Screen NSW, Documentary Australia Foundation and RØDE Microphones today announced three recipients of the first inaugural SheDoc program, a new initiative to support female documentary filmmakers based in NSW. The inaugural recipients are Justine Moyle, Gemma Quilty and Georgia Quinn, each of whom have already established projects that the initiative will help them bring to fruition.
Sobering figures from Screen NSW figures report that in the period between November 2015 and November 2016, only 37% of documentary and factual directors were women in Screen NSW supported or funded projects. While this is higher than the previous audit period, there is still a large gender gap to cover in this field. The projects that the three filmmakers have planned all focus on social issues, from women in skateboarding to
Producer/director Justine Moyle will travel to the US to work for up to six weeks with British born and twice Academy Award-nominated documentary director Lucy Walker and her team. While there, Justine will hone her skills as a storyteller and craft a treatment and story structure for her feature documentary film in development, TALL POPPIES, about young women in skateboarding. Lucy Walker has previously directed the observational documentaries Devil’s Playground, Oscar nominee Waste Land, and the HBO feature documentary The Crash Reel.
Filmmaker Gemma Quilty
Western Sydney based graphic designer and documentary filmmaker Gemma Quilty has been working with strong support from the Information Cultural Exchange (ICE) in Parramatta for a number of years. With the SheDoc funding, Quilty aims to “research and develop new work and to further develop a strong slate of observational documentaries from Western and South Western Sydney.” Award-winning documentary producer and director Tom Zubrycki will mentor Gemma.
Georgia Quinn, also from Sydney, has a degree in Anthropology and International Relations from ANU and her first film recently screened at Flickerfest. With a keen lens focused on social activism and human rights causes, Quinn aims to “engage in an intense professional development schedule with Walkley Award winning video journalist and filmmaker Yaara Bou Melhem, who works as a freelance documentary director for SBS, ABC, CNN and Al Jazeera English…researching a slate of films and will then travel together internationally to produce a range of documentaries for Al Jazeera’s 101 East documentary strand, among several other broadcasters.”
