclear Film.

Ian Bryson
is a postgraduate student in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. He is conducting research on the history and politics of the ethnographic documentaries made by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

Roger Buckeridge
is director of Myamyn Pty Ltd and serves as a consulting associate of Cutler Company Pty Ltd. He has carried out a substantial range of consultancy and investment management activities over an 18 year span. In recent years, he has focused on the information technology, communications and new media industries, both as an advisor and as a contracted manager of an enterprise in its start-up phase.

Arthur Cantrill
together with Corinne Cantrill, has been making films since 1961; at first documentaries on art, then experimental film, and editing and publishing Cantrills Filmnotes, a journal on film and video art since 1971. Their film work and publishing is well-known internationally; they are represented in several film collections, including those of The Royal Film Archive of Belgium, Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek (Berlin), Deutsches Filmmuseum (Frankfurt), Musee National D'Art Moderne (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris), PREA (Avignon), The British Council, and the National Library of Australia. Arthur Cantrill is Associate Professor of Media Arts in the School of Studies in Creative Arts, Victorian College of the Arts. He is writing a book on Australian experimental film.

Alan Carter
is the series producer of First Person a set of six video diaries commissioned by SBS and Open Channel. Prior to this he was Executive manager of the Film and Television Institute in WA. He has been producing documentary programs since 1983. Before his arrival in Australia in 1991, Alan worked as an independent documentary producer in Britain. His production credits include the award winning Billy Bell, Wooden Curtains and We're Not for Sale. Alan has also worked extensively as a researcher for productions commissioned by Channel 4 and the BBC.

Craig Carter
is an indepentant audio post-production speceliast who tracklayed and mixed "Rythms of Life"

Tony Chapman
is Head of Television, SBS Melbourne.

Barbara Chobocky
is a well known independent documentary director with many successful and award-winning projects to her credit. Most recently her projects have included Billion Dollar Crop, and The Raid, which was awarded the 1985 AWGIE for Best Public Broadcast documentary.

Sharon Connolly
was a founding director of the highly successful Melbourne based production company Yarra Bank films. In 1986-87 Sharon was senior script editor in the Melbourne Drama Department of the ABC. She also worked as an independent script editor and has been both Project Officer and Project Manager for Film Victoria. She served as a councillor of the Screen Production Association of Australia, Deputy Chair of the 1991 Australian Documentary Conference and as a member of the Board of Film Victoria. Sharon was appointed Executive Director at Film Australia in June 1993 and is currently responsible for a slate of documentary, drama, and CD-Rom programs developed and produced under the National Interest Program.

Jennifer Cornish
specialises in the production of blue chip wildlife films. Her company Jennifer Cornish Media specialises in representing wildlife, multicultural, adventure and travel documentaries to international television. JCM is also involved in co-productions and multimedia products. The company has recently entered a new venture, representing SBS Independent product in international markets.

David Court
is the editor of The Content Letter and executive producer of the feature film "Lilian's Story", currently in post-production

Kim Dalton
joined Beyond International Limited in 1995 as the Manager of Acquisitions and Production. A graduate of Flinders University Drama School, he lived in London from 1976-80 where he completed a post graduate diploma, freelanced in the film industry, and managed an independent production and distribution company. Since returning to Melbourne, he has worked as General Manager of Open Channel, Melbourne Investment Manager for the FFC, and General Manager for the Australian Children's TV Foundation, as well as forming and running his own production company.

John Darling

Colin Dean
served his film apprenticeship in Britain's Crown Film Unit. From 1949 to 1956 he served as a Director at the Commonwealth Film Unit making the extraordinary "Melbourne Wedding Belle". Colin was one of the progenitors of Australian television in 1978 reaching the position of Federal Director (TV) at the Australian Broadcasting Commission.

Daryl Dellora
has been working as a documentary filmmaker for ten years. His most recent film "Conspiracy" about the 1978 Hilton Hotel Bombing prompted fresh calls in both state and federal parliaments for a royal commission into the bombing. His 1991 film "Mr Neal is Entitled to Be an Agitator", about the late High Court Judge Lionel Murphy, was awarded the Australian Human Rights Award for Documentary film.

