By Simon de Bruyn
Eight teams of filmmakers – including relative newcomers Zak Hilditch and Boyd Hicklin as well as established names such as Joel Edgerton and Brendan Cowell – have been selected by the Australian Film Commission to develop their projects in the 2008 IndiVision Project Lab.
The projects broach a diverse range of subjects, from a romantic thriller about a regular guy who becomes a spy on his lunch break to drama about the devastating effects of a car bomb, and join an already illustrious list of previous IndiVision participants such as Ten Empty, Cross Life, Cactus and All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane.
Actor Joel Edgerton has teamed up with producer Rachel Okine from Hopscotch Films to develop The Professor, a complex thriller about a top forensic scientist investigating a family murder-suicide who becomes secretly obsessed with his wife’s double life. Edgerton has written the script and will also direct the film.
Writer/director Zak Hilditch, writer Steve McCall and producer Liz Kearney will use the program to develop their drama Small Worlds, while 2007 Academy Award nominee Peter Templeman has joined producer Jodi Matterson (Razzle Dazzle) and writer Michael Lucas to develop romantic comedy The 20-Something Survival Guide.
Actor and writer Brendan Cowell will attend the Lab with director Boyd Hicklin and producer Nick Batzias to develop Save Your Legs!, a dramatic comedy about an amateur cricket tour of India – based on Hicklin’s documentary of the same name and a script by Cowell.
The other teams selected for the 2008 IndiVision Project Lab are: writer/director Leon Ford and producer Nicole O’Donohue with their romantic spy thriller Griff the Invisible; director Amanda Jane, writer Christine Bartlett and producer Nicole Minchin with the black comedy Kin; director Darren Ashton, writer Fiona Seres, producer Jodi Matterson and executive producer Judi Bailey with the political drama Undertow; and from New Zealand writer/director Stefen Lewis and producer John Davies with their comedy thriller Fiasco.
This year’s Project Lab advisors and guest speakers include acclaimed American producer Christine Vachon (Kids), award-winning London-based writer Laurence Coriat (Wonderland), internationally renowned development executive Vinca Wiedemann from Demark, as well as Australian producers Al Clark (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert), Robert Connolly (Romulus, My Father), and Julie Ryan (Ten Canoes), agent and producer Stacey Testro (Saw), distributor Alan Finney and actor Claudia Karvan (Love My Way).