Southern Screens : Southern Stories Building a New Screen Culture in

Peter Wintonick 2005 Peter Wintonick | Southern Screens : Southern Stories

Southern Screens : Southern Stories Building a New Screen Culture in South Australia

Prepared by Peter Wintonick

Department of the Premier and Cabinet c/- GPO Box 2343 SA 5001

January 2006

©All rights reserved – Crown – in right of the State of South Australia

ISBN 0-9752027-8-2

www.thinkers.sa.gov.au

1 Peter Wintonick Foreword

Based in Montreal, Peter Wintonick is an Peter Wintonick’s period as an Adelaide Thinker It provides a thorough analysis of the four internationally pre-eminent fi gure in digital in Residence in 2005 was highly constructive, ‘spheres’ critical to the creation of a thriving documentary media production. Peter has been a and it stimulated vibrant and necessary debate and globally plugged-in digital documentary producer, director, critic, advisor, media activist and about the future of the South Australian fi lm sector in South Australia: education, the screen editor of all manner of independent fi lm, video industry. industry, the community and infrastructure. and new-media, an array which includes dramatic features, theatrical documentaries, web-sites and Through his wit, insight and experience, he The report also includes a series of valuable educational and socio-political works. delivered on the great promise of his residency and challenging recommendations – covering – which was to engage, enthuse, and enable. everything from the promotion of greater He is most noted for co-producing and directing, ‘media literacy’ in our schools to increased with Mark Achbar, one of the most successful Peter’s time in South Australia coincided with support for the Media Resource Centre. documentaries in Canadian history Manufacturing the State Government-instigated Adelaide Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. The fi lm and International We in South Australia thank Peter Wintonick played theatrically around the world in 200 cities, Documentary Conference, and he made a for helping us to see and think freshly about won 22 awards in more than 50 international fi lm major contribution to both events. fi lm, and for giving us the equipment – in our The following partners were involved in festivals and was broadcast in almost 30 markets heads and our hands – to tell our own stories. Peter Wintonick’s residency: in a dozen language versions. More substantially, he met the four objectives of his residency: Department of the Premier and Cabinet In 2002, Peter Wintonick directed and produced, • to contribute to a plan to develop South with Katerina Cizek, Seeing is Believing: Handicams, Australia’s digital documentary industry; South Australian Film Corporation Human Rights and the News, an exploration into • to help the State create global networks the political and social uses of handicams and new in the fi lm industry; Department of Education and Children’s communications technologies, which won the • to provide advice on education policy, Services prestigious Hamptons International Film Festival’s including curricula; Premier of South Australia Abraham Prize. and Minister for the Arts • to strengthen the knowledge and skills of January 2006 He directed the feature documentary Cinema South Australian students and educators. University of South Australia Verité: Defi ning the Moment, about the history and contemporary legacy of that most important fi lm This report – Southern Screens: Southern Stories Arts SA revolution which was the special prize winner at – is the culmination of Peter’s work, and it’s one the 2001 Banff Television Festival and winner of the I warmly welcome. Ecumenical Prize at the Berlin Film Festival.

Australian International Documentary Peter Wintonick is currently circumnavigating Conference the globe, holding workshops, advising festivals, writing for numerous hardcopy and online magazines and post-producing several fi lms he has directed, one of which investigates the inter-generational shift from old to new media throughout the world, made with his daughter Mira Burt-Wintonick.

2 3 Acknowledgements Contents

In particular, I would like to thank the South Abbreviations 7 A Thousand Flowers Blooming in a Australian Film Corporation, the Adelaide Digital Sun 26 Film Festival, the Australian International 1 Summary of Main Understand Media 27 Documentary Conference, the Department of 8 On the need for Media Literacy 28 Education and Children’s Services, The University Recommendations of South Australia, Flinders University, Arts SA Screen Education 8 Teaching Media 29 and the Thinkers Unit of the Department of the Screen Industries 9 Media Literacy and South Australia’s Premier and Cabinet. 30 Community Media 11 Strategic Directions Infrastructure 12 Fostering a Culture of Creativity and I would also like to thank the hard working Industrial Development 31 people in the Thinkers Offi ce - Ann Clancy, Pamela James-Martin, Alyssa Late, Joanna 2 Introduction 13 A Future Vision for a Media Literate South Australia 31 Hughes, Brenda Kuhr, Denise Maddigan, The Educational Sphere 14 Gabrielle Overton and Pauline Tuft, and my Recommendations for the The Screen Industries Sphere 14 Ngai wangandi marni nabudni Kaurna researchers and ‘thoughtcatchers’ Beth Neate Educational Sphere 32 yertaanna - The Adelaide Plains of South and Rachael Thompson. The Community Media Sphere 14 Australia are home to the Kaurna Aboriginal The Infrastructure Sphere 15 6 The Screen Industries Sphere 37 people. Also on a personal level, I want to acknowledge Building a Rainbow Bridge 15 Highlights of Recommendations for the the hundreds of citizens of South Australia I Screen Industries 37 At all the offi cial functions I attend in South have met along my thinking way. They have 3 37 Australia, and indeed in my own country, given me their ear, or an earful. They have been Some refl ections on Thinking in Reality Check: The Rebirth of Documentary Canada and throughout the world, I think it is universally kind and generous with their ideas, Residence 16 Scope of the Screen Industries always important to fi rst acknowledge that we their complaints, their wishes, their visions, and Consultation 42 are working and living on the traditional lands their opinions. 4 South Australia and Digitopia 18 Creative Industries in South Australia 43 of the First Peoples. A Utopian History Lesson 18 Observations: The Screen Industries 44 But mostly I want to acknowledge the brilliant But I always also found fi nd myself musing as media work shining out from all corners of : The Beginnings Success Stories 44 20 the conventional greeting is announced: ‘Well, the State, the work of young and fi rst-time of Digitopia A General Appraisal 45 that’s all very fi ne to acknowledge the past, but fi lmmakers, the work and promise of those The Context: History and Screen Culture 47 what are we all going to do about it now, to emerging from the educational sectors, the 5 The Educational Sphere 21 49 make things right?’ work done with fl air and social justice in the The Adelaide Film Festival Highlights of Recommendations for communities by groups like Carclew or Nunga The Adelaide Film Festival Education 21 The challenge is to make all of our stories come TV, the work beginning in the schools by kids Investment Fund 49 Media Education 21 together, Aboriginal and other originals, and to like Heidi the six-year old animator, facilitated The Australian International 22 be accessible to each other. by teachers who will take us all into a place I call The Work: Results and Outcomes Documentary Conference (AIDC) 50 Digitopia. Observations in Media Education: The Don Dunstan Film Fund 51 I would like to thank Premier Mike Rann, 23 The Current State 52 Warren McCann and the Cabinet for their Peter Wintonick The Fifty Cent Fund Tensions, Issues and Perceptions 25 support for a highly innovative, world-leading Thinker in Residence Creating Inter/Screen 52 program, Thinkers in Residence. 2005

4 5 Contents Abbreviations

How Inter/Screen and the Screen Scope of the Consultation in ABC Australian Broadcasting PLICT Professional Learning in Catalyst Could Work 53 Aboriginal Media 82 Corporation Information and Communication The South Australian Film Corporation 54 Macumba Media 82 ACCC Australian Competition and Technologies Our Paradise of Dissent 55 Media in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Consumer Commission SA South Australia 83 ScreenSA 56 Yankunytjatjara Lands AFC Australian Film Commission SAAME South Australian Association of 84 Media Education Visualisations and Suggestions for Policies Nunga TV AFF Adelaide Film Festival and Directions for SAFC/ScreenSA 59 US Mob.com 84 AFFIF Adelaide Film Festival Investment SAFC South Australian Film Corporation Visualising Screen SA’s Budget 63 Recommendations for Aboriginal Media 85 Fund SPAA Screen Producers Association of Australia Visualising Incubation and Career Creating a Community Media Hub 86 AFI Australian Film Institute Development 63 AFTRS Australian Film, Television and SSABSA Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia Visualising Documentary and Digital 8 The infrastructure sphere 87 Radio School 67 TAFE Technical and Further Education Opportunities Highlights of Recommendations for AIDC Australian Industry Development Screen Culture for ScreenSA 68 Infrastructure 87 Commission TSOF Technology School of the Future Infrastructure for ScreenSA 69 Observations 87 APY Anangu Pitjantjatjara VCA Victorian College of the Arts Yankunytjatjara ScreenSA in Partnerships 74 Privatisation of Public Resources 88 VET Vocational Education and Training DAARE Department for Aboriginal Affairs Final Words: Challenges for Change 74 88 Free Trade or Fair Trade and Reconciliation Broadband Infrastructure 89 7 75 DECS Department of Education and The community media sphere Archives 90 Children’s Services Highlights of Recommendations for Open Source Software 92 DFEEST Department of Further Education, Community Media 75 Access to Information 93 Employment, Science and The Globalocal Village 75 Technology Freedom of Expression 93 Community Media: Observations, FA Film Australia Urban Issues 94 Best Practice and Outcomes 76 95 FFC Film Finance Corporation 76 About Sustainability: Inter/Screen The Media Resource Centre GAIMSCOE Games and Interactive Media And How Will We Pay For All These Carclew 77 Simulation Centre of Excellence Recommendations? 96 ARTSsmart 77 HESS Higher Education Selection Subject And then, a thought of the day… 96 Directing the Hero Within 78 ICT Information and Communication 78 The Parks Project: Challenges for Change 9 Epilogue 98 Technologies Dococom.com 79 NSWFTO New South Wales Film and Television Offi ce Recommendations for Regional Media 10 Appendix 1: The SAFC View 101 and Community Networks 80 Aboriginal Media 81 11 Additional acknowledgements 103

6 7 1 RecommendationsSummary of Main Peter Wintonick | Southern Screens : Southern Stories

should continue its support for initiatives Recommendation 2 but, curiously, not in the art form which is most like ARTSsmart. It should also work with Establish a university-level school of media pervasive, and which means the most to the existing artists-in-schools programs and such education within an existing faculty of average student - media. Such a school could organisations as the Australian Film, Television education, to train teachers how to teach media. be right down the street from the essential and Radio School (AFTRS), the Media Resource Technology School of the Future, which could Centre (MRC), or Carclew’s Digital Media We must create a critical mass of skilled media act as a guiding resource centre. Division to promote short term mentorships, educators. and in-school workshops by dedicated screen professionals. Within the framework of an existing Screen Industries University’s School, Faculty or Department of New initiatives in distribution of student work, Education, at the UniSA, Flinders University or Recommendation 4 across all school years, such as the brilliantly the , a dedicated School Support and sustain the Adelaide Film Festival conceived Upload, should be created and for Media Education should be established and its Investment Fund, and the Australian supported. to produce highly skilled media teachers for International Documentary Conference, two the system. This should be accomplished in world-class fi lm industry festival and conference The State could establish a Premier’s Media co-partnership with all of South Australia’s events. Challenge for all schools, to produce fi lms and existing tertiary institutions as a collective My mandate in South Australia took me into new media to be showcased in collective ways. operation with additional contribution The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) brings together four intersecting Spheres (or areas) of interest. from the State and DECS. There is already a South Australian audiences and the best My thinking, and the main recommendations With partnerships forged between industry precedent for this level of cooperation, in a new of local, national and international cinema. detailed in Southern Screens : Southern Stories, and education, the State could establish a pan-university science initiative. Its dynamic and unique AFF Investment are organised accordingly. dedicated broadband web distribution portal Fund gives proactive treatment to ideas, for student production. Media is a matter which should apply across innovation and new works for the screen. A Screen Education the whole curriculum. In addition to the national initiative currently based in Adelaide, All educational partners should establish training of specialist media teachers, all new the Australian International Documentary proactive opportunities for media training for teachers will need to take courses and be Conference (AIDC) is a great opportunity for Recommendation 1 Aboriginal students and teachers, perhaps in trained in how to teach media. the non-fi ction world to arrive at Adelaide’s Forefront media literacy in all of our conjunction with an envisioned Aboriginal doorstep. These two world class events offer State’s schools. Media Resource and Training Centre. Recommendation 3 much to South Australian society and its Establish a specialised Secondary Media School screen culture. They should be supported and Media is the language of the twenty-fi rst There should be State support for DECS of Excellence. sustained over the long-term. century, the language our children use, the involvement as a leading educational partner language we use. Media literacy should be in the International Democracy Project. Media is the ubiquitous language that our Recommendation 5 prioritized at primary, secondary and tertiary This could involve the production, in South students speak. Establish the Don Dunstan Film Fund to enable levels, using a number of proactive ideas, Australia, of educational materials, web-sites, socially useful fi lms for the strategic future projects and programs to promote multiple test-bed research and the production of local DECS and the State should establish a of the State, and to provide opportunities for media literacies. SA educational content around the theme of specialised Secondary Media School of emerging fi lmmakers. democracy. What a wonderful opportunity Excellence, perhaps in the southern, northern A few examples: South Australia’s Department to showcase South Australia and to enhance or western suburbs. Schools of excellence have The Don Dunstan Film Fund would grow out of Education and Children’s Services (DECS) DECS’s international profi le! already been established in other art forms of the existing Educational Content Fund

