ADG BOARD

             

• Ray Argall
• Sue Brooks
• Bob Connolly
• Ruth Cullen
• Michela Ledwidge
• Vicki Sugars
• Nadia Tass
• Stephen Wallace

Ray Argall (President)

Drama Director & DOP
MDA, Return Home, Look Both Ways (DOP)

graduated from the Australian Film Television and Radio School in 1980 and has enjoyed a colourful and productive filmmaking career spanning more than thirty years. In that time he has worked as a director, producer, DOP, editor and writer on features, short dramas, documentaries, and established a reputation as one of Australia's most innovative cinematographers through his work on features such as Wrong World, The Prisoner of St Petersberg and most recently Look Both Ways. Ray's first feature, Return Home, received the 1990 AFI Award for Best Director, and the Film Critics Circle of Australia Award for Best Director and Best Film; and screened at Berlin, Edinburgh, Seattle and a retrospective in Cannes.

Ray has also produced numerous music videos for Midnight Oil, Crowded House and Hoodoo Gurus among others; and has produced several feature concert films, most recently for Split Enz. He also produced the animated short feature Les Contes des Animaux for theatrical and DVD release in France. Ray has directed hours of TV drama, and has specialised in setting up drama series such as Sea Change and MDA. He has been a lecturer at AFTRS and the Victorian College of Arts, teaching screen performance to the drama students and acting as supervising producer for the final year film students.

Sue Brooks

Documentary Director / Producer

Sue Brooks has directed the two highly-regarded features Road to Nhill and Japanese Story.

Sue directed and co-produced Japanese Story. Japanese Story starred Toni Collette. Japanese Story was launched at the Official selection at Cannes Film Festival and won a coveted International Federation of Film Critics FIPRESCI award. Japanese Story swept the 2003 AFI Awards winning 8 of the 10 categories in which it was nominated, including Best Screenplay, Best Actress (Toni Collette), Best Director and Best Film. In total it won 29 Australian and international awards. It was sold to most international territories including Samuel Goldwyn in the U.S. And it grossed just under 5 million in Australia.

Sue directed and co-produced Road to Nhill, which played in Australian cinemas for over nine months. It was loved for its laconic sense of humour. Road to Nhill won the prestigious Thessaloniki prize for best film and Best Script at the Turin Film Festival. It recouped one million dollars. Sold to 30 territories. Screened at over 20 international film festivals

Sue directed and co-produced with Alison Tilson An Ordinary Woman. An Ordinary Woman won Best Script. St Kilda Film Festival, won the Dendy Award Sydney Film Festival and the Erwin Rado Award at the Melbourne Film Festival

Sue graduated in directing from the Australian Film Television and Radio School after making several acclaimed short films including Tea and Tiny Cakes and The Drover's Wife based on the Murray Bail short story. Drover’s Wife won the Rouben Mamoulian award at the Sydney Film Festival.

Sue also directed the documentaries High Heels and Land of the Long Weekend, television drama Piccolo Mondo and the comedy performances, Extraordinary Encounters of the Mundane Kind and Life of the Party, both featuring comedienne Denise Scott. She also directed episodes of RAW FM and Something in the Air for the ABC.

Sue directed a number of episodes of SeaChange, a popular ABC drama that won many awards and the hearts of millions of Australians. SeaChange starred Sigrid Thornton and David Wenham.

Sue co-produced with Steve Thomas, Flying Carpet Films, the feature length documentary Hope. Hope is the amazing story of Amal Basry who survived the sinking of the SIEV X. Over 400 people drowned when the SIEV X sank, most of them women and children. Hope won the ATOM award for best documentary, screened at the Melbourne Film Festival and had a national cinema release.

Bob Connolly

Director/Producer/Cinematographer/Writer

Bob Connolly trained as a journalist at the ABC and then spent a decade there as a foreign correspondent, current affairs reporter and documentary filmmaker. He made 30 documentaries for the ABC, winning several national awards for production and direction.

