News

Five-part ABC iview comedy All My Friends Are Racist, written and created by Enoch Mailangi, has kicked off production in Brisbane, with co-executive producer Leah Purcell to star.

Joining Purcell are Davey Thompson and Tuuli Narkle, who will play the lead characters: two young, affluent Aboriginal flatmates – gay social media influencer Casey and budding lawyer, Belle.

The duo are socially outcast after their online ‘burn book’, listing their racist friends, is discovered, and are then faced with a difficult decision as to who and what they are willing to lose.

Purcell will play high court judge and Casey’s mother, Justine Janelle Ray Ao.

Mailangi’s pitch for the series saw them win 2017’s Raw initiative, a First Nations writers workshop conceived by Artology with the support of Purcell, Wayne Blair and Kyas Hepworth.

Directing the project is Bjorn Stewart, with Kodie Bedford having penned the scripts with Mailangi and co-producing.

Ben Lawrence and Beatrix Christian’s Hearts and Bones was named best original feature film screenplay at the Australian Writers’ Guild’s annual Awgie Awards yesterday evening, while Shaun Grant and Harry Cripps took home the adaptation prize for Penguin Bloom.

Two of 2019’s top dramas, The Hunting, written by Niki Aken and Matthew Cormack, and Total Control (Episode 3), by Pip Karmel, were recognised in the television categories, while The Heights, lauded for its depiction of contemporary Australia, won Peter Mattessi the Awgie in the television serial category, ending a run of 16-straight years for Neighbours and Home and Away.

Playwright Suzie Miller’s critically acclaimed one-woman play Prima Facie took out the evening’s highest honours, winning the 2020 Major Award, the David Williamson Prize for Excellence in Writing for Australian Theatre, and in the stage category.

The one-woman play holds a mirror up to the Australian legal system, exposing...

Enoch Mailangi, Bjorn Stewart and Kodie Bedford.

Writer and creator Enoch Mailangi’s five-part series All My Friends Are Racist is set to go into production for ABC iview in November.

The comedy centres on digital natives Casey and Belle who live together in the big smoke. He’s a gay Aboriginal influencer, she’s an Aboriginal budding lawyer. They are the hottest friendship in town and the party is always at theirs. Life couldn’t get sweeter for these first-generation rich kids. But when their ‘burn book’ wall, where they’ve listed all their friends as racists, is discovered, they are suddenly ousted from the friendship group. The pair need to make a decision on who and what they are willing to lose to finally grow up.

Mailangi’s pitch for the series saw him win 2017’s Raw initiative, a First Nations writers workshop conceived by Artology with the support of Leah Purcell,...

Stars: Nelson Baker, Katherine Beckett, Shakira Clanton, Bernard Curry | Directed by Kodie Bedford, Liam Phillips, Robert Braslin, Perun Bonser, Bjorn Stewart

Apparently commissioned to promote First Australian talent, Dark Place is a ground-breaking anthology feature telling a quintet of indigenous tales, each around 15 minutes in length, and using largely indigenous casts. All of which approach post-colonial Aboriginal Australian history through the though-provoking lenses of historical parallels, horror, gore and fantasy.

Dark Place opens with the short Scout, a a strong opening that sets the tone for the rest of the film – dealing with a group of aboriginal women who’ve been kidnapped as part of a human trafficking ring, touching on the value of life, in particular the life of minorities and how under-valued they really are. It starts out on a downward note, really showing us the despair and danger these women are in, before taking a turn into revenge-film territory.

‘Sky Sharks’ to open horror and fantasy film festival.

Seven world premieres will screen as part of the UK’s Frightfest virtual edition running from August 27-31.

A total of 25 films have been selected for the horror and fantasy film festival. All virtual screenings will be geo-locked to UK audiences, which means the London-based festival will be accessible nationwide for the first time.

Frightfest is also planning a physical event for October which will feature an entirely different line-up.

Now in its 21st year, Frightfest 2020 will open with the UK premiere of Marc Fehse’s Sky Sharks, in which flying...

FrightFest, the UK horror festival that was forced to move online this year because of pandemic disruption, has unveiled a lineup for its 21st edition (August 27-31) including seven world premieres.

The event opens with the UK premiere of Sky Sharks, which features Nazi zombie-piloted airborne killer sharks.

World premieres include Logan Thomas’s There’s No Such Thing As Vampires, Patrick Rea’s I Am Lisa, Ruben Pla’s The Horror Crowd, G-Hey Kim’s Don’t Click, Toby Watts’ Playhouse, Airell Anthony Hayles and Sam Casserly’s They’re Outside, and Francesco Giannini’s Hall.

Industry-focused events will include a panel hosted by Den Of Geek’s UK editor Rosie Fletcher about how the horror genre has been affected by the pandemic.