8 9 1 Summary of Main Recommendations Peter Wintonick | Southern Screens : Southern Stories

currently administered by the South Australian Recommendation 6 As is the case in France and other jurisdictions Arising out of the various circles of dialogue Film Corporation (SAFC). The idea was originally Support and foster the South Australian Film where such quotas are supported, the State representing all screen sectors created with conceived by the State’s visionary Premier, Don Corporation in its renewal and growth as it should ask SA fi lmgoers for a minimal, freewill the Thinker’s residency, and amalgamating Dunstan, and incarnated as the Government meets the needs and technologies of a 21st 50 cent surcharge contribution on foreign and an existing, rather dormant, Screen Industries Film Fund in the 1970s. A fund in his name century South Australian screen culture. US cinema theatrical entries, in order to aid SA Council, Inter/Screen should be established should be established and funded to the levels media production. Based on the recent history as an effective, properly fi nanced, small he originally envisaged. South Australia should ensure the existence of fi lm-going in South Australia, this measure directorate to facilitate dialogue and solutions, and sustained funding of a State screen could by most accounts add more than a create on-line and real-life networking, conduct Many of the purposes of the proposed agency that prioritises incubation, innovation million dollars to the SA production pie. Half of research and provide strategic advice to the Don Dunstan Film Fund are those of the and pro-South Australia policies. Innovation the proceeds would be for SA-based features, State and to the SAFC/ScreenSA. Educational Content Fund, which is a and incubation are vital to the viability of the and half across the other genres to promote Government communication resource, a screen industries and the ongoing provision innovation in South Australian screen art. Inter/Screen would hold monthly, consultative developmental strategy and an income stream of support to the next generation of screen forums, articulating the common interests of for South Australian screen practitioners. practitioners. Preliminary discussions with some of all screen institutions, individuals, educators, The SAFC could perhaps administer the new South Australia’s leading home-grown companies and associations. version. I recommend that additional funding The South Australian Film Corporation already exhibition professionals indicate that this be provided to the Don Dunstan Film Fund / undertakes a signifi cant role and it is critical recommendation may have wide support It could, among other things, facilitate Educational Content Fund, with consideration that such a State-based agency exists for these within the distribution sector, as I believe it will professional development, commission and given to broadening the criteria for the fund purposes. The SAFC would grow to imagine with the public at large. South Australia would study best practice, maintain databases, beyond educational content to also include itself as a dynamic and visionary ScreenSA, be seen as leading the nation in this initiative. conduct research, and develop a South socially responsible low budget full-length fostering a holistic approach to the screen Making the Fifty Cent Fund voluntary would Australian screen marketing initiative. documentaries, shorts, new media, fi ction and industry of the 21st century. avoid collision with potential requirements of features. the federal US-Australia Free Trade agreement. Guiding principles of innovation and A properly supported Don Dunstan Film Fund Community Media incubation would foster an emerging, Recommendation 8 would support and produce documentary, 9 digital, web, fi ction, shorts, animation products aspirational South Australian screen culture Create Inter/Screen and a position of Screen Recommendation that promote social progress and achievement across all fi lm, new media and next media Catalyst. Inter/Screen would be a South Enhance community-based media by of such goals and objectives of the State’s long platforms. The SAFC/ScreenSA would provide Australian inter-agency Forum and Council dramatically increasing support for the Media term Strategic Plan as sustainability, ecology, visionary leadership for the industry so that the for screen industries, screen arts and screen Resource Centre (MRC). In parallel, create a integration and social justice. South Australian fi lm movement is viewed as education. sister organisation, an Aboriginal-based Media the home for the truly independent screen arts. Production, Resource and Training Centre for Most importantly, the Don Dunstan Film Fund With representatives from across all the emerging and existing Indigenous practitioners. 7 would be an elegant, effi cient way to take up Recommendation sectors, Inter/Screen would be a multi-partner, the ever-increasing pool of new fi lmmakers, Establish the Fifty Cent Fund as a voluntary consultative, advisory and research body to The Media Resource Centre (MRC) serves giving both emerging and experienced SA contribution from South Australia’s cinema- encourage dialogue and strategically enhance a hundreds of media-makers and practitioners media makers opportunities to hone their going public to foster the growth of South whole-of-industry approach. A small directorate as members, and delivers an incredible number skills on socially worthy fi lms and media Australia’s own images on its own screens. would be created and fi nancially sustained and of essential services to the media making productions. Many of South Australia’s most a project offi cer or Screen Catalyst would need community generally. The MRC deserves to important senior fi lmmakers today developed to be appointed to manage Inter/Screen. have its minuscule funding substantially because of the original Government Film Fund.

10 11 1 2 Summary of Main Recommendations IntroductionIntroduction increased and sustained over the long-term. Recommendation 11 consensus. All of these ideas and strategies Additionally, after consultation with all SA Foster, fi nance and facilitate the creation of a combine to create long-term solutions to the Aboriginal practitioners and organisations, the screen industries and community Media Hub in challenges South Australians face in their State should help fund and establish a totally central Adelaide. engagement with the screen. Some may inclusive, autonomous and adequately funded consider these ideas slightly idealistic, others Aboriginal-controlled Media Production, This would resemble the Film House in will fi nd them practical and stimulating. Resource and Training Centre. This centre would Copenhagen. A large building or a number serve the production, resource, networking and of co-located buildings could house such a When implemented, I believe these common media educational needs of young, emerging screen hub in Adelaide which could include sense and feasible suggestions may help and existing Indigenous media makers. It SAFC/ScreenSA as the lead funding agency, South Australians build their fi lm and media could bring together the existing best practice the Media Resource Centre, representative industries into a screen culture that celebrates experiences from all the State’s Aboriginal agencies and practitioner associations, offi ces South Australian stories but also captures the media groups. These would include PY Media for a proposed Aboriginal media resource and I am South Australia’s seventh Thinker in world’s attention. It will be one which favours and Port Augusta’s Umeewarra Aboriginal training centre, screening facilities and offi ce Residence. It’s a unique position created innovation and incubation; and catches the Media Organisation; government agencies spaces for other production companies. by the visionary Offi ce of the Premier and exciting spirit of these digital times, fostering such as DAARE, Aboriginal Education and TAFE Cabinet and supported, in my case, by seven and encouraging independent vision and SA; advocacy groups such as Yaitya Makkitura; other Institutional partners in the fi lm and creativity. emerging makers at Nunga TV and experienced educational sectors. I spent four months guidance from Aboriginal media pioneers immersed in hundreds of meetings and It will be a place where: like John Macumba Productions, a co-founder consultations as the Thinker in Residence. My • all of South Australia’s media-makers can of CAAMA, the Central Australian Aboriginal mandate was to observe all aspects of the work and thrive, without having to go Media Association. State’s screen culture - the screen industries, elsewhere - or nowhere media education and community media • ‘fi lm-making’ in the widest possible sense practice - and to refract these observations is redefi ned as the Eighth Art. All of the Infrastructure through the personal prism of my 30 years as screen arts - digital media, feature fi lm, a director, producer, educator, writer and critic documentary, hybrid fi ction, non-fi ction, Recommendation 10 with professional experience around the world. animation, games, cellphone fi lms, video- Create a South Australian Digital Visual Archive. podcasting and the web - will be a means I acted as a catalyst, active listener, objective to create our own stories, our own images, Extending and building upon the ground- sounding board and observation post in order our own futures breaking work by the State Library of South to make these humble recommendations and • multiple media literacies are encouraged in Australia’s SA Memory Project and the suggestions about how the screen arts in our schools because digital is the language Aboriginal APY Land’s Ara Irititja Archive, the South Australia might best meet the realities of the 21st century State should support the capturing, in digital and challenges of our digital age. • media can empower students and teachers visual archives, the story that is South Australia. to understand the over-mediated world Empowered by an enhanced broadband As an essential guiding philosophy, I believe a around us backbone, the SA digital visual archive should holistic approach is required. I have consulted • community and media can be bound be a media-rich web-plex that all South with all the important players and so many together with an invigorated sense of Australian citizens, students and institutions generous, creative individuals to take the pulse social purpose can contribute to, and freely use. of SA’s screen culture and synthsize a common

12 13 2 Introduction Peter Wintonick | Southern Screens : Southern Stories

• ‘docu-mocracy’ (documentary fused The Screen Industries Sphere The Infrastucture Sphere But when I thought about it, perhaps half a with democracy) serves an all-inclusive rainbow is a symbol of the challenges that lie civil society with information and ahead for all of us here. We are all attempting enlightenment to build the other half of the rainbow - to do • one can face reality in the 21st century, our part to make South Australia into a creative where the informed screen takes its capital, where everyone has the necessary tools rightful, poweful place. and support networks to tell their own stories.

My mandate, thinking and activities in South There is so much to do to complete Australia took me into four intersecting One of the main aspects of my residency was In this fourth sphere I refl ect upon what that rainbow, not the least of which is a areas, or what I call Spheres of interest. As a to observe and report on the fi lm, TV and I call Infrastructure. These are contextual reconciliation reality check of the relations result, Southern Screens : Southern Stories is new media sphere of industries, what we issues sometimes determining, colouring or that different communities have with the First organised accordingly. call the screen industries. These range from facilitating work in the other spheres. Peoples of this land. Part of my work includes digital documentary, through feature drama, how one might turn the First stories, using webwork, animation, special effects and games community and new media practice, into work The Educational Sphere to what I call the ‘next media’ or ‘now media’. Building A Rainbow Bridge we can all share. I looked at how the State can nurture best practice, both from big “I” industry and little ‘i’ South Australians are fortunate to be living industry perspectives. in a time and place where art, technology and entrepreneurship can all work together towards a sustainable culture, where values of The Community Media Sphere education are cherished equitably.

Completing the rainbow is a way of building I observed, examined and worked within a unique, internationally recognised South the Department of Education and Children’s Australian screen culture and a new media Services (DECS) and at South Australia’s movement for this digital age. universities. I particularly looked at media education and fi lm studies, how to develop multiple media literacies and screen competencies and how to encourage such I examined many excellent best practice After an early morning rain in Adelaide, I rushed things as educational career path effi ciencies, examples in South Australia’s community to get my digital camera to capture a rainbow resource-sharing and teacher training. media production, both in the Adelaide area I could see was forming over my balcony. But I and in several regions. I made a special point was a little disappointed because it was only of including many fi ne Aboriginal screen a half a rainbow that I could see. The corner of initiatives which are highly innovative and my own building, literally and metaphorically, responsive, but which are often hampered by a blocked out the rest. lack of support.

14 15 3 ThinkingSome Refl ection in onResidence Peter Wintonick | Southern Screens : Southern Stories

the game, along with the rules. But what corner video booth right across the road from During my stay, I worked with community intrigued me most was the scoreboard. Here in Parliament House. Or creating a Festival of media groups in such places as Salisbury, an age of technological advancement, was an Festivals which would bring all together all the Parks and the Aboriginal APY Anangu ancient mechanical object of extreme beauty. the art forms, selecting from each of the other Pitjantjatjara Lands, thinking about how Handmade technology, totally functional, great festivals in the world, one single act or documentary can empower individuals and appropriate and accurate. A pure information fi lm or performance or individual or painting to societies in this digital age. system, documenting the game, wicket by showcase them together in Adelaide. fallen wicket, as new and useful as the day I brainstormed with educators and students it was born. It was, for me, an analogy to the Those were my less practical Thoughts. You on such practical matters as scripting and documentary fi lm process, which is my line of can judge, be inspired by or re-work the more production, but more importantly, on how sport. That was my Thought of the Day. serious ones which follow. educational systems, along with government support, can provide unrestricted pathways for On my fi rst day in Adelaide, as South Australia’s During this residency, as an amusing exercise, The Thinkers program is original. It must be, emerging talent. latest Thinker in Residence, I went to the I came up with other random Thoughts of because a Canadian province is going to adopt great green Oval where Australia was deftly the Day, like developing a hybrid car factory the idea. It must be, because I even found my In short, how can we provide a bedrock of handling a cricket team from the West Indies in in Adelaide and running a hybrid car race thinking self featured as a clue in a crossword media literacy to all of South Australia’s a sport where the rules totally dumbfound this alongside the Clipsal 500; or putting a puzzle in the Adelaide Advertiser. citizens, and especially to our young daughters unenlightened Canadian. big drive-in movie screen in the middle of and sons who will be the next generation of the Parklands which will only show South As the Premier puts it, my mandate was to the creative class, the innovative media makers I was made to feel welcome by those who Australian fi lms; or installing a speaker’s engage, enthuse and enable. That indeed and consumers, working both for art and for inhabit the Hill. They happily spelled out for me has been the mandate of all the previous industry. They are the dream-keepers and the nuance, artistry and athleticism of Thinkers, who bring expertise from outside storytellers for the future. the oval into South Australia’s social, political, educational and business circles. They bring Being a Thinker has given me a new their own experiences, opinions and detached appreciation of the complex nature of building observations into view, offering examples of consensus in a democracy. It’s that tough job best practice. Working with South Australians, that the Premier, the government, the public they generate new ideas and solutions. As the service and you, the reader, all have as citizens. old Chinese proverb says, the frog can only see a small circle of the sky from inside its well. On the whole, the Thinkers project offers the The advantage of having Thinkers visit South people of South Australia new ways of seeing Australia is that they can watch both from old problems. It offers lateral solutions instead outside in, and the inside out. of top-down, vertical ones, applied from on high. My work here catalysed action and During my residency, I thought about how to communication across groups which may not grow South Australia’s fi lm and media arts have worked together in the past. It uncovers sectors into a truly independent, internationally and reveals promising success stories which competitive brand over the next decade. are already here.

16 17 4 DigitopiaSouth Australia and Peter Wintonick | Southern Screens : Southern Stories

Utopia (Uto´-pia) noun. A visionary, imaginary In terms of the fi lm arts, media education and Knowledge, or what we would call today State with perfect political and social conditions. the screen industries, I want to imagine here Creativity. But in 1901, the Premier at the time A paradise. (from Sir Thomas More’s book about what it will take to rebuild South Australia’s decided to axe it. He just took his pen and an imaginary island nation Utopia, published screen culture into a digital utopia, or scratched out the pomegranate. 1516.) Etymology: from the Greek ou, (not) and ‘Digitopia’. But before we build the future, we topos, (a place). In other words, Nowhere. must know the past.