Maree Delofski
has been involved in several areas of documentary production including broadcasting and script assessment as well as reviewing. She was program director for the second Australian Documentary Conference and is currently teaching in the screen studies department at the AFTRS. She is co-editing a forthcoming documentary edition of Media International Australia with Jane Mills

Venieca Doolan
has been BRACS co-ordinator in Queensland since 1989. In this capacity she oversees media training in nine communities, producing videos and conducting onsite programs. Her committment to BRACS (Broadcasting in Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme) is to ensure that indigenous media is delivered by indigenous people, for indigenous people and to be fully representative of the indigenous view. .

Helen Durham
is a Melbourne lawyer who is currently the Chair of the Australian Committee of Investigation into War Crimes. She is employed as a Program Manager at the Asialink Centre. Helen is completing her Master of Laws at the University of Melbourne and has spent much time studying the international legal position of rape during times of conflict. In July 1995 she presented a paper to the Academic Council of the UN in The Hague arguing that rape should be deemed a war crime under current international law.

Karen Eastmure
is an account manager with Kodak Australasia. For over ten years she has been providing technical service and customer support to the motion picture industry in Victoria.

Chris Fitchett
was recently appointed Chief Executive Officer of the new Commerical Television Production Fund. Prior to this he was Project Manager and Deputy Director at Film Victoria. He was formerly an independent writer, director and producer and his credits include the AFI award winning films "Queensland" (producer) and "Blood Money" (writer/director). He also has considerable experience as a script editor and taught screenwriting for three years at AFTRS in Sydney.

John Flaus
The barefoot anarchist from working class Sydney who once went to the drive-in without a car, John Flaus is the recorded voice you now get when you ring the Working Nation hotline. Iconically Australian, Flaus is a radio, stage and screen actor, film critic, academic and journalist. An original filmnik, once criticised for 'wilful personal enthusiasm for films of unedifying taste and questionable allegorical significance', Flaus is passionate about films and was co-host of the long running "Film Buff's Forecast" on 3RRR.

Keren Flavell
is the founder of Global Passage, a company that makes interactive information for travellers. She has created the Global Passage netSTOP internet site and is scripting and producing a series of CD Rom and video travel guides which will be sold through the internet service. Flavell is the author of Camping and Tramping in Australia's National Parks and is the presenter of a travel program on 3RRRFM.

Michael Frankel
is principal solicitor of Michael Frankel & Co, and specialises in intellectual property, entertainment and media law, multimedia and trade practices related matters. He was a member of the Federal Attorney General's Copyright Law Review Committee. He represents filmmakers in all aspects, from development through to financing, production, distribution and marketing

Richard Frankland
is an independent Koori filmmaker

Freda Freiberg
An author and cinema studies lecturer, Freda Freiberg contributed the chapter on wartime Japanese cinema to Oxford University Press's forthcoming anthology, "World War 2, Film and History". Apart from Japanese studies, her research interests include Australian independent cinema and still photography.

Martin Friedel
is the composer on the ABC documentary series "Rhythms of Life". He has composed opera, chamber music, theatre, film and TV.

Dione Gilmour
is the Executive Producer of the ABC Natural History Unit and Commissioning Editor of independent natural history and travel and adventure programs.

David Goldie
has been making documentaries for 15 years during which time he has earned a highly regarded reputation for his ability to examine sensitive, complex social issues with depth and compassion. He is best known for his nationally and internationally acclaimed documentaries; Out of Sight, Out of Mind, Nobody's Children and Without Consent.

Mitzi Goldman
is an independent documentary director and producer. Her first film Snakes and Ladders was an award winning documentary completed in 1987. In 1988/9 Mitzi worked at SBS-TV directing half hour documentaries for their Australian Mosaic series. She then moved to the USA where she lived for three years editing, writing and teaching. For the last three years Mitzi has been living in Perth, teaching at Murdoch University and developing her latest project The Wild Monkey (working title only)

Cynthia Goliopoulos
is Project Manager for CD-ROM at Pacific Access (T/A WYellowpages). With a background in marketing, she is especially interested in facilitating the transition of small businesses into the information age.

Mary Graham
turned a hobby of reading, music, films and chess into a strategy for the development of indigenous media during her work as the Administrator of the Aboriginal and Islander Child Care Agency in Brisbane in the early 1980's. She is a Kumbumerri woman of the Gold Coast, Queensland. She has worked in Aboriginal politics for 16 years (past member of Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, presently member of Brisbane Regional Council ATSIC, and established Mary Graham and Associates Consultancy specialising in Aboriginal perspectives and approaches to knowledge. She is the Executive Producer of "Makin Tracks", her first film.

