The winners of the 2015 AFTRS Creative Fellowships are visual artist Del Kathryn Barton, emerging filmmaker Sari Braithwaite and AFTRS alumnus Rachel Perkins, who will all be supported to create bold and distinctive new works.
Now in their sixth year, the fellowships provide funding and support for talented individuals or small collaborative groups from a diverse range of creative backgrounds including visual artists, filmmakers, screenwriters and directors.
AFTRS CEO Sandra Levy said, “What is truly special about the AFTRS Creative Fellowship is that practitioners are supported with a substantial grant to pursue unique and innovative work in a context where grants of this nature are not on offer from other organisations.”
The grant is supplemented with additional support that includes access to the School’s resources and state-of-the-art production facilities as well as its teaching staff to encourage innovative creative exploration and original work.
Del Kathryn Barton will use her fellowship to create RED, a dual-screen work that will delve into themes of passion, sex and death, drawing on the legends and symbolism of the female red-back spider.
The recipient of the inaugural Indigenous Creative Fellowship, Perkins will work within the storytelling traditions of elder Arrente women in Alice Springs, capturing their Altyerre, (dreaming), which has been passed down through generations through songs. These stories, referred to as songlines, are on the verge of extinction and Perkins will capture this important project on screen.
Braithwaite will create a provocative, experimental artwork, The A To Z of Censorship, that tells the untold and unseen story of Australian film censorship. She will splice together curated clips of never-before-seen images deleted from films by the Australian Government censor between 1940-1970, offering an insight into the anxieties of the Australian psyche over three decades.

Levy says the fellowship “has a strong track record of supporting ambitious screen-based projects from talented artists and we are thrilled to be able to support Del, Rachel and Sari to deliver their exciting new works. We look forward to seeing the completed projects.”
Previous recipients include Amiel Courtin-Wilson, Melissa Anastasi, Damian Power, Carl Firth, Christopher Frey, Angelica Mesiti and Lynette Wallworth.
Mesiti’s Citizens Band has been exhibited widely internationally and in Australia and won the Anne Landa Award for video and new media arts.
Wallworth’s immersive media project Coral: Rekindling Venus has also exhibited widely internationally including at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontiers Program. Last year it was invited to the World Economic Forum.