A Utopian History Lesson The dominant narrative of the modern history of South Australia is that it was born as a King William Street c1910 photo courtesy of State utopia. Like Plato, who designed his Republic, Records South Australia the colonial ‘founder’ of what is now called South Australia, Edward Gibbon Wakefi eld, had South Australia has been the location for a vision of a perfect pattern of society laid up in a number of historical fi rsts - the fi rst to the heavens. champion free and compulsory education in 1875, the fi rst to recognise the rights of That vision came into being in the Aboriginal Peoples, the First Housing Trust in 1930 Proclamation of December 28, 1836 which the ’s. created South Australia as a great free Colony. I note that, in the second paragraph of that But South Australia is also home to a little Proclamation, the same protection was delusional thinking. I worry about a place that extended to the Native Population as to the says it has ‘No Worries’ all the time. rest of His Majesty’s subjects. The Piping Shrike of Creativity In Wakefi eld’s vision, the greatest happiness The offi cial State animal of the ‘Utopia’ of could be achieved in a balanced community South Australia is the Hairy-Nosed Wombat. I recommend that it’s time to bring the of enlightened citizens. He prophesied no I would recommend that could be changed. Pomegranate back into the State crest. I am now half way through shooting a major adoration of wealth, no oppression of the poor, fi lm about utopias, in more than a dozen no need for dissent, because everyone would And then there’s South Australia’s offi cial State In other words, it’s time to bring creativity and 1901 countries. I am making it because I want to be happy. Life would be perfect. Instead of crest. In , the graphic artists of the time innovation back into the picture. offer a little hope to the world in the form of a granting land free to settlers, land should be morphed an image of an eagle from Germany fi lm and an internet web-plex. sold. into what South Australians call the Piping To make South Australia the Knowledge State - Shrike (or is it Pipping Shrek?), but which is where the State of knowledge leads the nation. Utopias are about how we wish to visualise an Many of the white settlers who came to South actually an Australian magpie. A very, very To make South Australia the Art State where ideal world, and how we reconcile and manage Australia were Nonconformists, or Dissenters, smart bird. the State of art is second to none. To make that vision against the sometimes irrational who believed Wakefi eld’s plan offered them South Australia the State where the screen is impulses of the real world. That’s my defi nition more freedom. Thus Adelaide was born not In the original painting, above the head of both a mirror and an agent for change. of utopia. only as a city of churches, but also as a Paradise the bird was a beautiful red pomegranate, of Dissent. the King of Fruit. The Pomegranate represents

18 19

4 5 South Australia and Digitopia SphereThe Educational

Don Dunstan: ‘In the arts, Don Dunstan showed that a small The Beginnings of Digitopia State could not only become an international centre for culture, but could take the arts to ordinary people, not just to the privileged. In developing an Australian fi lm industry, Don led the way.’

As Thinker in Residence, I did my little bit by spending almost four months of twelve hour days, seven days a week on research, consultation, study, speech-making, writing, conferencing, lecturing and listening as I Highlights of Recommendations continued on my quest seeking a map to a for Education new Paradise of Dissent, to a Digitopia in South Media Education Australia. • Support Aboriginal media training. • Set up proper accreditation for media In South Australia today, there is a sense of photo courtesy of The Advertiser In the end, I have come to the conclusion that it literacy. hope and promise. Change is in the air. For me, will be up to all South Australians to continue • Create a pan-university School for Media the most important aspect of my work here Don Dunstan created the South Australian Film the quest, to build it for themselves, in their Education to teach teachers how to teach has been in the educational sphere. Corporation, the fi rst such agency in Australia. own images. media. • Create a secondary Media School of I have been re-educated through my work ‘Throughout his career Don was prepared to put Excellence with fl ow-ons for primary and with the State’s education system. It’s been his neck on the line whenever he believed the early and preschool years students and heartening to engage with the evolved principle of an issue was important. Don fought staff. thinking at the top echelons of Department for fundamental reforms that we now take for • Foster new initiatives in production. of Education and Children’s Services (DECS), granted. As Premier, Don led South Australia out • Create new initiatives in distribution of facilitated by the DECS representative of a dull conservatism to make us a pace-setter student media. at the Thinkers Offi ce. Together, we have in this nation . . . Don moved South Australia • Create a student-based web portal TV accomplished much with the dedicated from rock bottom to Australian pre-eminence.’ channel. teachers in the Salisbury public schools, and • Establish the Premier’s Media Challenge. with the University of South Australia and Those actual words were written by Premier • Foster the development of media mentors. Flinders University. Mike Rann in the Labor Herald. Mike, when • Support the International Democracy he was young, used to work for Don. Mike Project though local initiatives. In Canada, I recently worked with others continues: • Take measures to make more resources to develop competencies in digital and available for teachers. documentary production for use by educational • Create and sustain an inter-agency Media systems in my own country. Most appreciate Literacy Umbrella Group. that fi lmmaking is an art, a craft and a business. It rests upon a series of essential elements. Some are given or innate: passion,

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personal identity and talent. But there are their skills can be applied to working within I recommend that the valuable work of Schools, and Parafi eld Gardens High School. many other essential competencies that can a new digitally converged environment. I also our Curriculum Dialogue Group continue Students there have made short animation be learned and acquired. This is where the lectured to staff at the Centre for Public and with the establishment of a Media Literacy fi lms, documentaries and public service educational sphere enters the picture. Many Professional Communication and addressed Umbrella Group within the educational announcements. This work will spur others to skills are necessary to build the ideal media the School’s teaching and research community, sector. This would be an ongoing, working take up the model. artist: academic background, knowledge, including Honours and PhD students, and body to champion, facilitate and continue culture, personal experience, the ability to worked with media creators in the Architecture this important dialogue for media education, One whole school, Pooraka, which had never articulate ideas, to analyse and synthesize and Design schools and at the Wearable identifying common pathways and potential before engaged with media-making, turned information, to make decisions, to manage Computer labs at UniSA. blockages. Headed by a media education its total attention to the idea of Fear. There budgets and fi nally, numerous technical skills champion or catalyst, the group will be light, were classroom activities about fear, poems, necessary to make, or study, media. One of the most important aspects was responsive, non-bureaucratic, and risk-taking community surveys and powerful discussions working with partners to create a Curriculum - not risk averse. Representatives from the about the ethics of fi lming about fear. The Dialogue Group (CDG) working on all aspects Media Literacy Umbrella Group will also be school made a fi lm about fear which included The Work: Results and Outcomes of screen education and media literacy. This part of Inter/Screen, an envisioned Forum and Jason walking across a swing bridge for the group represents everyone in the sector, from Council which I recommend elsewhere in this fi rst time in his life. With a fellow student I’d like to outline a few of what are called bottom to top: document, in Section 6, The Screen Industries fi lming from the riverbed, and his teacher ‘outcomes’ in systems speak. I dislike the word • Curriculum Policy and Futures Connect Sphere. fi lming from the bridge, Jason before our eyes outcomes. I’d rather call them tangible, visible people in the Department of Education and and in real time, overcame his fear by coming results. Children’s Services (DECS) During my stay in South Australia, I met with face to face with it, inspired by the power • teachers and students at individual schools executives and senior managers in DECS to inherent in the fi lmmaking process itself. My objective has been to provide strategic (covering birth to Year 12) inspire, challenge and inform DECS about the advice about current and future educational • Salisbury Schools District staff and impact and potential of digital technologies policy, programs and pathways relating to Learning Band Coordinators and fi lm media. I’ve helped build educators’ Observations In Media Education: screen media. I helped facilitate collaboration • Technical and Further Education (TAFE) and learners’ capacities by developing their between universities and secondary education • Senior Secondary Assessment Board of SA The Current State understanding, critical skills and knowledge media teachers, and advised on curriculum (SSABSA) development for South Australian universities • ArtsSA about the construction, role and potential of that are teaching production, digital media and • SA Association of Media Education (SAAME) digital screen media. I discussed applications in communications. • University of SA a digital environment which can enable socially • Flinders University inclusive improvements to policy, curriculum I contributed to teaching and mentoring • Media Resource Centre (MRC) and vocational futures. I also mentored students who are developing specializations • Technology School of the Future (TSoF). teachers and students in the use of non-fi ction in screen studies at Flinders University. I’ve screen media to engage the voice of students inspired a series of fi lms made by third year This group provided strategic advice about and those at risk of leaving school. students serving the social needs of the Parks current and future educational policy, and Community Health Centre. At the University pathways relating to screen media. Many of With DECS and others, I also catalysed a very of South Australia I worked directly with the comments and suggestions I make in the successful experimental project which has the School of Communication, Information education sphere are directly due to the work led to a range of fi lms being conceived and South Australia’s DECS primary and secondary and New Media’s advanced fi lm and video done by the Curriculum Dialogue Group and produced by students in four Salisbury Schools: education systems show world leadership production students to help them explore how the DECS facilitator. Burton, Pooraka and Mawson Lakes Primary in its guiding principles of democracy,

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decentralisation and valuing the teacher and I believe the main factor contributing to Tensions, Issues and Perceptions staff to utilise technology or a lack of school student voice in decision making. DECS is this drop at Stage 2 is the subject’s tertiary support staff to maintain and support teachers building a culture of inquiry throughout its education HESS (Higher Education Selection There are tensions and issues in regard to and students, all of which can be overcome curriculum. Subject) Restricted status. Although this all resources and funding. with resource management and mentor may seem like technospeak the real end effect There is a variety of media education providers: systems. There is a perception that SA is not But at the post secondary level, Australia, once is that this discourages schools from offering Vocational Education and Training (VET), providing adequate funding. As well, some known for its leadership in media literacy and the subject, thus denying students a pathway schools, Technical and Further Education (TAFE), children don’t have equal access due to lack media studies in the 80s, now risks falling for proceeding to the next level of their universities, registered training organisations. of fi nances or a low socio-economic profi le. behind the curve. This decline has happened for education in media. This must change. But there is a lack of connection, coordination Country and regional schools are currently a number of reasons, some of them economic, and focus across sectors. Schools have developed disadvantaged in their access to training and some of them through neglect. But in the I would acknowledge that SSABSA has recently a wide range of good resources which are not development and industry contacts. context of this new media-centred century, agreed to change its defi nition of literacy as shared. The DECS Technology School of the it is urgent for all students, educators and it applies to year 11 and 12 students, effective Future is a real point of connection, but is not There are tensions and issues in regard to government agencies, in a lifelong way, to since 1 January, 2006, to encompass visual utilised to its maximum potential. Media Education and Media Studies. begin to understand the power of the mass communications. I would encourage DECS Media Studies as part of the SACE framework media - and to begin to make their own. We to publicise and support this alternative There is a lack of an implemented and is not as valued as traditional subjects. Media need to develop students and citizens into avenue for students to respond to major integrated media-rich curriculum across Studies are often viewed as an add-on, or as produsers (individuals who can embody two issues of study, across areas of the curriculum different levels of education. Media vision is a specialist area, whereas it should be seen ideas simultaneously as they both produce as diverse as business studies, biology, too localised and fragmented and not driven as cross-curricular. The study and creation their own media but also use and consume Japanese, chemistry, community studies, and or overseen by an overarching government of digital screen media should not just be media). mathematics. policy framework. While many children are about the end product, but about the skills comfortable, expressive and literate in the which can be developed by using media across In South Australia, up to the end of year 10, Other factors that appear to restrain an domestic products of the new technologies the whole curriculum. In other words, how media is mandated as a part of the Arts engagement with media include perceptions and while there is increased availability in the media contributes to the whole-of-curriculum curriculum within the SA Curriculum Standards about the high cost of media production, average home of simple and sophisticated Key Competencies and Essential Learnings and Accountability (SACSA) Framework, and teacher training, equipment and relative media technologies for consumption and as outlined in the SACSA Framework. And stage one and two courses are offered within importance as set against other departmental production, from mobile phones to digital stills generally, there is the continuing need to the Studies of Society and Environment fi eld in priorities. Across primary, secondary cameras to handicam videos to mp3 players to discuss the purpose of media education: the SA Certifi cate of Education (SACE). Both the and tertiary education, student learning games and software, there is a perceived lack of Is it to provide ‘fodder’ for industry, or to SACSA Framework and SACE defi ne literacy in pathways in media are not clearly aligned similar resources at school. provide a ‘holistic’ education? broad terms that are inclusive of media literacy, nor articulated and assessment practices production and analysis. However, while continue to privilege written responses over There is the misguided perception about the There are tensions and issues SSABSA data indicates consistently high audio-visual articulations. There is an apparent cost of technology to the schools and a need to in regard to teaching. numbers of students studying SACE Stage 1 contradiction between promoting digital continually update equipment. This is a legacy South Australia has an ageing teaching Media Studies over the past decade, the screen media and an assessment system that from the days when the equipment was a force who are, in general, not as confi dent number of sites and places offering the subject still privileges writing. burden. Cheap digital pro-sumer hardware has as they should be in digital technologies. at Stage 2 has reduced from 27 fi ve years ago to overcome this problem. There is a perception DECS teachers have varying levels of skills in only 18 in 2005. This trend must be reversed. that there is a lack of access to technology in the area. Teachers need time to investigate some schools and preschools, a lack of trained new trendencies in media making; to learn,