In 1978 Connolly left the ABC to work independently with Robin Anderson. Their first film together was Franklin River Journey. In 1983 they released First Contact, followed by Joe Leahy’s Neighbours (1989) and Black Harvest (1992). Shot in the PNG Highlands over ten years, these 3 films won 30 national and international awards, including an Oscar nomination for First Contact, the Grand Prix at France’s Festival Cinema du Reel, and AFI awards for Best Documentary. In 1996 Connolly and Anderson released Rats in the Ranks followed by Facing the Music (2001) which won the AFI Award for Best Documentary, and was voted most popular film at the Sydney and Brisbane Film Festivals. All five films made by Connolly and Anderson won Australian Film Critics Circle awards for Best Documentary.

Tragically, in March 2002, Bob Connolly’s wife and professional colleague Robin Anderson died aged 51.

In 1992 the Australian Film Institute awarded Connolly and Anderson the prestigious Byron Kennedy Award. In 2001 they picked up the Brisbane Film Festival’s Chauvel Award for their “Outstanding Contribution to Australian Film Making.” Later that year they were presented with the inaugural IF Living Legend Award. In 2008 Connolly was awarded the Stanley Hawes Award for his “Outstanding Contribution to Documentary Film making.”

As well as his contribution to Australian Film, Bob has written several books including Making Black Harvest ABC Books 2005 which won Walkley Award, Best Non Fiction Book 2005 and was shortlisted for the 2005 NSW Premiers Literary Awards, Non Fiction.

With co-director Sophie Raymond, Connolly has just completed his sixth feature documentary, Mrs Carey's Concert.

Ruth Cullen

Documentary Director / Writer / Producer
Neil Perry's High Steaks, Two of Us, Heat in the Kitchen, Becoming Julia

Ruth Cullen is a Documentary Director, Writer and Producer whose credits include the highly acclaimed Neil Perry's High Steaks, Two of Us, Heat in the Kitchen, Becoming Julia. Ruth’s recent films include the documentaries Painted Lady, which explores the world of artist Vali Myers, and Becoming Julia - fast cars and a sex change that followed a macho Aussie farmer through his sex change into Julia.

Ruth’s films have screened at IDFA, Montreal, Los Angeles, Sydney & Melbourne Film Festivals and she has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, POV, and Filmink magazine. Ruth has worked as an assessor for the NSW Film and Television Office and the Australian Film Commission, and as a specialist consultant to the FFC (now Screen Australia).

www.ruthcullen.com

Michela Ledwidge

Writer/Director/Producer

Since 1993 Michela has specialised in pulling together creative and technical teams to work on cutting edge projects. Her focus is on developing original cross media properties and assisting clients to define and deliver their content and services. 2009 projects include strategy to heritage film and TV companies, design/production of iPhone games, production of a cross-platform children's TV series, and creation of the University of Sydney's post graduate remixable media course.

Michela has directed a wide range of high profile projects encompassing film-making, publishing, broadcasting, commerce, music, and IT. She was the first webmaster of the National Library of Australia and technical lead on the BBC's first online community system.

Michela explores and prods the gaps between traditional and interactive media. In 2001 she wrote, directed and produced the multi-lingual interactive short film Horses for Courses which was awarded the web3d art prize at SIGGRAPH that year.

In 2004, Michela founded the UK production company MOD Films with an Invention and Innovations award from NESTA to develop next-generation film content and related web services. In June 2005 Michela's film Sanctuary became the first 35mm production to clear audience re-use rights with professional actors using Creative Commons licenses.

In 2007 she was a technical architect on the BBC iPlayer project and consulted to the post production company Molinare.

In 2009 Michela won the Sydney Film Festival's inaugural Peter Rasmussen Innovation Award in acknowledgement of her cutting edge screen projects.

Michela's vision is of remixable films that can be re-used and re-played like video games. As a VJ, Michela performs with films, treating each like a musical instrument.

She has been a member of the Web3D Consortium, the UK Cabinet Office Special Interest Group on Open Source Software, and the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Committee (2002-2004).

Michela's work has been shown in London, Milan, Salzburg, Singapore, Canberra, Sydney, the Gold Coast, Göteborg, Paris, New York, and Los Angeles. It has been covered in publications such as The New Paper, internet.au, Wired, The Financial Times, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal.

Michela is currently based in Sydney but works on projects across the globe. With her virtual team, she is building the MOD Films network - an online studio system tracks how media is evolving and facilitates complex film & TV productions as well as tools for next-gen storytelling. She is also teaching a post-grad unit, Remixable Media, at the University of Sydney.

