Back in July, when every cinema around the country was shut, Sue Maslin took a leap: she committed to a three month marketing and P&A campaign for feature documentary Brazen Hussies.
"The Minister should acknowledge and encourage our home-grown creatives too. The Australians working on local stories and projects, generating IP, creating jobs and running small businesses as they tell our stories; stories that must be told," write Shadow Minister for the Arts and Industrial Relations Tony Burke and Shadow Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland.
The Documentary Australia Foundation is urging the Federal Government to treat documentary distinctly from drama as it proceeds with reform to the Producer Offset.
Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts Paul Fletcher has doubled down on criticism of the ABC for its response to potential local content obligations, but has sympathised with other industry views on the green paper – namely the call for streaming platforms to spend 20 per cent of their local revenue on Australian content.
In a welcome move for industry, the Federal Government has backtracked on its decision to harmonise the Producer Offset for film and television, announcing on Sunday that the offset will remain at 40 per cent for theatrical features.
The Federal Government has released its draft amendments to the Australian Screen Production Incentive - i.e. the offsets, inviting public comment until the end of this month.
With the draft amendments to the legislation that governs the Producer Offset now published, there is one issue that to date hasn’t garnered much attention. That is, the re-introduction of the 20 per cap on above-the-line fees for non-feature length documentary production.
A Senate committee has recommended the government temporarily raise the copyright cap on documentaries and work to strengthen Australia's PDV sector as part of its offset reform.