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talk, collaborate, plan and prepare on-the- media, one’s own voice, one’s own music, one’s the Education Content Fund at the SAFC among documentary or a web-based video blog. ground projects. Teacher training is a key own vision, one’s own creativity, one’s own others, it was written and fi lmed in collaboration Digimedia can be studied and used at all levels issue. Students are savvy in Information and stories. I have seen with my own eyes how a with drama students at three high schools, of education. It caters to individual learning Communication Technologies. They are born once dormant desert can bloom into a garden including Underdale High in Adelaide. styles and needs. It can be done by eight into this brave new digital world as digital of digital sunshine. year-olds or eighty year-olds and look equally natives. The more traditional transmission As one teacher told me: ‘Teaching media is sophisticated. It can be biased, personal, public model which would have teachers standing One day, in a workshop at the Adelaide Film really about challenging myself to think about or poetic. It can depict a particular point of at the front of the classroom telling students Festival, I watched a young student, living in a things in different ways. About broadening view and it can be infl uenced by viewers’ what is good for them, where a teacher is in home where the internet had not yet arrived, my own mind to expand defi nitions of perceptions. It is powerful, provocative, total control - is out of place in an environment busy working with mentors from Britain’s documentary, audience, and the uses of emotional and infl uencing. It can be where the student often knows more than the the-phone-book Group. With their gentle technology.’ spontaneous, contrived, or interactive. It can be teacher. This is the real digital divide. empowering guidance, she was able to learn, ethical. It can be judgmental. It can be critically within two hours, how to make her own stop- analysed - by critical, active, interpretive There are tensions and issues in frame movies. Shooting image by image with students and viewers, who are made aware of regards to pathways. her digital stills camera and using simple the author’s purpose, visual language systems There is a lack of a clear pathway between software, she was able to make a sophisticated and message. primary and secondary schools and media plasticine animation fi lm. The look of pride courses in universities, and between schools/ on her face, and her parents’ broad smiles as Digital media is infl uenced by culture, universities and the industry. they all left the room arm in arm, made for an economics, government, politics, social identity unforgettable moment. and consumers. It can build community Some issues are context-bound, and may not capacity. According to the manifesto of the be amenable to universal solutions, and must The kids are teaching the teachers. In our South Australian Association for Media be localised. Support from the education experience working with the Salisbury schools, Education, media education is essential to system is crucial in supporting that. I watched six year old Heidi work with two Understanding Media make Australians literate in the use of new young colleagues to make a little stick fi gure forms of communication. In doing so, we will story using iMovie software. My jaw dropped in In a world where media is the very air we have also have citizens who can effectively A Thousand Flowers Blooming awe when I heard the fi fteen year old boys in breathe, we need to expand our view of literacy participate in a democratic system and In a Digital Sun the workshop ask our six year old Heidi if she to include media literacy. In other words, how contribute to Australia’s economic growth. could teach them how to use the software too! to ‘read’ and ‘write’ with light, where the pen All of these notions, tensions and problems can Let each one, teach one, as Nelson Mandela is now the camera, where the writing’s on be minimised or overcome. And when they are, would say. the wall - in the form of a screen. Where ‘the then the powerful, measurable results gained product’ or ‘measurable outcome’ or test can by studying and making media, across all With media, children are telling their own just as easily be an essay assignment made learning situations, will be incontestable. stories, choosing their own topics, shaping their with images, sounds and digital tools and world, shaping their ideas. Stories of Us, a three handed in as a DVD. Thoughout South Australia, I have personally part series on schoolyard bullying, romance watched how teachers, students, parents and and student stress, is a fi ne example of student Digital media is a tool for teaching and communities can be engaged and enabled generated media. Directed by an accomplished learning, a multifaceted literacy tool. It can be by the power of being in control of one’s own Adelaide fi lmmaker and supported by DECS and fi ction or non-fi ction, animation or a game,

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On The Need For Media Literacy fi gure out how to solve problems and negotiate • We risk losing the individual’s voice to package their stories in a medium that is their way in the economic world. tell their own story as they consume a readily accessible to all. Literacy is the ability to understand, analyse, daily diet of mass produced, stereotyped critically respond to, and produce appropriate The same goes for teaching media literacy. We formulas pitched fi rmly at the Of course, there may be challenges in teaching spoken, written, visual and multi-media in teach media literacy, not to make every student consumption dollar rather than a desire media literacy. If we teach students how to different contexts. It is as ubiquitous as the into the next Steven Spielberg or Rolf De to inform and/or understand the world in make and understand media, we may alienate air we breathe. We must understand what it Heer or , but because media is the which we live. a cohort of teachers who view change, and is, what it does and how it works. And how to language of the twenty fi rst century. It is the • We risk further constraining the voice of often technology, as an imposition rather than make it ourselves. language that our children speak. those who may be physically or mentally the opportunity to grow as educators and challenged, those who do not excel in the citizens of a global community. We may risk This is necessary for what the internationally What we do with the old literacies we must do current methods of storytelling (ie creative demanding too much from a screen industry respected liguist Noam Chomsky calls with media literacy - because it is the language writing) by not allowing them to explore in the form of structured work placements, ‘Intellectual Self Defence’ - protecting students of our future. other avenues of representation that they work experience and mentoring. We may risk and citizens from propaganda in this mass media recognise are already accepted by the wider channeling students into a career pathway in age. We must always remember, that even if In Britain, teenagers who traditionally took community. which the number of direct jobs are limited. It Adelaide may be the home to some of the fi nest two subjects - English and English Literature • We risk not utilising a huge resource, is worth those risks. universities in the world, it was also the original - are now being encouraged to take exams in those current new-media-savvy students home to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, English and media studies instead, according in primary, secondary and tertiary sites, one of the largest media empires in the world. to the report, Media Matters. The number of who are ready and willing to engage in Teaching Media students taking Media Studies has risen by mentoring roles in a subject that they value In media, we can all teach about software and nearly one-third since its introduction in 1986. and are passionate about. To fear media literacy is to fear democracy. hardware. But I want students (and adults) to be • We risk condemning the study of media Creating more engaged media-literate ‘mediaware’ (i.e. to develop media awareness). If we don’t engage in media literacy and its infl uence on society and culture to students is about making more opportunities • We risk the loss of South Australia’s unique a small specifi c subject valued by the few available in the education system, not less. As I am not just talking about training kids to be view on culture, as we will continually view rather than the many. students graduate and join the massive and fi lmmakers or training them to study media as the world through the eyes of storytellers emerging creative class, media literacy is also a unique subject. No, this is all about using the from other States or other nations, If we do engage in media literacy about building a screen industry and a screen digital tools and fostering fi lm expression, and particularly the United States. • We will sustain the uptake and growth culture in South Australia which can lead the documentary process, which is an ethical • We risk further alienating a cohort of in the use of media as the benefi ts in Australia, if not the world, as it harnesses and process, as learning aids to every subject in the disenfranchised youth who already view engagement become obvious to the fosters creativity, innovation and independent curriculum. Media needs to be in everybody’s school as an institution imposed upon majority of classroom practitioners. vision in the fi eld. toolkit. them, rather than one of the most valued • We will develop a generation of media experiences in their lives. and technologically literate individuals It is therefore important that State and federal Granted, we do need to teach kids how to • We risk sending our students into a media who may rapidly surpass the skills of the governments immediately implement policies write and analyse texts, and books and plays. rich society without the critical skills classroom teacher in their passion to and strategies to ensure that all Australians, But we teach such essential skills, not with the needed to analyse the messages that tell their story in the most effective way especially our children, become educated expectation that all of our kids will become the surround and infl uence their lives daily. possible. consumers of media who can also access, use next Shakespeare, but because one needs to • We risk losing a way of engaging students • We will create innovative thinkers, with a and produce their own media. read and write to understand the world. in dialogue with their peers and mentors strong student voice, who will showcase We teach our kids how to count, so they can about issues that occur in personal, public their local and State communities and and global arenas.

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By working with educators and students to in the acquisition of all the skills that are Fostering a Culture of Creativity A South Australia which is seen as an incubator develop skills of media literacy, one can create necessary to make this happen. and Industrial Development for young, media literate students. new models of curriculum, teaching and A State where media literacy is a valued, learning. Screen media have an important Teaching media is about young people Developing media literate students and citizens legitimate part of everyday learning, providing function in community life. A recognition by the developing the tools to think laterally, and with can only but encourage innovation, and thus its students with a set of transferable skills. A community that students are using a variety of dexterity, no matter where life takes them. create new jobs vital for economic growth State where values of tolerance and fairness media as a multimodal form of communication where creative capital is paramount, where are supported through the study of media. is an important, resonant result. Teaching media is about creating a culture of knowledge is currency. Where students and a whole community of communication that is essential to our social South Australian citizens contribute to national Learning media can bring benefi ts to the whole survival. Media literate citizens can begin to contribute identity through their artistic and cultural of the system. Teaching media can show us to a living culture, economic vitality and a social activities. A State where, from an early age, our how to engage and fulfi l students on the edge, history as active agents and members of their youth begin to contribute to our society in a and on the margins, by bringing them into the Media Literacy and South Australia’s communities - both local and global. manner which sustains the environment, and story-telling tent. It’s about student voice, and Strategic Directions the health and welfare of all Australians. it also refl ects community voice. A strategic design for the State which Globalisation, advancements in digital values media education as an entitlement A State where, throughout their schooling, Teaching digital media is about learning to technologies and the development of is underpinned by principles which include students acquire a set of media literacy learn; it’s about moving to a culture of inquiry, ‘knowledge economies’ demand inclusive storytelling as fundamental to personal and competencies which allow them to as DECS calls it. Teaching media is about societies that build capacities for critical social development. By broadening the uses construct their own learning. Where learners connecting teachers to an array of best practice and creative thinking. Therefore, it can be of audio-visual media and career possibilities, communicate and design multi-media with a sense of vocation and self-renewal. forcefully and factually argued, media literacy a proposed Inter/screen Forum and Council projects with confi dence, applying high level is an essential component in a sustainable, (outlined elsewhere) should be part of that technical skills toward making socially inclusive If we are asking our teachers to develop prosperous, informed, progressive, creative and plan, as an inter-agency working group that projects. Where, through media literacy, critical faculties, fl exibility, media literacy and articulate society. In that light, links to South can develop strategies to expand a diverse students discover alternate ways of knowing, creativity in our students, then our educators Australia’s Strategic Plan and the Department industry, develop collaborative relationships understanding, viewing reality and having a must possess and model these capacities in of Education and Children’s Services Priorities between key stakeholders and identify and ‘voice’. themselves. They must be positively supported are shown below. map existing expertise and facilities for sharing, collaborative networking and specialisation. It’s a future where students fl ow with ease South Australia’s Strategic Plan DECS Priorities between geographical learning locations, in Fostering Creativity - Objective 4. Strong beginnings for all children an environment which enhances relevance, their choices and enthusiasm. Where greater Creativity T4.1 Excellence in learning provision, achievement and A Future Vision for a Media student attendance is evident, particularly in Improve learning outcomes in the Arts and pathways Literate South Australia other learning areas that utilise enterprise Engagement and wellbeing the public sector, as student numbers increase 4.9 in high school and at a tertiary level. Where education T Quality teaching What do those of us who believe in media 4.3, T4.4, T4.5 literacy see in South Australia’s future? strong interrelationships and connections exist Grow industry T Build workforce capacity and resilience between our learning institutions, and the Improve partnerships and connections between Access to integrated services education and industry T4.10 We see a South Australia which will be a broader screen industries. Where mentoring Interdependence Internet usage T4.7 leader in media literacy, a State with a clearly and coaching programs are an accredited form Sustainability of learning in all educational institutions. Increase Learning Together and school- articulated future-learning context for community arts and recreation T4.11 Information and Communication Technologies.

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It’s a future where teachers are skilled screen studies, media production or related A Secondary Media School of Excellence might New initiatives in distribution of student practitioners and media literacy is embedded in media education subjects are not considered be located in the southern, northern or western media need to be created both pre-service and in-service teacher training. HESS restricted subjects in the SACE but as suburbs or be right down the street from the New initiatives in distribution of student work, approved, general competencies or subjects, wonderful Technology School of the Future across all school years, should be created and At the end of one workshop at a high school in in every possible way. (TsoF), which could act as a guiding resource supported, such as the brilliantly conceived Salisbury, a young student left an anonymous centre and facilitator. DECS should reinvigorate but not yet funded Upload, which will be both note on my desk. It read: ‘Please. Just give us A pan-university School for Media Education and expand the use, role and access to the a bi-annual festival and a training initiative the tools, and we can do anything.’ needs to be created to teach teachers how to TSoF as a centre of excellence in media literacy. throughout the year. A range of awards, teach media In addition to the universities’ courses and festivals and events should be supported or We work for a time when a media literate Within the framework of an existing School, programs, there are a few existing individual enhanced to celebrate student media literacy South Australia as a Digitopia is the reality and Department or Faculty of Education, at post-secondary courses in media production work to add to existing programs such as not some faraway dream. UniSA, Flinders University or the University of at campuses like the Helpmann Academy or Giffoni, Come Out, and the essential Adelaide Adelaide, a dedicated, pan-university, School MAPS at Hamilton College, and workshops Film Festival. for Media Education should be established to occasionally offered by registered training Recommendations For produce highly skilled media teachers for the organisations in small scattered pockets of A student-based TV channel or web portal The Educational Sphere system. This should be a collective operation the State’s education system. But these do not needs to be created with contribution from all of the State’s fulfi ll the need for the comprehensive dedicated With partnership from industry and education, Here are recommendations for the Educational existing universities, tertiary institutions and Secondary Media School described here. the State should establish a dedicated Sphere. Some are administrative, some need DECS, with input perhaps included from the broadband web distribution portal for student fi nancing, some need imagineering. All need brilliant national Australian Film, Television New initiatives in student media production production. In other words, an SA-based proactive support: and Radio School (AFTRS). There is already need to be fostered student TV educational channel, video-podcast a precedent set for this in a pan-university Media literacy has to happen across all areas or WebTV. Perhaps such a TV channel for Aboriginal media training needs support science initiative where all the universities are of the curriculum and is therefore an issue for schools could be run out of TSoF, and could The State’s educational systems should contributing to one goal. all teachers, all students and all parents. We also cross-promote best practice through the establish proactive opportunities for media can encourage new cost-effective initiatives community TV channel, C31, and community training for Aboriginal students and teachers, A Secondary Media School of Excellence needs in student media production. In the digital radio. perhaps in conjunction with an envisioned to be created media age, a mobile digital studio resource, Aboriginal Media Resource and Training Centre DECS should establish a specialised Secondary like the old idea of a library van that served A Premier’s Media Challenge needs to (see Section 7, The Community Media Sphere). Media School of Excellence. Such schools have under-resourced schools, should be equipped be created already been established in other art forms, with cheap yet appropriate production, editing The State could establish a Premier’s Media Media literacy needs to be properly accredited and in sports, but not in the art form which is and exhibition technologies. The Mobile Media Challenge to all schools, in which students In order to ensure that senior secondary most ubiquitous, most pervasive, and which Van can go from school to school for week- watch, critique and make their own productions students wishing to pursue screen studies means the most to the average student long training sessions, serviced by experienced during the year, which are then showcased and screen production can rightfully pursue - media. Such a school would be a centre of mentors. A few skilled specialists would work collectively for the community. This Premier’s their dreams and destinies and in order to excellence and an incubator which could fast across a range of sites to share resources Media Challenge would augment the Premier’s reinforce the importance of media literacy in track talented kids. Such a focus centre could between schools which could also link to awards and challenges in other arts and all students’ learning, we should immediately offer immersion and scholarship opportunities community libraries or digital archives as music, and the highly successful book reading unblock any and all bureaucratic impediments for more disadvantaged students, and could resource centres. challenge. It could also work in conjunction for proper accreditation. This means that all also include remote or virtual learning for with other initiatives like Crank! at Come Out. regional candidates.