Vicki Sugars

1st Assistant Director / Director / Writer / Producer

Vicki Sugars background is in film production having been the 1st assistant director on 9 feature films. Credits include Parklands, Greenkeeping, Mary, Turning April, Diana & Me, Closed For Winter and Me Myself I, along with 120 hours of TV drama including McLeod’s Daughters, Heartbreak High, Naked and Wildeside to name a few.

In 2004 Vicki received her Masters in Creative Writing from UTS and also directed her first short film Moustace that screened in competition at the Venice Film Festival. The film won 11 awards internationally and sold to Canal+, MTV USA, ZDF, ABCTV and ARTE TV Belgium, screening in over 130 festivals worldwide.

That same year Vicki was an associate producer to Bridget Ikin on the multi-award winning feature film Look Both Ways and produced the 6 minute claymation Extreme Makeover which premiered at Annecy in France and took out Best Animation at St Kilda Film Festival in 2007. Her 2nd short film Past Midnight premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in 2009 and won Best Director at the SASA Awards. Most recently Vicki was associate producer on Gillian Armstrong’s feature length documentary Love Lust & Lies scheduled for release in May 2010. With co-producer Julie Byrne, Vicki has recently established VELVET ORANGE a production house based in Adelaide, facilitating interstate productions in the State while also developing their own slate of features, TV drama and documentary.

Nadia Tass

Director

Malcolm, Rikky and Pete, The Big Steal, Mr Reliable, Amy, Pure Luck, the Miracle Worker, Stark

directed her first feature film, Malcolm, in 1986. Since then she has directed the Australian features Rikky and Pete, The Big Steal, Mr Reliable and Amy, which received 23 international awards including Best Film at the Paris Film Festival (99), Grand Prix de Cinecole at Cannes Film Festival (99), Grand Prix Cannes Junior (99) and the Humanitarian Award at Asia Pacific Film Festival. Nadia’s work in the US includes Pure Luck for Universal Studios, The Miracle Worker for Disney, Child Star: The Shirley temple Story for Disney, Undercover Christmas for CBS Network, Samantha: An American Girl Holiday, and Felicity: An American Girl Adventure for Warner Bros, and Custody for Jaffe Braunstein Films. She also directed Stark), a mini series for The BBC/ABC television.

Nadia has continued her relationship with commercial theatre by directing for the Melbourne Theatre Company, and in 2002/2003 directed the musical theatre production of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, which toured Australia and New Zealand. Nadia's work was rewarded with a nomination for Best Direction of A Musical 2003 at the prestigious Sir Robert Helpmann Awards.

Nadia is currently in post-production of a feature film with the working title Love and Mortar, which will be distributed by Twentieth Century Fox in Australia. She also has a number of feature films in development with American studios, in addition to the slate of projects being developed through her production company Cascade Films.

    Stephen Wallace

Drama Director
Water Rats, Twisted Tales, Blood Oath

Stephen Wallace is a filmmaker who has directed five feature films; Stir (1980), The Bpy Who Had Everything (1984), For Love Alone (1865), Blood Oath (1990) and Turtle Beach (1992). After making several short films (including Break Up and Brittle Weather Journey) he began his professional career with the low budget 50 min drama The Love Letter From Teralba Road in 1977 and followed this another hour long low budget drama Captives of Care. He has directed a number of features (one off dramas) for television including Gordon Bennett (Ch 9), Quest Beyond Time (Ch10) Women of the Sun (SBS) and Mail Order Bride, Hunger, Olive and Envy for the ABC. During the last ten years he has also directed for series television (Water Rats, Flying Doctors, Pig's Breakfast and Twisted Tales), was the president of the Australian Screen Director's Association (ASDA now ADG) between 1992-2000.

He has always had an interest in theatre and acting and has his own small theatre company with Michael Gillett, Impulse Theatre. They have produced several versions of Oedipus plus Lysistrata, Cosi and Away and have completed four productions for the Short and Sweet series at the Seymour Centre as well as short film with the company Disconnected. He continues workshopping with actors to prepare for new productions.

State Representatives

Australian Capital Territory

TBA

Northern Territory

David Curl

Queensland

Sally McKenzie

South Australia

TBA

Victoria

Joel Loxton

Western Australia

Ross McGregor