David Hanan
has taught film and television studies at Monash University since 1978. He was company secretary of the Melbourne International Film Festival from 1985-1991. He has been responsible for the exchange of film programs between Australia and Indonesia and Australia and Thailand, and is currently completing a book on the representation of Asia in Australian documentary from 1930-1995.

Brian Hannant
has been a screenwriter-director in the Australian film industry for more than twenty-five years. After a brief career teaching physics and mathematics he began making documentary films professionally at the Commonwealth Film unit (now Film Australia). Several of his documentaries have won major awards including the Statuette of St Finbar from the Cork Festival in 1980 for Bound for the Alice. he has known the highs and lows of feature filmmaking - from co-writing Mad Max 2, to co-writing and directing The Time Guardian. This was all put to good use as head of Directing at AFTRS for the past five years, a positions he has now just put aside.

Cate Hemmings
is a specialist copyright lawyer who heads the Distribution Department of the Audio-Visual Copyright society which is copyright collecting society distributing royalties to owners of copyright in audio-visual works including film producers, film distributors, scriptwriters and music copyright owners.

Jeremy Hogarth
is a producer with the ABC Natural History Unit and co-ordinated the post production of "Rhythms of Life."

Jonathan Holmes
has worked in current affairs as Executive Producer of "Four Corners" and later "Foreign Corresondent." He wrote the narration for the ABC series "Rhythms of Life."

Jenifer Hooks
was appointed the Executive Director of Film Victoria in July 1991. Prior to this she was an independent television producer for twelve years and the recipient of many awards for children's television. She is a graduate in Economics and Geography from the University of Melbourne and attended the Australian Film and Television School 1977-78. Her work in the film industry has included service on a number of Boards - the Australian Children's Television Foundation, the State Film Centre Council of Victoria, Film Victoria, and currently the Interim Council of the National Film and Sound Archive where she chairs the Technology Working Group.

Ted Hopkins
is the director of Aegis Multimedia and Champion Productions, Prahran, Victoria. He is a writer, publisher and creator of multi-media whose objective is "to become a storyteller in digital form". Recent digital work includes "Virtual ICE Antarctic Multimedia" for the Museum of Victoria and the Tasmanian Museum and "What's for Dinner, Thankyou!" featuring Research the Dog, created and produced for Dataworks Educational Software.

Peter Hughes
lectures in Media Studies in the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Enquiry at the University of Ballarat. He has also done work in marketing documentary film for a number of film distributors and some script development work.

Sally Ingleton
has specialised in making documentaries about Asian people in Australia. She has produced and directed several films including the award winning The Tenth Dancer and The Isabellas. She is currently post-producing Silk and Steel and developing Mao's New Suit. She is Deputy Chair of the 1995 Australian Documentary onference and Melbourne Convenor for the Australian Screen Directors Association. In both 1994 and 1995 she acted as Film Victoria's Documentary Manager.

Graeme Isaac
has worked in a wide variety of fields within the Australian film industry, as a writer, producer, script editor and music producer.In 1980 he co-wrote and co-produced "Wrong Side of the Road", the first Australian feature with an all Aboriginal cast, together with the first album of contemporary Black Australian Rock and Roll. Since that time he has produced both drama and documentary films including several documentaries with Aboriginal subjects or elements. He is currently Supervising Producer for short drama series invloving Indigenous directors and financed by the AFC, State Film Bodies and SBS.

Claire Jager
is currently Film Victoria's Documentary Manager and a Board Member of the 1995 Australian Documentary Conference. Claire was a founding member of Reel Women and has worked extensively in both documentary and drama. Her most recent work "The Good Looker", a portrait of the well known Australian painter Joy Hester won the 1995 AFI Best Documentary award.

Andrew Lloyd James
is the General Manager of SBS Independent. Born and educated in England, he came to Australia in 1967, joined ABC-TV as a Relief Clerk and worked his way through the organisation from Trainee to Senior Executive Producer. The majority of his work has been in prime time documentary programs, many of which have won awards including two Logies. In August 1988 he was appointed Head of Television. After six years in that position, he moved to his current position as General Manager of SBS Independent, a branch established specifically to increase the quality of Australian produced programs on the network.