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Media mentors need to be fostered Mentors should include senior students, TAFE the production of educational materials, web- • promoting and publicising student DECS should continue and expand its support students, university students, expert teachers sites, test-bed research and the production of achievements in media literacy and strategies for arts education and creativity and industry practitioners. One can establish local SA educational content and resources • empowering youth voice in SA schools and preschools with initiatives a system for identifying students who show around the theme of democracy for schools, • providing a model for other cross-agency like ArtsSmart to strengthen digital media, talent to support them to become local pre-schools and their communities. What a media related projects (for example, multimedia and the screen arts. Such projects mentors. Media coaches can be deployed and wonderful opportunity to showcase South Upload) encourage a continuing engagement of young trained to work across districts and schools Australia and to enhance DECS’ international people in arts education, partnerships between based on the existing highly successful model profi le! Measures need to be taken to make arts educators and arts practitioners, and of the Statewide Learning Technologies more resources available for teachers lifelong learning. Coaches program currently managed by South Australia’s contribution to the To help educators create a media literate Technology School of the Future. International Democracy Project would be to educational culture, several cost effective and DECS should also work with existing artists- engage the education sector and the broader simple measures need to be taken. In general, in-schools programs, promote short term The International Democracy Project community in media literacy learning as a a systemic and creative media educational mentorships, and in-school workshops by needs to be supported critical and empowering capacity of the 21st culture needs to be fostered and developed, dedicated screen professionals, and identify During this Residency, many of us were able Century; and to support the generation of allowing for more fl exible and accessible artists-in-schools programs that include to catalyse and capitalise on the visit of major dialogue about, and practice of, democracy in approaches to staffi ng, resourcing and facilities digital media and fi lm: Organisations such as international public television commissioning the local and international community by: management. These measures need to be Carclew’s brilliant Digital Media Division, or editors to the AIDC Documentary Conference. • developing the content for resource studied, quantifi ed, fi nanced and prioritised, to the effective and innovative Directing the Hero These broadcasters are creating the materials which support the facilitate a system of media education which Within Projects, local workshops provided by International Democracy Project, a series of documentaries and stimulate dialogue and enables educators and students to use media the local offi ce of the Australian Film, Television short and medium length documentary fi lms discussion about democracy with different in rich ways. and Radio School, and workshops provided by and educational out-reach projects around the age groups and diverse audiences the under-funded Media Resource Centre are theme of democracy. In 2007, around the world, • creating networks to test the resource The system can offer and design many viable, leading the way in such school-mentorship democracy will rule, with the results of the material for each fi lm and evaluate the cost effective solutions and measures to programs. Documentary Project simultaneously playing effectiveness of the resource material alleviate teachers’ fears of being overwhelmed out in education systems and across scores amongst different ages, cultures, etc by technology, costs, management issues and Leadership positions can be created across of international public TV networks, in many • igniting opportunities for students to make the burdens of uptake. These fears can be institutions and agencies incorporating a languages, including the BBC, SBS, France’s and share documentaries and other media overcome by simple measures which should coordinated approach that is supported and ARTE, the US’s PBS, The Sundance Channel and forms exploring the theme of democracy include in-service training, beginning with the resourced centrally and implemented locally. NHK Japan. • modelling the principles of democracy acknowledgement of multimedia work as part A twinning, databased exchange program can through the project of teacher time. match media teachers and teachers of media DECS, known as an educational system which • developing new and improved relationships literacy to industry practitioners. Resources promotes decentralised and democratic internationally, inter-State, cross-agency, The schooling system should introduce as should be made available to enable teachers to voice, has been asked to participate in the and with business many as possible of the following strategies: undertake professional learning and training. Democracy Project as a leading educational • providing opportunities for young people • co-teaching arrangements which will The system can offer certifi cate accreditation partner. I would recommend that DECS take to build relationships intra-State, inter- enable smaller, temporary breakaway for student placement in on-the-job training up the challenge, fund a project offi ce and State and internationally media production sub-groups to operate with opportunities to work with fi lm-makers/ appoint a project manager for the Democracy • promoting and demonstrating creativity within whole classes digital media producers and industry mentors. Project. This offi ce could involve itself with and media as career pathways

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5 6 The Educational Sphere SphereThe Screen Industries

• media coaches modeled on the DECS into the impact of 21st Century media • Create Inter/Screen as the South Australian Professional Learning in ICT program on teaching and learning and integrate inter-agency forum and council for • access to existing resource packages for methods to clarify and underpin media Screen Industries, Screen Arts and Screen teachers literate strategies and goals Education and create the management • cheap video cameras for all schools • examine resourcing needs, timelines and position of a Screen Catalyst. • easy ways for teachers to use part of strategies for longevity, sustainability • Enhance community-based media by their required professional development and the costing implications for training dramatically increasing support for the hours to learn about media literacy initiatives and updating equipment. Media Resource Centre and by creating including acknowledgement of editing and an Aboriginal-based Media Resource and production time for fi lm and multimedia An inter-agency Media Literacy Umbrella Training Centre for emerging and existing work Group needs to be created and sustained Highlights of Recommendations Indigenous practitioners. • enable skilled staff to work on media- To continue the dialogue which has begun in for The Screen Industries • Re-imagine the South Australian Film related innovations independent of the media literacy with this residency, and with the Corporation as ScreenSA and support and school timetable Curriculum Dialogue Group that developed • Support and fi nancially sustain the foster its renewal and growth to meet the • teacher release for industry placement with it, DECS, the universities, TAFE systems, Adelaide Film Festival, the Adelaide needs and technologies of 21st Century • staffi ng allowances for the workload along with other educational institutions, Film Festival Investment Fund and the screen culture across all fi lm, new media of media teachers, including class size Catholic and Independent Schools, private Australian International Documentary and next media platforms. capping colleges, etc., and representatives from relevant Conference. • staff sharing arrangements across schools government departments should establish • Establish the Don Dunstan Film Fund in clusters a top level ongoing, inter-agency Media to provide opportunities for established Reality Check: • professional renewal programs for existing Literacy Umbrella or Steering Group, headed and emerging fi lmmakers to hone The Rebirth Of Documentary media teachers by a champion or catalyst. A principle of this their skills on socially worthy fi lms and • compulsory media components in teacher dynamic systems group should be that it be media productions of general benefi t I have been working in the fi lm industry education courses light, responsive, powerful, non-bureaucratic, to South Australian society. This might for thirty years. Initially, I was involved with • time set aside to allow teachers to and risk taking - not risk averse. be achieved by expanding the scope educational fi lms, industrials, sponsored fi lms investigate, collaborate, refl ect and and providing additional funding to the for government departments, campaign fi lms contribute Representatives of the Group will also join existing Educational Content Fund, with for our then Prime Minister, and even a few • ensure that the pre-service training of Inter/Screen, the proposed Inter-agency Forum consideration given to broadening the commercials. A bit later, in the fi ction world, all teachers incorporates media and that and Council for all the screen industries, screen criteria beyond educational content to also I worked in various roles: on locations, as a specialist programs are offered with real culture and screen education (see Chapter 6, include socially responsible low budget production manager, a fi rst assistant director technology that is out there The Screen Industries Sphere). full-length documentaries, shorts, new and as an editor of feature-length fi lms. • ensure that Learning Band Coordinators media, fi ction and features. are trained and supported to use media in • Establish the Fifty Cent Fund as a voluntary But since the early 1980s, I jest that I have their everyday practice contribution from South Australia’s cinema taken the ‘documentary vow of poverty’. Not to • provide a process for schools that going public to foster the growth of our disparage the poor, but as a refl ection of the demonstrates media work as part of own South Australian images on our own commitment it takes for all fi lmmakers who Moving Forward with SACSA screens. work outside the box, outside of Hollywood, • undertake investigations and research in other genres of fi lmmaking. Over the last two decades, I have worked almost exclusively

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in the factual, non-fi ction and documentary were good for you, but you related to them as information system. Docs are closer to real lives Back in the UK, the BBC announces an form as a producer, director, writer and editor, painful educational experiences. Today, there’s lived by real people. individual webplayer so you can view your as well as editing and writing for international a veritable explosion of doc-channels, docfests customised myBBC on the net. CNN counters fi lm magazines, organising conferences and and docs at the bijou. New reality-infused Documentary is alive and well and living with its Pipeline. Britain’s C4 creates a new advising fi lm and new media festivals. platforms are popping up every day - from everywhere, enabled by the impact of digital channel where the public can upload their own video blogs to video podcasts. Exhibitors and technologies. A new generation of cyber- four minute fi lms. All over the world, people For more than a decade, I have also been a broadcasters are scrambling to pick up titles for docs, DVDocs and digi-docs are fi nding huge create and share visual content on their mobile practitioner and apostle for non-linear, web- theatrical, educational and web distribution. audiences on web-screens. The wireless world phones. Vblogs (video web logs) are replacing based and digital media, especially as is exploding with documentary. The digital mass journalism; video podcasts, time-shifting it intersects with non-fi ction. It always puzzles me that, within the book documentary is a site of renaissance, and of personal video recorders and shape-shifting publishing industry, the non-fi ction form has diversity for the future. We are now living in electronic program guides demonstrate that I bring all of this experience to my Thinker’s enjoyed total legitimacy, huge audiences, the ‘hear and now’ of a revolutionary wave, the the niche, micro-market is ascendant. analysis of South Australia’s screen culture, critical attention, and lots of shelf-space. digital revolution, where everyone, literally, can fused with a positivist philosophy which Sometimes it feels like the Diet and the Self- become a fi lmmaker. Bit-torrent video downloads supersede wishes to see it develop with benefi ts to the help sections of bookstores are the only things traditional distribution channels. They whole community. My mandate has been to that keep reading alive. And yet until recently, The very defi nitions of fi lm, television, transform a reluctant fi lm industry in much look outside the frame. But in the fi nal analysis, non-fi ction fi lms and audio-visual works have broadcasting and the public are being blurred. the same way that the music industry was regardless of what I may write or suggest, it is needed to fi ght to breathe and stay alive. The dominant Hollywood and televisual asked to reinvent itself because of peer-to- South Australia’s governments, agencies and theocracies, and the structures which support peer sharing through Napster, Limewire and media-makers who will have to put workable But lately there has been a noticeable shift them, are changing. In this paradigm shift, their MP3 clones. Through tsunamis, subway models into practice. in consumer consciousness and viewer the future is now. As a result, agencies, terror attacks and pandemics, citizen viewers preferences. I believe that audiences now governments, corporations and the public witness the world armed with camcorders, as Let me begin with documentary. feel that they can derive from documentaries need to respond today to meet the promise of individual produsers (producer/consumers). all the enlightened entertainment, stories, tomorrow. These trendencies are not speculations nor There has never been a brighter, more suspense, drama, humour, tragedy, and hypotheses: this is here. Now. Filmmakers and profi table time to be working in documentary. pleasure that they need, as they interact with More evidence: Ofcom, the British regulatory those who support them must respond, or be The great news is that we are experiencing a the screen, no matter what the size. Once these commission for communications industries, overwhelmed. reality renaissance. Let’s look at the evidence. were values we only experienced with fi ction issues a major report proclaiming that Public As I write, there are a dozen feature length fi lms. Service Broadcasters will transform into Public As a result, in this Screen Industries Sphere, I documentaries playing in regular cinemas Service Publishers, catering to individuals take the defi nition of fi lm and documentary in New York City. One doco about penguins The documentary art form, in all its hybrid not masses. The ’s in its widest, and newest, digital form. For me, has grossed about 100 million Australian incarnations, is reaching theatres as persuasive ambitious Smart Internet 2010 report explores living in the D-age, alongside an emergent dollars! Currently, there are half a dozen non- political essays, video verité character studies future possibilities for Australia in open source Generation D, the documentary has been fi ction fi lms playing in my city, Montreal. This and neo-propaganda (a)musings that assuage and social network technologies, eHealth, reincarnated as the Document - as a digital phenomenon has been replicated in Australia, the lies our mainstream media have been digital games, voice applications and mobiles. document which may, at times, embody and to a proportional extent, in Adelaide. telling us. The rebirth of documentary is It identifi es possible outcomes that are elements of fi ction, reality, animation, graphics, arriving at a time when mass audiences realise relevant to innovation strategies and sectoral cybertext languages, audio, TV and even games For too many years documentaries were like that documentaries provide what I call ‘a Real development. design. Films and media can all be seen as medicine for most people: you knew they News network’, an alternative international Content, for all platforms and delivery systems.