All online film screenings will be geo-locked to UK audiences and available through FrightFest’s website.

“We will desperately miss seeing all of you in person...

Baz Luhrmann.

A new feature film from Baz Luhrmann, set in a small Australian country town, is among the 18 projects to recently receive story development funding from Screen Australia.

The agency announced today it will share $620,000 between 11 films, five TV series and two online projects.

These projects come from both the existing Premium and Generate development funds. Generate Fund is for lower budget projects with an emphasis on new and emerging talent, or experienced talent wanting to take creative risks. The Premium Fund is for higher budget projects of ambition and scale from successful screen content makers.

Projects pitched for Premium Plus funds – the additional development funding the agency announced in response to Covid-19 – are still being assessed.

Screen Australia head of development Nerida Moore said: “With many productions temporarily halted it is more important than ever for us to support the development of Australian stories for all platforms. I...

‘Nice Shorts.’

Nick Boshier and Jazz Twemlow are leading the team of comedy writers/performers who will create Nice Shorts for Bunya Entertainment.

The online sketch comedy of 16 episodes, ranging from 3-10 minutes, will tap into national and international conversations to create videos for weekly release via social platforms.

Apart from Boshier and Twemlow the team includes Nazeem Hussain (Legally Brown), Greta Lee Jackson (Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am), Penny Greenhalgh (The Lost Tapes) and Bjorn Stewart.

The Bunya Group is not looking to monetize the low-budget online series, instead using it as the first opportunity to work with comedy creatives and as the first foray into comedy for the new banner Bunya Entertainment.

“Like the dramas we’re best known for, the quality of writing in Nice Shorts will be the hallmark of this show,” says Bunya Group CEO Sophia Zachariou.

Bunya Entertainment is developing seven narrative comedies including one with Adam Zwar.

Margot Robbie in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood’.

The 2019 Melbourne International Film Festival is being touted as the largest yet, with some 259 features, 123 shorts and 16 Vr experiences, including Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood.

The 1969-set film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, will screen on the opening weekend in the Astor Theatre on 35mm. An elegy to the Golden Age of Hollywood, it also features Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate and Damon Herriman as Charles Manson, as well as Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, Timothy Olyphant, Dakota Fanning, Damien Lewis and Luke Perry.

Of his first program, which includes 44 films straight from Cannes, Miff artistic director Al Cossar said: “I am absolutely thrilled to share my first festival with Melbourne in 2019. Rich in its diversity, this program is a true celebration of cinema: promising countless adventures into the kinds of places and people,...

Bunya Productions’ Greer Simpkin and David Jowsey with Aaron Pedersen on the ‘Mystery Road’ set.

Screen Australia is backing Bunya Productions, Aunty Donna, Mememe Productions and Southern Pictures among the recipients of more than $1.2 million in funding in its latest Enterprise Business & Ideas and Enterprise People initiatives.

Bunya Productions will receive funding to build a talent development network, develop Australian IP and extend the profile of its work overseas.

Comedy group Aunty Donna’s production company Haven’t You Done Well Productions will get support to help online creatives to develop and produce comedy projects and educate creators to ensure they retain the ownership of their projects.

“We were blown away with Bunya Productions’ innovative proposal. Bunya has a strong track record of creating stories for and about Australia that have also gained traction internationally,” said Screen Australia head of development Nerida Moore.

“It’s exciting to see them looking...

Lauren Elliott.

Mad Kids co-founder and managing director Lauren Elliott is launching a new production company focused on long-form television and features, Galactic Baby.

Elliott founded the Perth-based Mad Kids seven years ago with Henry Inglis and Matt Lovkis. It has produced a variety of content such as the Aacta-nominated Small Town Hackers for Saturday Night Live’ digital platform Above Average; The Big Spaghetti (which won director Zoe Pepper an Australian Directors’ Guild Award); Lucy Durack’s Lift for 10Peach, Dafuq? for ABC iview and The Legend of Gavin Tanner for ABC1.

ABC iview comedy series Kgb, which launches this Sunday and stars Clarence Ryan, Bjorn Stewart, Mark Coles Smith, Aaron McGrath and Genevieve Morris, will be the last project under the Mad Kids banner.

Having produced 11 web series to date, Elliott tells If she feels ready to take the next step in her career and move into longer-form with Galactic Baby.

Kodie Bedford.

When Kodie Bedford sets out to create a project or is offered a writing gig, she looks for three elements: Strong female characters, a regional setting which harks back to her childhood in country Wa, and a genre piece.

So far everything the Indigenous writer has accomplished in her burgeoning career has ticked all three boxes, with credits on Grace Beside Me, Robbie Hood and Mystery Road as well as the horror short Scout, which marks her directing debut.