Owen Johnston
A Queenslander who graduated from the Swinburne Film School, Owen spent nearly 10 years contemplating the mysteries of Australian Rules football in Melbourne while he learnt how to edit at Crawford Productions and Kestrel Films. He is now an independent producer in Brisbane whose credits include editing and producing "Red Ted and the Great Depression" (1994) and writing and pro-ducing "The Legend of Fred Paterson" (1995).

Peter Jordan
is a graduate of the Swinburne Film & Television school. He has worked in production on a number of Melbourne-based dramas and features. He is the director and co-producer of the documentary The Sleep of Reason.

Mitchell Kelly
is a researcher with the ABC Natural History Unit and worked as assistant camera on "Rhythms of Life."

Peter Kemp
A freelance writer and part-time lecturer in cinema studies, Peter Kemp's reviews and articles have appeared in a variety of publications including FilmNews, Cinema Papers, Artlink and The Melbourne Times. He contributed a chapter on the last quarter-century of Australian feature films to the recent AFI anthology "A Century of Australian Cinema". He has also broadcast radio reviews and commentary on Melbourne 3RRR-FM's Film Buff's Forecast and the ABC Radio's Arts National.

Arun Khanna
came to Australia in 1990 from India, where he headed his own design company, and in that same year was appointed Managing Director of Cadability. Cadability specialises in supplying complete solutions (hardware/software) for the broadcast video and photographic markets, and in multimedia production in the fields of CD-ROM development and Online services. The interactive CD-ROM "AFL '95 Multimedia Football", was the initial publication and Arun, on behalf of Cadability, was presented with the AIMIA Multimedia award in the category of Education/Training in July this year.

David Langsam
is a print, radio and television journalist, media consultant and lecturer. He has recently returned to Australia from London, where he worked as a correspondent for the Sydney Sun-Herald and the Bureau of National Affairs, and taught journalism at City University. He has been a freelance contributor to numerous newspapers, radio and TV programs including the BBC World Service, RTE (Dublin) and ABC Radio.

Pat Laughren
Since co-writing and editing "Exits" (1980), Pat Laughren has worked to promote filmmaking in Queensland. He is a senior lecturer in Media Production at Griffith University in Brisbane and has been involved with the Brisbane International Film Festival and the Queensland Cinematheque. His credits include directing "Red Ted and the Great Depression" (1994) and "The Legend of Fred Paterson" (1995)

Gillian Leahy
is an Australian filmmaker whose credits include "My Life Without Steve". She is also a senior lecturer within the film and video major at the University of Technology, Sydney.

John Lewis
is a television current affairs producer and an independent documentary producer. He is currently executive producer of "Order in the House" (ABC) and the producer of "The Good Looker" (1995).

Lisa logan
is presently working as a Project Co-ordinator for the Australian Film Commission, supporting the development and production of interactive multimedia, work employing new technology, animation and experimental film and video. In 1994, Lisa Logan and Shiralee Saul opened New Media Network, an exhibition venue to profile artists working with new media. Prior to this, Lisa worked as Project Co-ordinator at Modern Image Makers Association, where she programmed exhibitions and encouraged critical writing about art and technology

Gary Maclennan
was born in Ireland but has spent the last twenty one years teaching in Brisbane. He is a lecturer in Media Studies within the School of Media and Journalism, Faculty of Arts, QUT. As a long time member of the Brisbane Left, he played an active part in many campaigns against the corrupt ultra-right Bjelke Petersen Government. He is currently doing research towards a PhD on the topic of Left Wing Documentary Film in Australia from 1945 to 1990.

Bob Maza
is an Aboriginal actor and playwright and has recently been appointed as a Commissioner of the Australian Film Commission. Mr Maza is well known as an actor, having starred in productions such as Heartland, Reckless Kelly and Fringe Dwellers. His play The Keepers is currently part of the NSW School Curriculum. Mr Maza is a part-time lecturer with the Aboriginal Research and Resource Centre at the University of NSW and also runs a communications and media consultance specialising in increasing opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture within theatre, radio, television and film.

Bryce Menzies
has developed an extensive entertainment and intellectual property law practice. Since the 1980's, he has been heavily involved in the film industry, working both as a lawyer and an Executive Producer. Films he has worked on include "Malcolm", "The Big Steal", "Death in Brunswick", "Proof" and Muriel's Wedding, as well as television's "The Magistrate" and "Stark".