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In this new world, defi nitions dissolve, and enterprises, and artists, along with government Across the country, documentary workshops, apply to all forms: to documentary, fi ction, new hybrids emerge. New media forms are about agencies, broadcasters and funds now make training initiatives, festivals, conferences, media, games design and others. Industrial blend, about fusion, about trans-boundaries, up the Canadian documentary industry. They magazines, summer institutes, pitching and State incentives and programs, necessary transgressions and trans-genres. For the have contributed hundreds of millions of possibilities and incubators have all been to develop a dynamic South Australian screen average, fl exible person, they expand the dollars to the Canadian economy. In Canada, created. Documentary groups, associations, culture, can be applied across the playing language of acceptable cinema, and we go with we have our own documentary TV channel and and cooperatives of young media-makers, fi eld, while at the same time being careful to the fl ow of the new. Everything is document. many private and public broadcasters feature like Lucioles in Montreal, have sprung up. address real sectoral differences, defi ciencies In this conception, the internet itself can be enormous quantities, if not qualities, of reality- Given that good documentaries cost a and imbalances. For example, the values seen as the greatest, largest documentary in based material. On all federal and provincial lot less than average television situation of incubation and innovation are generally the world. As a universal audio-visual-textual levels, public agencies and para-public funds comedies and fi ction featyre fi lms, as most applicable, and the proactive and affi rmative library, infosystem and key portal to all things are using measures such as tax credits to reality programming television channels measures that are needed to increase higher real. develop proactive policies in consultation with have discovered, and given that factual fi lms percentages of South Australian-based the communities they serve. Everyone is taking historically provide better returns on the production are values which transcend genres. The prognosis and the promise non-fi ction seriously these days. investment dollar, Canadians have discovered If adopted, they will help build a new culture of But with all this factual good news in the that there can be both economic rationales and creativity. factual world, it is occasionally necessary to After several years of lobbying by our creative and socio-cultural reasons to give docs touch the ground. Despite the promise in the documentary organisation, all the agencies their fair shake. With the proper government and agency prognosis, the fact is that South Australia’s have started to work together in annual support, South Australia can better position current documentary production is very under- documentary summits, on areas of Not that all of these measures can be mirrored itself for the non-fi ction production of both represented on the national scene. It accounts common concern, such as streamlining and exactly in South Australia, but the Canadian compelling classic documentary and emerging for just two per cent of the country’s output, systematising funding requirements. The model gives an indication of the possibilities. docs for alternative screen platforms. whereas it should at least be seven or eight per main federal agency, Telefi lm Canada, and They can be studied, rejected, customised or cent to refl ect the weight of SA’s population. partners like the Canadian Television Fund, adapted. Creating a dynamic screen culture takes active, But that sad fact is not for lack of potential or The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and creative collaboration and relationship-building talent. the National Film Board of Canada, an arm’s In my comments for the Screen Industries between players and across genres, between length federal agency, have worked together to Sphere, I try to take a holistic approach. My the new and the established. I will suggest measures which might be create Feature Documentary Funds. The Federal ideas about digidocs, documents, screen, taken here to right this balance. But for now, Department of Heritage, which manages next media, and fi lm imply a fair and The South Australian Film Corporation has as an exemplary parallel, I will cite several fi lm, communications and broadcasting, is equitable balance across all the genres. As a strong awareness of the important role of advances made in support of documentary considering a large infl ux of money dedicated defi nitions blend, cheaply made web-only documentary making in the 21st Century. It in Canada over the last few years. Beginning to documentary. The National Film Board of viral doc(uments) or web-mations on the has conducted a number of programs aimed with a small group of fi lmmakers in Montreal Canada has created a world documentary fund internet are pulling as much cultural weight, specifi cally at the genre, with particular and Toronto, I helped co-found the Canadian in cooperation with domestic and international and audiences, as an overblown, star-laden emphasis on professional development Independent Film Caucus, (now called the broadcasters. The Canadian Broadcasting Hollywood fi asco. including regular assistance and feedback to Documentary Organization of Canada) which Corporation, where many documentaries have aspiring practitioners, da few documentary has now grown to more than 600 members migrated to its second news channel, has I take as a premise that all genres are incubators and documentary workshops like in four chapters across Canada, which is an created an innovative third, web-based, digital interrelated and co-dependent. Many of the the dococom experiment that I was involved indication of documentary’s success story. channel where, among other forms, digital general principles or specifi c suggestions in. Given that docs are hot, with more SAFC Hundreds more documentary entrepreneurs, documentaries can fi nd a home. that I make here for one genre or another can support, it shouldn’t take too much to

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encourage more South Australians to pursue a Scope Of The Screen feature fi lm makers, animators, new media I also read several recent Annual Reports of the career in documentary making. Industries Consultation artists, emerging screen makers, internet people, South Australian Film Corporation, and dozens software developers, gamesters, Aboriginal of other reports, web pages, an online forum Artists and entrepreneurs need to feel that Filmmaking is an international system, based media makers, venture capitalists and IT and dialogue about SA’s screen industries, they are being nurtured for the long term, on local production. I have been familiar with specialists, along with key agency leaders, and portable document fi les and online posts and not just supported for the early stages of the rich tradition of Australia’s fi lm culture government and institutional heads. I’ve also concerning the fi lm and digital industries a project’s life. Sometimes this can become since the mid-1970s when the fi rst wave of had several hundred individual, collective and in Australia and South Australia, including an endless circle of development hell, where great independent Australian feature fi lms online consultations via email, list-serve groups material about the new streamlined versions fi lms only ever get developed - but never made. burst upon the international scene. Since and forums. of Arts SA. I immersed myself in economic Filmmakers also need money for production. the mid-1980s, I have been directly and and industry studies from the Australian Film Emerging media makers also need to see a professionally familiar with Australia, as Other work in South Australia allowed me to Commission, Film Australia, the Australia picture of a possible world where they can see the Canadian co-producer of Peter Watkins’ set out strategic objectives for the 2005 and Council and the Film Finance Corporation, themselves fi tting in, where they don’t have The Journey. Since 1990, I have had direct 2007 Adelaide Film Festival and the 2005 and and for comparison, materials from British to leave South Australia to lead a creative life. experience working with SBS on pre-sale 2006 Australian International Documentary and Canadian screen agencies, and Australia’s South Australia can attract more docmakers to productions. I’ve also had fi ne experiences with Conference. With others, I helped catalyse Film Victoria, the New South Wales Film and produce in the State through a climate which Australian distributors. and facilitate an international presence of Television Offi ce and Screen West, the agency supports innovation regardless of form. international commissioning editors at the which does the same for Western Australia. As a cinematic citizen of the world, I have also AIDC; with the SAFC, I was able to meet round This can happen through innovative been familiar with the policies and personalities tables of South Australian practitioners, and With all of this, it has been my goal to get the dynamic policy design, through intra-agency involved in Australia’s fi lm industries, the helped introduce Canada’s Bell New Media big picture and to place my suggestions, ideas cooperation, by domestic and international co- Australian Film Institute (AFI), the Film Fund and Canadian new media and animation and recommendations into a comparative mix production, and broadcaster involvement. But a Finance Corporation (FFC), the Australian Film makers to their South Australian counterparts; with three decades of my own experiences and viable industry also needs to wean itself away Commission (AFC), the Australian Broadcasting and I worked with groups of community observations of best practice around the world. from dependency only on the broadcast model, Corporation (ABC), Screen Producers media fi lmmakers including those on a My thinking is about institutions, systems and which is an old model. New models centered Association of Australia (SPAA) and others. SAFC-sponsored dococom community media ideas, and is not directed at individuals. I hope on fi lmmakers, projects, new technologies, new experiment, which is a fi ne success. these words open up a conversation that South delivery platforms and social enterprise can I have visited Australia many times over the last Australia’s whole screen industry will initiate lead to more creative futures. decade. Being a Thinker in Residence allowed I’ve had briefi ngs by, and for, all levels of and complete soon, in its own way. me to return to South Australia and Adelaide government, in a wide range of portfolios. In the end, a fi lm, however one labels it for the fi fth time in the last six years. So, over or defi nes it, is the product of an active time, I have been able to gain knowledge of the I’ve read a thousand pages of commissioned Creative Industries in South Australia imagination. And that is what must be evolution of the screen industries here, and the studies, including an important precursor to encouraged in South Australia. agencies that serve them. this one, South Australia’s Film, Television and Many governments around the world have Audio-Visual Industry: A Development Strategy by increasingly accepted the argument that My Thinker’s spreadsheet of appointments Bruce Moir and Barry Burgan, December 1999. the cultural, creative and aesthetic fabric of took me to more than a hundred meetings This useful report analysed the industry and its any society is a key element of its economic with several hundred people involved with contribution to the SA economy. It focuses on performance. Richard Florida’s The Rise of the the screen industries, in circles large and the impact of convergence and the need to build Creative Class has been particularly infl uential small, private and public. Screen practitioners, the SA production base across fi lm, TV and the in this view and the South Australian rapidly growing digital content creation sector. government, through its Strategic Plan, has

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targeted Florida’s Top 10 Regions Creativity Success Stories Success stories include but are not limited to: A General Appraisal Index as a measuring tool for the State’s • Anifex • Fusion • Imagination Entertainment creativity. The Strategic Plan sets a target of SA is home to some of Australia’s most creative • Kojo Group • Ratbag Games • Rising Sun ‘Film’ is quickly becoming an expendable term, achieving a top three ranking within ten years. media-making communities. One of my favorite Pictures. These six companies alone employ a relic of the 20th Century. There are adaptive South Australian fi lms, Fritz Gets Rich, is a almost 320 full time equivalents and the fi ve sectors within the screen industries, but beautifully rendered animation. I’ve been also largest had an aggregate turnover of $40m outside of animation, games and new platform Observations: The Screen Industries blown away by a new soundtrack for Fritz Lang’s for 2003/04. They represent the type of digital media, other parts of SA’s industry could better restored classic Metropolis, as well as by the creative company that can potentially grow equip themselves to take South Australia down This is what I observe: There is unlimited surreal short fi lm Carcass, and by UsMob.com quickly and make a disproportionately large the proper paths to sustainability fi ve years creative talent here in SA, with as many stories a multiplatform Aboriginal-driven web project, contribution to State development. And they from now. to tell as there are South Australians. There are just to name a few of many possible examples. are joined by other digital creatives that are exciting sectors of the screen industries which There continues to be solid feature fi ction work emerging: • A-Rage • Brave Vision • Digital Economic sustainability is a problem for the marry innovation with progress; the digital coming from South Australian directors. Monkey • Kukan Studio • Logic Films • Monkey independent fi lm sector everywhere, and more creatives, the animation, games and new platform Physics • Nylon Films • People’s Republic of so in Australia because of the relatively small media sectors are fi ne examples of these. South Australian-related productions have Animation • Plexus Films. marketplace. Even though South Australia won Australian Film Institute and international spends more per capita on culture than any ABS statistics indicate that the creative awards, including Golden Globes, an Emmy As well, visionary South Australian companies mainland State, the annual arts and culture industries in South Australia employ and an Oscar. There is a wealth of talent like Internode, m.net, cine.net and others are budget is just about one percent of the total 15,761 people or 2.5 per cent of total State here. Accomplished work is emerging from growing innovation and creativity. Some are annual budget. employment, generating estimated wages entrepreneurial companies ... Smoking Gun, locally grown telcos, working in broadband, of some $640 million, a turnover of $2 billion Duo Art, Planet Earth, Re/Angle Pictures, wireless and infrastructure in service to the David Throsby and Virginia Hollister’s 2003 and contributing almost $1 billion towards Vertigo Productions, Archangel Australia, the industry. These new-style companies join survey, Don’t Give Up Your Day Job, concludes gross State product. The related ICT industries United Film Group, Katalyst Web Design, Closer traditional South Australian-based screen that the economic returns to artists in all employ many more thousands of people. It Productions ... among a hundred others. Work funding agencies and organisations to serve of Australia remain low, but are not a true is estimated that in South Australia’s motion principally shot in South Australia includes the industry. measure of their real contribution to society. picture, radio and television sector last year features like Human Touch, Rabbit Proof Fence, Half of Australia’s artists in 2000-01 earned less approximately 2200 people were employed The Tracker and Wolf Creek, and documentaries In addition to the existing talent, the South than $7,300 from their creative practice before with $380 million of turnover, $91.4 million in such as Opal Fever and We of Little Voice. The Australian education sector generates hundreds tax, and half earned less than $30,000 from wages and a $173.0 million contribution to the SAFC has been involved in supporting, in one of potential southern ‘stars’ every year, all sources. The two most signifi cant factors gross State product. way or another, many of these stories. potential fi lmmakers, graphic artists, editors, restricting artists in the pursuit of their creative camerapersons, web designers, composers, work remain the lack of work opportunities and Although Adelaide is not the biggest The fastest growing companies in the creative digi-doc makers, all hoping to emerge and the lack of return from their creative practice. production zone in Australia, in several industries are within the digital creative merge into the existing SA media industry meetings it was suggested that the relatively category. They have formed, or are forming, without having to go elsewhere - or nowhere. In these fi scal realities, there is no reason to ‘small pond’ of Adelaide and South Australia scalable and sustainable businesses that have Those are the people I am worried about. believe that screen artists are any different can be seen as an advantage. The close developed international markets and employ from other artists. proximity of practitioners, companies and ideas signifi cant numbers of South Australians. The to each other makes lateral thinking and cross- digital creative sector in particular has a great genre/cross-media hybridisation possible. potential to contribute to the economic and cultural success of South Australia.

