Screen Australia's Gender Matters Taskforce and WIFT Australia have partnered on a new mentorship program aimed at empowering women and gender-diverse practitioners from across the screen industry, from production through to distribution and marketing.
Distributor Umbrella Entertainment is expanding into production via a partnership with Julie Ryan, director of Cyan Films. To be known as Sanctuary Pictures, the new arm of the company will have a focus on genre titles.
Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) has revealed the participants in its AFF Youth Program, naming the nine jurors for its youth screening initiative and the 21 finalists in the Statewide Schools Filmmaking Competition.
The South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC) has made a host of new staff appointments, including new hires in Julie Ryan and Kath McIntyre, and promotions for Nara Wilson and Petra Starke.
John Sheedy's debut feature H is for Happiness has been acquired by Samuel Goldwyn Films in North America and Germany's Telepool as well as distributors in multiple other markets.
"The best way to get people to go to the cinema is to embrace the point of difference from television, enhance the cinematic scale of the work and create narrative experiences that are immersive." - Robert Connolly
John Sheedy’s feature debut 'H is for Happiness', an adaptation of Barry Jonsberg’s young adult novel My Life as an Alphabet, has won this year's $100,000 CinefestOZ Film Prize.
Producer Julie Ryan was in post-production for 'Hotel Mumbai' when writer Lisa Hoppe’s script for 'H is for Happiness' came across her desk. She loved it straight away - by page 40, she'd recognised it would make a heartwarming, funny family film.