Bruce Moir
has had a long association with Film Australia. From 1968 to 1978, he worked as Director, Producer and Head of Production before taking up a position as Executive Producer with the South Australian Film Corporation. His credits include the feature film "Playing Beatie Bow", the mini-series "Robbery Under Arms" and "The Shiralee", and the docu-drama "Mortgage". In November, 1988 he returned to Film Australia and was appointed Managing Director in 1989. He is also Director of the Australian Multimedia Enterprise Limited.

John Moore
is the Executive Director of Open Channel, Melbourne's community cased resource centre for independent filmmakers. John has produced a string of award winning documentaries on co-production with independent filmmakers including Guns and Roses with Carole Sklan, Barefoot Student Army with Catherine Marciniak and Balck Man's Houses and Harold with Steve Thomas. John was on the Advisory Committee for the 1991 Documentary Conference held in Canberra.

Jane Mills
recently joined the AFTRS as Head of Screen Studies from Sheffield Hallam University (UK) where she was Head of Documentary at the University's Northern Media School. Formerly Head of Production at the National Film and television School, Jane has made documentary films for English television and served on the committees of a number of international documentary festivals. She is author of several books and articles on issues of film, language, gender and sexual politics.

David Noakes
is one of three Investment Managers working for the Australian Film Finance Corporation. He began his film career as a director of photography in 1978 and formed his production company Market Street Films in 1984. He has produced drama and documentary and has directed a number of award winning documentary films.

Jane Oehr
began her filmmaking career as a Trainee Director at the BBC in London and then went on to direct many independent documentaries including "Niugini Culture Shock". She has worked with leading filmmaking organisations including Film Australia, ABC TV and SBS, and has lectured at the AFTRS. She has written and directed many short dramas as well as the feature "On the Loose" and telemovie "The Journey". She currently works in the AFC Film Development Branch, overseeing the development and production of drama and documentaries.

Dennis O'Rourke
came by his first job in the television industry courtesy of the ABC - who employed him as an assistant gardener. It wasn't long before he was promoted to cinematographer. Between 1975 and 1979 he lived in Papua New Guinea and worked for the new government training Papua New Guineans in filmmaking techniques. His first film Yumi Yet; Independence for Papua New Guinea was completed in 1976 and was awarded many prizes. His other films include: Yap...How did you know we'd like TV? (1980); Half Life: A Parable for the Nuclear Age (1985); Cannibal Tours (1988) and The Good Woman of Bangkok (1991). His awards include; The American Film Festival Blue Ribbon Award, the Jury Prize for best Film at the Berlin Film Festival: the Eastman Kodak award for Cinematography, the Director's Prize for Extraordinary Achievement at the Sundance Film festival and the Australian Film Institute's Byron Kennedy Award.

Michael O'Shaughnessy
lectures in Media Studies, including documentary film and television, at Edith Cowan University in Perth.

Chris Peacock
returned from the U K in 1981 after ten years acting and directing in community theatre. You'd think a holiday would do. No. Chris jumped feet first into television, graduating form the ABC TV Producer course in 1985. Invited to work in Brisbane near her family, she became a producer/director (etc.) for Murriimage Community Video and Film Service, impacting on the development of indigenous media with a community cultural base. She is a descendant of Erub (in the Torres Strait) and, with partner Carl Fisher and five children, lives north of Brisbane. A confessed workaholic, she is producer/director of "Makin Tracks", her first film.

Daniel Pearce
Dan Pearce joined Holding Redlich in 1991 and became an Associate in 1994. He practices in contract, companies and securities and intellectual property law with emphasis on business acquisitions, corporate compliance and media and entertainment. Some of his principal clients include Film Australia, Network Ten, John Fairfax Holdings and its subsidiary AAV Australia and a number of independent film producers including Richard Franklin, Daniel Scharf and Fiona Eagger.

Josko Petkovic
teaches screen production at Murdoch University in Western Australia. Originally a student of Swinburne Film School, he has been writing, directing, producing, filming and editing his own films since 1976.

Mike Piper
is the executive producer of SA Government Films at the South Australian Film Corporation under a non-exclusive contract. He is currently producing and directing Rosenberg's Goanna, a half hour natural history program which has been pre-sold to the ABC, with distribution by Beyond International. Mike's other credit's include Echidna - the Survivor, Convicted, Facing the World and Not a Nice Job for a Jewish Girl.