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According to the AFC’s production statistics, in media, design, IT and communications schools kind of thinking is also now being embraced in The Context: the fastest growing genre in the screen world every year need support. other Australian and international jurisdictions, History and Screen Culture - documentary production - South Australia such as in Western Australia and Nova Scotia can only claim two per cent of the national Some expressed a desire for a ‘whole of life’ in Eastern Canada. South Australia is in a good share (and the national share of documentary vision for career-building in the SA fi lm and position to meet the challenge. Otherwise, vis à vis other genres is not very signifi cant to digital media industry. Others pointed to a lack the 21st Century - the Century of Media - is in begin with). I was told that 70 per cent of those of professional development and mentoring, danger of leaving SA behind. who have had an opportunity to make a fi rst and a lack of industry transparency which fi lm in SA do not get the opportunity to make manifests itself as lack of communication and If South Australia is growing into a creative a second. I was also informed that no young cross-industry dialogue. There is also a widely society, based more on the knowledge South Australian fi lmmaker was offi cially expressed need for advocacy, in the form of a industries than older resource-based ones; if, as supported or developed to make a fi rst-time strategic and lobbying body. All agreed that Richard Florida and others claim, a signifi cant South Australian fi lm culture has a long, long feature fi lm in South Australia in almost a the industry would benefi t by developing a percentage of Australia’s workforce is now history. In fact, some of the fi rst fi lms ever decade. Several other fi rst timers have been ‘unifi ed voice’ and stronger advocacy to, and by, rapidly joining the growing creative class; if made in Australia were made in SA. Born in supported, but they have been from outside government. 15,000 people in South Australia are already South Australia, J.P. McGowan went on to the State. involved in the creative industries; if there are become one of Hollywood’s most prolifi c silent While the public applauds its local screen hundreds of talented media-making students era fi lmmakers, with 600 titles to his credit. In my consultations, others remarked that successes, there is limited opportunity for emerging into the SA job force every year Flash forward to documentary adventurer sometimes there is a lack of collective self- it to do so, since only a small percentage of wanting to create a future in South Australia; Alby Mangels and then fl ash again to the confi dence in South Australia, which results South Australian fi lms actually make it in then I believe South Australia needs to meet future with the current hothouse studio, in a tendency to serve the needs of inter-State the competitive theatrical marketplace. The those facts with proactivist zeal. the extremely brilliant People’s Republic of producers and broadcasters over local needs tendency to allocate its scarce resources to Animation. and objectives. higher budget productions provides limited There is much to applaud within the existing potential for growing a sustainable industry or SAFC, and a culture of change is beginning I believe that the myth and character of the And then there are the gaps in what would be culture of success, risk and innovation. to be recognised as necessary on individual South Australian people can be seen to be a practitioner’s career path: and entrepreneurial levels, but nevertheless, shaped by three things: its utopian history as • between educational qualifi cation and We see these same kinds of critiques in Canada, the screen industries in South Australia need a Paradise of Dissent, its relationship to the promise of employment and elsewhere. Nevertheless, they need to be a dynamic re-balancing and re-imagineering tranquil sea and its mythological relationship • between promise and resources taken seriously and addressed. In this context, which embraces the notion of ‘screen’ rather to the harsh, mysterious, outback. This is where • between experience and the expectation of the SAFC, as the State’s existing fi lm funding than just ‘fi lm’. its stories are born. further nurturing body, can take more of a leadership role in • between established credits and perceived responding to these changing times. A beautifully produced locations guide from rights of entitlement the South Australian Film Corporation points • and between the lines in the oldest circular I believe a new screen culture has to be out that many of the greatest Australian fi lms story in the book, the chicken and egg story: imagined and fostered in South Australia. ever made were made in South Australia’s No experience, no track record. No track A versatile new set of funding instruments, outback. The classic of Australian cinema, The record, no job. No job, no experience. and a new generation of public funding Back of Beyond, was shot here in 1954, and initiatives have to be embraced and developed starred the other Tom Kruse, the Outback Those who are emerging into the career stream here, favoring screen innovation and the Postman. from South Australia’s fi lm, documentary, new development of human creative capital. This

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The South Australian outback is where These days, the average Hollywood fi lm budget about both by proactive agencies and the Under outstanding leadership and Australian fi lms have been born. Breaker for the average Hollywood fi lm is up to $US100 creative spirit, youthful vision and innovation management, the AFF is already wonderfully Morant, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Priscilla, Queen million when you factor in the marketing costs. of its creators, have to be brought forward into envisioned, powerfully articulated and branded. of the Desert, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, It’s hard to think that South Australia’s fi lm the 21st Century. Rabbit Proof Fence, Gallipoli, Sunday Too Far culture can compete with that. But it can play As someone who has been to over 200 fi lm Away, The Tracker. I was able to visit some of its own game, on its own terms, I believe, if it The audience wants to see its own stories festivals, from Cannes to Berlin to Sundance, I these locations during my residency. foments innovation. refl ected upon the screen, but sadly, only can say the AFF already shouts out way beyond two or three percent of Australia’s theatrical its size and years. The AFF in its class, is second South Australia’s own golden age of fi lm We are living in a digital age where the screens are given over to Australian fi lms each to none. I know that it takes the average was fomented by visionary Premier Don hardware and software tools needed for fi lm year. Compared to the latest Hollywood fi lm, festival seven years to get itself organised, a Dunstan’s creation of the South Australian and media creation, for production, post- or heavily subsidised European co-productions, dozen years to fi nd its way in the world, and Film Corporation more than thirty years ago. production, distribution and exhibition are with tens of millions of dollars in an average twenty years to overcome an inevitable mid-life Many of the fi lms that I’ve named were from developing at an incredible rate. They are production and marketing budget, South crisis. The AFF is already recognised, and given that age. Although many were shot in SA, very getting portable. They are getting cheaper. They Australia will fi nd it impossible to compete, as its spirit of renewable energies, and continuing few were actually made by South Australian are getting easier to use. Now the skills and it can bring very little money to the production government support, it should never know fi lmmakers. tools are available to everyone. This can be an table, let alone marketing. crisis. empowering or threatening thing, depending I will argue here, as a fi lm critic, that what on your point of view. In light of this, I believe that the SA industry really drove that golden age of Australian needs to promote creative screen development The Adelaide Film Festival cinema were not only visionary government Only a few years ago, the now industry and incubation to encourage innovation and Investment Fund policies and tax breaks. Yes, they were crucial. standard high defi nition camera was creativity in all the screen arts. There should But more importantly there was a certain unaffordable to me. Today, I can walk around be an integrated whole-of-industry approach The Adelaide Film Festival’s Investment Fund spirit, a capturing of the Zeitgeist by a group the streets of Adelaide with a high-defi nition including government, screen arts and (AFFIF) with its philosophy of placing ideas of talented Australian fi lmmakers, producers, prosumer handicam camera which cost me industries, digital communities, the education and creators fi rst should be the model of all writers, storytellers and their teams who $A 5,000. systems and the interests of the SA community institutions and agencies. It invests in culturally collectively made up that fi rst wave of the as a whole. resonant and economically sound projects Australian Film Movement. They were young, I wear my studio around my neck as a portable across a wide variety of genres. The last round innovative, independent and creative. USB memory stick. The cell phone is both a invested in an innovative original feature, camera, and a means of distribution. A PDA The Adelaide Film Festival shorts, a documentary, an animated fi lm and I believe that every successful fi lm, screen is my television set. The web is my projection a cross-media TV/digital platform work both or media movement in history, in countries room. Today my physical post-production With only two editions behind it, the Adelaide from inside and outside the State. The AFF’s which have been as restricted in population studio in Montreal is virtually rendered Film Festival (AFF) is already an innovative, investments are predicated upon curatorial or funding resources as South Australia’s, can obsolete because I can put all my editing, world class event with a strong international principles which forefront the idea and the be characterised by a philosophy of risk, and sound editing, graphics and mixing software reputation. In 2005, the AFF engaged record role of the fi lmmaker and prioritise a fi rst-in, a belief in the creator rather than the dealer. onto my Powerbook. public support, but also support from the startup philosophy. Movements are marked by artists supported by industry at large, through a series of programs industry and not vice versa. I believe that the conditions which created responsible to the South Australian screen I would wholeheartedly endorse the AFF and a richly textured South Australian cinema community. the AFF Investment Fund. Times have changed since Dunstan’s 1970s. movement in the past, which was brought

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Recommendation The AFF is so good that it should think about cement Adelaide as permanent home to Film Fund (as a kind of Social Justice Media That the AFF’s continued existence be becoming an annual affair. AIDC alongside the Adelaide Film Festival. The Fund) with funding restored to the levels that guaranteed, and that its budgets be sustained, goal would be to make the AIDC a fl exible Don Dunstan envisaged. augmented and supported over the long term. organisation, permanently based in SA, with a The State should continue to sustain and The Australian International national outlook and international outreach, Many of the purposes of this proposed Don expand the AFF Investment Fund to allow it Documentary Conference (Aidc) but with SA imperatives. Dunstan Film Fund are those of the Educational to continue to invest in a wide range of screen Content Fund, which is a Government projects with the same curatorial breadth The AIDC is the second organisation which has As well, the State could establish, with communication resource, a developmental which has guided it thus far. captured the spirit of these times. It is the AFF’s the AIDC, a Human Rights or Indigenous strategy and an income stream for South sister conference. Documentary Fund, Award or Scholarship. The Australian screen practitioners. I recommend I would also recommend that the AFF expand State could also collaborate with AIDC and that additional funding be provided to the its existing Don Dunstan lifetime achievement With energized visions of its directorate, the other SA bodies to stimulate documentary existing Fund, with consideration given award for outstanding contribution to the 2005 edition of the AIDC was, by all measures, production here. to broadening the criteria for the Fund national fi lm industry and establish a slate of the most successful in the Conference’s almost beyond educational content to include also awards - the AFF Don Dunstan Awards for two decades of history. I would suggest that the AIDC’s continued socially responsible low budget full-length Excellence. Cash prizes should be given for the existence be guaranteed, and that its budgets documentaries, shorts, new media, fi ction and best South Australian, national and international A record number of the television world’s be sustained, augmented and supported over features. works, documentaries, and dramas, digiworks, most important documentary commissioning the long term. and animations as well as the best 1st or 2nd editors attended the AIDC’s Documart Co- A properly supported Don Dunstan Film feature at the festival. A press prize, facilitated fi nancing Day; the AIDC hosted the only Fund will support and produce documentary, by a strategic alliance between the Festival meetings in the southern hemisphere of the The Don Dunstan Film Fund digital, web, fi ction, shorts, animation products and the International Film Critics Organisation, International Democracy Project; there were that will promote social progress and the FIPRESCI, could also be established. Pitch and Punts, a series of day long panels Recommendation goals of the State’s long term Strategic Plan around digital technologies, an international That the Don Dunstan Film Fund be created. and objectives on sustainability, ecology, The festival should continue its workshop co-production summit, training sessions for integration, social justice etc. and developmental arm. Perhaps these AFF pitchers; countless networking and screening The existing Educational Content Fund, initiatives can extend during other parts of opportunities for SA doco-makers; budgeting currently administered under the South Most importantly, the Don Dunstan Film Fund the year, through collaboration with ongoing sessions co-presented with AFTRS; a keynote Australian Film Corporation, was formerly the would be an elegant, effi cient way to take up laboratories like Crossover or in partnership from Richard Florida. A record number of Government Film Fund started by Premier the ever increasing pool of new fi lmmakers, with other screen agencies. delegates from around the world, and large Don Dunstan in the 1970s. With a budget of giving both emerging and experienced SA international delegations attended, including $800,000, its aim was to help fi nance fi lms media makers opportunities to hone their By way of advice, the Festival could look at those led by the Bell New Media Fund in in the interest of the State. The existing skills on socially worthy fi lms and media tightening up its dates, and respond to public Canada. This will have future positive economic Educational Content Fund, whose budget has productions. Many of SA’s most important demands by adding repeat screenings. The AFF outcomes co-partnering Canadians with South been diminished by three-quarters, now funds senior fi lmmakers today developed because of could fi nd ways of providing clear pathways Australian practitioners. works which have educative values, and are not the original Government Film Fund. into its program, so that the public at large, necessarily driven by market forces. from all points of their screen awareness, can Recommendation enjoy the Festival with ease. Although it is a national organisation, I would I believe that, under the SAFC’s administration, recommend that the State explore ways to the existing Educational Content Fund should be upgraded and renamed the Don Dunstan

