The $100,000 reward for information solving the mystery of the disappearance of Brenda Hean and Max Price officially closed yesterday.
Last September, filmmaker Scott Millwood launched the reward and set up a hotline to seek information about the disappearance of Hean and Price on 8 September, 1972.
Brenda Hean was a leading environmental campaigner in the early 1970s and a founder of the first environmental political party in the world. While en route from Tasmania to Canberra to lobby key Federal Government figures, Brenda Hean and her pilot went missing. Their message, had they reached Canberra, was an attempt to save Lake Pedder from inundation by a massive Hydro-Electric scheme – but their twin-winged Tiger Moth plane simply disappeared.
Despite extensive searches by police and the Department of Civil Aviation, the plane was never found. Evidence of foul play later emerged, pointing to the possibility of sabotage. Despite calls for transparency, the Tasmanian Government never conducted a full public enquiry into the disappearance.
Since the campaign launched in September last year Millwood and his team have received in excess of 150 calls and have documented this information in 60 in-depth interviews. A number of these reports came from people who have never before spoken out. As such, Mr Millwood is confident the public will finally be given answers;
‘In many ways this documentary project takes the place of public enquiry in Tasmania’, Millwood said today. ‘When our public institutions fail us in the pursuit of truth and justice, we, the people, find our own ways to uncover and speak of our history. We have searched through the prism of documentary film and the release of the film will be our fulfilment of our duty to the public.’
The film Whatever Happened to Brenda Hean? is a recipient of the Melbourne International Film Festival Premiere Fund and will screen for the first time at the festival this year.
Producer, Michael McMahon of Big & Little Films, said ‘we hope to secure a cinema release for the film and are currently involved in discussions with various distributors’.
[release from Limelight PR]