Russell Porter
is a documentary filmmaker, writer and director who has been closely involved with the industry for over 20 years. His most recent film is "Luchando - Cuba's Struggle to Survive". He is currently Project Officer at the Melbourne Office of AFTRS, where he recently ran a documentary series called "Reinventing the Real". This led to the formation of the new Melbourne Documentary Group, with over 160 members.

Mike Rubbo
is the newly appointed Head of Documentaries at the Australian Broadcasting Commission. As an expatriate Australian, he lived in Canada for many years, spending much of that time as a staff director, writer and producer for the National Film Board. He has made numerous programs that document social and political issues, winning over forty awards. A few of his best known films are: "Sad Song of Yellow Skin" made in Vietnam in 1970 about the war and its effects, "Wet Earth and Warm People", the story ofpedicab drivers and village people of Indonesia and "Man Who Can't Stop", which explored the crusade of Francis Sutton against pollution of NSW coastal waters. He has worked on U.N. film projects in South East Asia and Africa and has also produced highly regarded films for the American PBS Network. He has also worked as a documentary teacher with Harvard University and with AFTRS in the 1980s.

Dasha Ross
is Executive Producer for ABC-TV Documentaries. After working in commercial TV news and current affairs Dasha first joined the ABC in 1984 as a producer with Four Corners and rejoined in 1987 as on-air reporter with the 7.30 Report. She has also worked with the International Festival of Video and TV in Montbeliard, France and as a freelance print and radio journalist in New York. In late 1990 she was appointed Project Co-ordinator for the Australian Film Commission before joining ABC Documentaries in 1994.

Jennifer Sabine
is an Associate Professor and Dean of the Victorian College of the Arts, School of Film and Television. She started her interest in film as a film buff in the mid 60s, a member of Sydney University Film Group and W.E.A. Film Study Group. Previous positions have included Film Study Officer for the National Library of Australia, Distribution Manager of the Australian Film Institute, and Manager for the Melbourne base of AFTRS. She has been an assessor for the Women's Film Fund of the AFC, a Judge for the Melbourne Film Festival, and a board member of numerous film organisations. Wal Saunders is the Manager, Indgienous Branch of the Australian Film Commission. Walter is from the Gunditjmara people of the Western Districts of Victoria. He has a long association with Indigenous media and image culture as well as working in Aboriginal Education, Training and Employment.

Bill Simpson-Young
is a Project Manager of the Distributed Interactive Multimedia Information Services (DIMMIS) project of the Research Data Network Cooperative Research Centre and works at the CSIRO Division of Information Technology's Sydney Laboratory. He received a BA (in History of Art and Computer Science), at Auckland University and a Master of Cognitive Studies at UNSW. His current interests are distributed multimedia and human-computer interaction.

Carole Sklan
is a Project Co-ordinator in the Film Development Branch of the Australian Film Commission, working in the Melbourne office. Carole wrote and directed "Guns and Roses", which won the AFI Award for Best Television Documentary. She co-wrote "Fifty Years of Silence" with Jann Ruff, which won the AFI Best Documentary and the Logie Award for Best Television Documentary. Carole has also worked on the research and development of major television drama and documentary series, including "Scales of Justice", "Leaving of Liverpool", "Brides of Christ" and "The Last Dream".

John Smithies
assumed the role of Director of the State Film Centre of Victoria in 1991, following an extensive restructure of the Centre. Prior to that he was involved in the development of programs and exhibitions formats for new media and film and video arts through gallery exhibition format, cinema programming and video distribution.

Bill Stewart
is currently working at the University of Melbourne developing Multimedia titles in an educational context. He has worked as a musician, both as a performer and in the development, teaching and usage of computers with music.

Deb C Stewart
is Channel Manager for Discovery Channel - Australia. In this capacity she is responsible for overseeing marketing, publicity and local production. Prior to joining Discovery Channel, Deb worked for XYZ Entertainment as Channel Manager to create the documentary channel Quest. She has also produced and directed documentaries for the Seven and Nine Networks and the 1994 Commonwealth Games.