“I pinch myself every day as I get to tell stories; I am living the dream,” she tells If. She turned to screenwriting after working as a cadet journalist for Sbs before moving to the ABC as a researcher on documentary series Message Sticks.

A graduate of the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor of Communications and a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Technology, Sydney,...

‘Dark Place.’

Five horror shorts by emerging Indigenous filmmakers commissioned by the ABC and Screen Australia will premiere as a 75-minute anthology at the Sydney Film Festival.

Under the banner Dark Place, the 15-minute films address post-colonial Indigenous history through the lenses of horror and fantasy.

Female oppression and revenge take centre stage in Kodie Bedford’s Scout while Bjorn Stewart unleashes small pox-infected zombies in the splatter comedy Killer Native.

An insomniac questions her sanity in Liam Phillips’ Foe, supernatural forces infiltrate a housing commission estate in Rob Braslin’s gritty Vale Light and Gothic horror shrouds the woods in Perun Bonser’s The Shore.

The casts include Leonie Whyman, Tasia Zalar, Jolie Everett, Clarence Ryan, Charlie Garber, Lily Sullivan, Natasha Waganeen, Katie Beckett, Shakira Clanton, Tamala Shelton, Nelson Baker, Nicholas Hope, Hugh Sheridan, Luka May Glynn-Cole and Bernard Curry.

ABC head of Indigenous Kelrick Martin commissioned the anthology...

‘Diary of an Uber Driver.’

Sally Riley is bemused when people use this line when they are pitching projects to her: “This is definitely an ABC show.”

The ABC’s head of scripted production, Riley usually replies: “What is that? What is an ABC show?”

Interviewed in her Ultimo office for a two-part story, she tells If: “If it’s a great show, we’ll do it. I don’t think it must fit in the parameters of what is supposed to be an ABC show.

“We want to not only hold our audiences but also bring in new and younger audiences and we have a broad slate to try to meet both. We will definitely take a calculated risk when we believe in a show.”

As an example of a program which she thinks most people would not expect to see on the public broadcaster, she points to Les Norton,...

‘Kgb’.

The ABC has green lit comedy web series Kgb, from brothers Luke and Dan Riches – a project borne out of Screenwest’s Indigenous online initiative, Originate.

Set in Perth’s notorious Kgb, the series – described as a cross between Black Comedy and Hot Fuzz – follows two rookie detectives, tough guy Jack and gentle giant Nigel, as they deal with the chaos of their new jobs, no-nonsense boss, work rivals, drug dealers and culprits who consistently turn out to be family members. Despite battling their own insecurities at every turn, and the fact that Jack bullied Nigel in high school, these two might just turn out to be Kgb’s finest detectives.

The cast include Clarence Ryan, Bjorn Stewart, Genevieve Morris, Mark Coles Smith, Aaron McGrath, Jesse Phillips, Lynette Narkle and Amy Smith.

Originate is a Screenwest and ABC Indigenous narrative web series development and production initiative for emerging Wa Indigenous screen practitioners.

Stars: Dee Wallace, Geoff Morrell, Janis McGavin, David Collins, Sarah Bishop, Bjorn Stewart, Gerard Odwyer, Atlas Adams, Sam Campbell, Deelia Meriel, Anthony Jensen, Robert Anderson | Written and Directed by Craig Anderson

Red Christmas is the latest festive horror which has been produced by, and stars, Dee Wallace. The film continues in the traditional bloody footsteps of the Christmas slasher genre, although writer and director Craig Anderson takes a lot of time to really develop the characters, giving the film a bit more depth than just your normal hack and slash.

Red Christmas begins in an abortion clinic, with a woman who is undergoing an abortion. During the procedure a bomb is detonated, causing panic and confusion as everyone tries to evacuate. Acting quickly, the removed foetus is dumped into a biohazard bucket which is kicked aside as everyone begins to leave. Unbeknownst to them the baby is found by the bomber,...

Red Christmas star Dee Wallace played the mother in E.T more than 30 years ago.

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Craig Anderson's Indie Aussie horror feature debut Red Christmas, starring Dee Wallace (E.T, Cujo) will have its world premiere at Sydney Film Festival.

Anderson is an award-winning director best known for television (Black Comedy, Double the Fist)..

His debut feature, Red Christmas, is a horror film about abortion and will receive its world premiere at Sydney Film Festival in June as part of the Freak Me Out program.

Red Christmas tells the story of a mother who must defend her family from a deranged killer on Christmas day..

Unbeknown to her, the killer is her son who survived an abortion twenty years earlier and was raised by an extremist who bombed the clinic..

American actress, Wallace, who most audiences will know as the mum in Steven Spielberg.s E.T, will also star in the film.