Gerald Stone
has been an influential figure in Australian television journalism for nearly 30 years. He is best known as the creator of Channel 9's 60 Minutes. In 10 years as executive producer he led that program to unprecedented ratings success. He began his career as a copy boy with the New York Times and after arriving in Australia in 1962, went on to become a newspaper war correspondent and author during the Vietnam years. He was an award-winning reporter for the ABC's pioneering "This Day Tonight". In recent years he has served as head of current affairs for Rupert Murdoch's Fox Network in New York and network head of current affairs for the Seven Network. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Bulletin Magazine

Steve Thomas
began making documentary films after he migrated to Melbourne in 1981 from the UK, where he had worked in teaching, youth work and race relations. His 1992 film "Black Man's Houses" (1992), produced in association with the Flinders Island Aboriginal community, is about the search for the graves of their ancestors and exploding the myth of Aboriginal extinction in Tasmania. "Harold" (1994) was a collaboration with the family of the late Harold Blair about his life and work as an opera singer and Aboriginal activist.

Daniela Thorsch
is an associate producer at Insight, a national current affairs program on SBS television where she's worked since 1988 on various current affairs programs including The Tonight Show and Dateline. In 1987 Daniela was the inaugural Director of the Australian National Documentary Conference held near Adelaide and more recently was the Executive Director of the Third Documentary Conference held in Sydney in 1933. Daniela has worked as a journalist and filmmaker in Australia and overseas, including a two year appointment as Executive Producer of the Women's Film Unit at Film Australia from 1985 to 1987.

Michelle Torres
is from the Yawuru people who live on the NW coast of Australia. She has worked with the ABC, SBS and WAAMA as a presenter, researcher and producer. She is known as an actor having appeared as the commentator in the acclaimed 'mockumentary 'Barbaquieria'. She is currently completing her Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies.

Laura Tricker
the Director of Multimedia Production at Monitor Interactive Communications in New South Wales, has a background in teaching, research, film and video production. For the past seven years she has been working exclusively in the field of interactive multimedia. During that time she has produced more than ten interactive multimedia programs, principally point of information and human resource development programs, which are successfully marketed internationally.

Franziska Wagenfeld
is an independent producer whose credits include the stylised ABC microdoc Brief Secrets which screened as a short film in Australia, NZ and opened the Nuart Cinama in LA. She produced the acclaimed documentary Scars nominated in this year's AFI Awards for best television documentary as well as Ann Turner's short drama Bathing Boxes which recently screened at the 33rd New York Film Festival. Franziska is presently post-producing an adventurous half hour ABC/AFC documentary entitled Come As You Are.

Dean Williams
teaches film and television in the Department of Visual Arts, Monash University. He is the author of "Mapping the Imaginary", an AFI publication to be released later this year and is presently researching Australian Documentary Film 1935-1955.

Gordon Williams
is the Director of the Office for Communication and Multimedia at the Department of Premier and Cabinet for Victoria. Gordon has had twelve years experience as a professional communicator with State and Federal Governments, and at a senior level in the international computer industry with Asia-Pacific wide responsibility for developing innovation in communicatio and technology methods for use in industry, government and the general community.

R. Maslyn Williams
served alongside Frank Hurley and Damien Parer as a war correspondent and was a Senior producer and Director in the Commonwealth Film Unit. His Film "Mike and Stefani", stands as a singular achievement in Australian documentary film making. Maslyn has since become a respected writer of fiction and non-fiction with some 17 booksto his name.

Tim Worner
started his career as a newspaper journalist in Perth before joining TVW Seven where he produced "Seven Nightly News" and "State Affair". He then joined Beyond Productions, working extensively in the field before becoming series producer of "Beyond 2000". He also made a number of documentaries including "Agenda 21" and "20th Century Syndrome" for the Seven Network, and "AIDS-What Do We Tell Our Children?" for London Weekend Television. He was Executive Producer of the Nine Network's "Wild Life" and is now Executive Producer-Infotainment for the Seven Network.

Dr Ken Yap
received his Ph.D in computer science from the University of Rochester in 1990. His research interests are in broadband networking, multimedia, and human-computer interactions. He is an avid film-goer.

Tom Zubrycki
emigrated to Australia with his Polish parents in the late 1950s. After studies in sociology and politics he became active in the 1970s in the community access video movement, which led him to documentary. Since 1979, he has directed and produced a body of work dealing with contemporary Australian political, cultural and social issues. His films include: "Waterloo"(1981), "Kerima-Diary of a Strike" (1984), "Friends & Enemies" (1987), "Lord of the Bush" (1990), "Bran Nue Dae" (1991) and "Homelands" (1993).

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