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The Fifty Cent Fund of these recommendations, but especially I recommend that, in place of the present communication technologies, animation through the Fifty Cent Fund proposal. There Industry Council, the industry should actively and the games industries. The educational Recommendation is an ‘educational effect’ to the fund that can build a broad new consultative body, which I sectors would be represented by DECS, That the Fifty Cent Fund be established. have a simple audience development outcome. call Inter/Screen. TAFE, the tertiary media education In effect, the box offi ce becomes an open sector and community media sectors. It This would be sustained as a voluntary window for audience-industry dialogue, as a would include related and appropriate contribution from South Australia’s cinema- discussion starter about many aspects of South How Inter/Screen and the government agencies, the SAFC and the going public to foster the growth of our own Australian screen culture. Screen Catalyst Could Work lead arts ministry, Arts SA. South Australian images on our own screens. • Inter/Screen would be a public forum, Inter/Screen would be the South Australian meeting monthly or quarterly, and open to As is the case in France and many other Creating Inter/Screen forum and council for screen culture. It would all those who wish to attend from across jurisdictions, the State should ask SA fi lmgoers include membership across all the screen all the sectors of the screen communities. for a minimal, freewill 50 cent surcharge on Recommendation industries, screen arts and screen education. • Inter/Screen would also create and house a foreign and US cinema theatrical entries, That the creation of Inter/Screen be fostered Its purpose would be to encourage dialogue smaller, multi-partner Consultative Council, in order to aid SA media production. Based as the South Australian forum and council and strategically enhance a whole-of-industry, with representatives elected or selected on South Australia’s history of fi lm-going for screen culture and that a management holistic approach. from across all the screen sectors, with attendance, this could, by my accounting, add position of Screen Catalyst be created. advisory, strategic and research roles and perhaps a million Australian dollars to the As a hot-wired organisation, Inter/Screen capacities. SA production pie. Half could be used for SA- Over the last couple of years, many members would be viable, vigorous and dynamic. Its • Inter/Screen would be managed by an based features, and half across other genres to of South Australia’s screen community have Forum and Council would be funded with pan- extremely small, effective directorate which promote innovation in South Australian screen come together in ad hoc real or virtual ways industrial and government fi nancial support. would need to be created and properly art. to discuss how to foster the local industry. fi nancially sustained. Many saw the need to create a Screen Council Inter/Screen would have several roles. • Inter/Screen would create a management Preliminary discussions with some of South and the 2004 Forum Steering Committee position of Screen Catalyst as a project Australia’s leading home-grown exhibitors recommended the establishment of a 12- • Inter/Screen would help build dynamic offi cer, champion and executive director. have indicated initial interest and support. As member interim Industry Council with relationships with the total industry at all The Screen Catalyst would facilitate a symbolic initiative, it would be welcomed by members representing the broader fi lm levels. It would facilitate and articulate the strategic dialogue and an overview of the public. South Australia would be seen as community. common interests of all screen institutions, the Statewide screen sector, identify leading the nation with this initiative. Making individuals, companies and associations opportunities and gaps within the the fund voluntary would avoid collision with That original Council is rather inactive, except working within the big ‘I’ screen industry industries, and work with all key bodies. the potential requirements of the US-Australia for an occasional consultation. Granted that driven by more corporate or market • The Screen Catalyst would help to develop Free Trade agreements, even if the State itself is production people are very busy trying to imperatives and the little ‘i’ industry driven the State’s screen profi le and unique brand excluded from those provisions. scratch out a daily living and cannot participate by independents, individual screen artists through action. Their role would be to to such collective volunteer initatives all the and cultural imperatives, media education, make it inclusive, open and accountable. South Australia has one of the ‘softest’ art time, or every time, but nevertheless, during my screen arts, screen culture, and community The Screen Catalyst would also facilitate, house markets in the country - not just for residency, from across all corners of the screen media practice. coordinate and chair the public Inter/ Australian fi lm but for all art house fi lm. I hope industry and media education communities, I • Inter/Screen would have membership Screen Forum. that a holistic approach to critical engagement heard an expressed need to create a responsive, from all sectors - across all the fi lm, TV, • Inter/Screen, with consultation as its with the screen runs generally through all consultative, whole-of-industry body. documentary, next media, information and core activity, would facilitate dialogue

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and solutions, create online and real-life readily as they now shop for the latest through such instruments as revolving loan Our Paradise of Dissent networking, conduct research and provide pinot noir from the Adelaide Hills. funds, and a suite of support programs and strategic advice to the State, the SAFC and • Inter/Screen could help develop a South production investment. In jurisdictions all over the world, in an arts Arts SA. Australian Screen Marketing Initiative. With industry as diverse as the screen industry, • Inter/Screen could facilitate professional public and private partnership, it could act The SAFC’s Screen Industry Programs there are always other views which may development by maintaining networking as a sales agent and distribution collective, Department manages development and differ from, or add nuance to, the policies databases and would maintain an open-to- promoting SA screen generally. It could investment funding to help support the outlined by national and State fi lm agencies, all internet discussion forum. offer expertise, pool common resources screen industries in South Australia. The organizations and other media funds. From • Inter/Screen could commission relevant and enable fi lmmakers, producers and their Marketing and Location Services Department producers, fi lmworkers and makers, exhibitors and necessary screen research and gather fi lm and other screen products to reach actively promotes SA as a viable base for fi lm and the public, there are often either positivist together other reports and research, for appropriate markets, in various territories, production and post-production. The SAFC’s suggestions or contrarian opinions which example: it could look at and report on and to visit professional development Studio Services oversees the production and emerge about how industry and government best practice nationally and internationally conferences and festivals. post production facilities of the SAFC, including might best serve screen culture. Some of these or map and track career pathways as a • Inter/Screen could perhaps work from a sound stages, production offi ces, and sound views are critical, some affi rmative. Some snapshot of the State of screen arts in purpose-built Offi ce for the Screen Arts in a mix, foley and ADR dubbing facilities. are original, some tried and true. Some are Australia and South Australia. proposed Screen Hub where the Forum and different, some dissenting. Some are minority • Inter/Screen could commission, for Council could be hosted. The South Australian Film Corporation has views. Some have broad-based support. But example, a study which would suggest been rebounding after some diffi cult years in my view, all players and stake holders how the SA’s screen industries can model and is now back on its feet. The SAFC has universally wish to be consensual and to themselves after the vision and roll-out The South Australian made signifi cant contributions to many of the make contributions to what can be healthy of the wine industry in regard to creating Film Corporation success stories cited in this report, either by community and democratic debate. a unifi ed presence and developing direct investment or by supporting or investing international marketing strategies. The The South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC), in SA organisations. This includes investment There is, in my opinion, a signifi cant perception South Australian success story, the wine the oldest such agency in Australia, is a in the projects supported by the Adelaide Film within the SA screen community that intra- industry, has been sectorally strategic, statutory body established under Premier Don Festival Investment Fund and contributions industry communication needs to be addressed effi cient, collaborative and incredibly Dunstan with the 1972 South Australian Film to the AIDC (Australian International to facilitate that debate. imaginative. Certainly it has a century Corporation Act. It reports to the Minister for Documentary Conference). old tradition of producing a high quality the Arts through Arts SA. The SAFC has a Board Over the last year there have been concerted product, but recent history has seen it of Directors, appointed by the Governor in As the SAFC was a partner in this Thinker’s efforts made at the SAFC to be part of the work proactively and collectively to make Executive Council on the recommendation of Residency, I have had very rewarding dialogue. Helen Leake, the CEO told me that an essentially niche boutique product, Cabinet and the Minister for the Arts. experiences working in consultation with ‘the door is always open at the SAFC.’ It may be developed by a small, independent cottage the organization, especially through an just as easy as that, and any alternative voices industry, into one of the most successful Since 1972, the SAFC has helped foster an opportunity to work with several SAFC project or alternative visions which have somehow felt brand marketing case studies in the world. industry within South Australia, with the offi cers on a trial dococom.com community excluded from the big picture in the past, could production of feature fi lms, television dramas, media project and on a visit to the APY Lands be included and made welcome. Ever the optimist, I would hope that one digital media and documentaries. In 1994, in the northern part of the State studying day the world may well want to take a the SAFC ceased its production role, and Aboriginal media initiatives. You will fi nd more In the Paradise of Dissent there will always be South Australian fi lm off the shelf, or became the South Australian government’s information about the SAFC and it’s current differing, yet equal views. For South Australia, download it on some pay4web site as lead development and investment agency for policies, strategies, programs and projects in a ramped-up Inter/Screen and Screen Council the strategic support of the screen industries the appendix. could facilitate the dialogue.

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Outside of a perceived need to broaden the by numbers or prizes but by how policies and Out of my four months of consulting, listening, more fundamental than a re-branding change circle of communication, there are other programs lead to the development of a critical reading, and observing ... oh, and yes, thinking, in public relations ‘optics’. The transformation practical realities, as I perceive them. From the mass of creative media makers who bring I will try to articulate and synthesize some would be signifi cant and complex, involving SAFC’s Annual Reports I surmise that there are collective economic and cultural benefi ts to the of the many ideas I’ve heard in the Zeitgeist both a reality shift and a perception shift, not limited resources available to properly fund State’s population over the long term. of SA’s screen culture today. I imagine that just superfi cial labeling. all of its intended programs. I observe that in the spirit of these fl uid times, and as the the fi nancial emphasis is generally balanced In this new era, I believe that the South SAFC’s additional information in the appendix With ScreenSA, the existing programs which in favour of one genre - fi ction features - over Australian Film Corporation can use its would suggest, that some of these ideas best meet the screen communities’ articulated and above all the others. For example, there is leadership to respond to the technological have been taken up or been initiated at the needs would be maintained, or improved, and relatively less support for documentary, which changes and challenges of this century and SAFC or are being actively considered. How many new policies and concrete programs is the fastest growing screen genre in the to the needs of all those working in South others may fi nally be addressed, rejected or would also evolve and fl ow from the re-vision. world. And little relative support for important Australia’s screen community. incorporated into the fabric of South Australia’s calling card fi lms, as only two short fi lms are screen culture will be up to all members The existing, well-known SAFC label could offi cially fi nanced. If the SAFC believes it needs to maintain of the industry, the screen community and well remain within ScreenSA, with important existing funding for the same number independent audio-visual artists, along with special functions assigned to it. For example, it Assuming my reading is accurate, and allowing of fi ction features every year, then its their government supporters, to determine. could foster the development of feature fi lms for yearly variations and change, I believe that total investment budget allocations and projects with essentially market-driven this genre mix could best be re-balanced, and and appropriations must be augmented As I collate, process and articulate a menu imperatives. It would take its famous historical re-mixed, with equal emphases placed equally substantially from government sources, so of observations from individuals and groups brand and trade on it. upon feature length fi lms, other fi ction, digital it can equally fund all the other genres, and across all of South Australia’s media making platforms including animation, documentary, industry innovation. communities, in the end, I can only mix and I do not believe that the changes or shorts, and professional and industry fi lter them through my own lens as a Thinker philosophical shifts to bring about ScreenSA development. I believe that the SAFC can, with all the in Residence and as a fi lmmaker with three would require any changes or amendments partners in South Australia’s screen decades of experience around the world. to the SAFC’s original act of incorporation, but I tend to have a positivist and optimistic communities, contribute to building a new others can argue about that. It’s the will that outlook. I believe that the SAFC can be better, wave in South Australian screen culture. A next So, what follows is a visualisation of what my counts. in fostering, creating, rebuilding and leading wave, a unique wave. A future wave. ideal agency would look like in a less-than-ideal a new South Australian screen culture - one world, a couple of years down the road. Re-imagining the SAFC as ScreenSA would that includes all aspects of the fi lm, digital, A new South Australian Screen Movement. be about balanced slates, innovation and documentary, shorts, fi ction, animation and Over the next year or so, and with intense incubation. It would be about South Australian games industry. One that could put cultural, consultation with all interested parties the screen development, fi rst and foremost. creative imperatives fi rst. One that supports ScreenSA South Australian Film Corporation could ScreenSA would demonstrate responsibility to all fi lm and media artists within a new culture transform itself and emerge reborn as South all its client communities and to its ultimate of public funding for screen innovation and Recommendation Australia’s new peak screen agency, ScreenSA. fi nancier, the tax-paying South Australian incubation. Re-imagine the South Australian Film public. ScreenSA would openly address the Corporation as ScreenSA and support and ScreenSA would be seen as a framework, complex issues facing all screen agencies today, I believe that one measures the success and foster its renewal and growth to meet the an accessible storefront, an umbrella about how to protect local culture in the face positive outcomes of an entity like a State’s needs and technologies of 21st Century screen superstructure carrying forward new policies of global markets. screen culture not by ‘product’, or ‘turnover’ nor culture across all fi lm, new media and next for the existing SAFC. This change would be media platforms.

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The major mission of ScreenSA would be ScreenSA would take an incubator approach not only because of successful Hobbits, but • project development, some of which to fund, emphasize and encourage creative stressing innovation and creativity, through through a long-term philosophy in screen would be tied to projects in incubator labs; development in all the screen arts (including labs, hothouses, and modular incubators for culture development. investing in laboratories and incubators. theatrical fi lm, television, documentary, emerging fi lmmakers and fi rst-timers. This kind There would be at least three labs a year, digital media, next media, experimental, and of risk may well be less risky than putting all of In Australia, ScreenWest in Western Australia, one for features and documentaries, one community-based media). one’s funding eggs into one basket. the Australian Film Commission and for interactive projects, one for animation. FilmVictoria provide models to be studied, Supervised by ScreenSA, the production of The main emphasis of ScreenSA would be on ScreenSA would emphasise the emerging emulated or rejected. these labs could be outsourced. long-term human and cultural development. screen artist equally with the experienced • career development programs including ScreenSA would not be focused on serving the practitioner. training and attachments; short training capital intensive needs of the big ‘I’ Industry Visualisations and Suggestions for courses would be done by such third party but would be about building a mission vision ScreenSA would work with the education and Policies And Directions For SAFC/ organisations as AFTRS, the Australian which serves the little ‘i’ industry by fostering the other screen sectors to create pathways ScreenSA Writers Guild, the Media Resource Centre human creativity and talent. for new graduates, to offer programs that can for entry level courses, etc. bridge the gaps and help build careers, and the The new re-vision for SAFC/ScreenSA would • producer-support programs including ScreenSA would think laterally, and innovatively, gaps facing experienced media makers who evolve from the combination of existing marketing, international travel grants and to create a boutique industry, and targeted may already have developed a track record but policies and programs which were seen as annual Australian delegations sent to key niche markets for its productions, based on who fi nd building a sustainable career, a fi lm positive in consultations with the community, market events original screen and fi lm media that fi t both the life, or a market-savvy business, a problem. along with newly developed policies and • industry-wide development including marketplace’s needs and cultural imperatives. innovative programs for building a new marketing, visibility at industry events, and Not fi lms and new media as product, but as ScreenSA could develop entrepreneurial and SA screen culture. Below are a number of ScreenSA-funded production launches. new works of screen art, stimulating new ways professional skills and give the market its just examples, suggestions and practical ideas of seeing. A boutique industry fostering a emphasis. It would help create a critical mass fashioned as speculative conjecture for a future Study other models brand which will make everyone in the screen and a new Screen Movement. SAFC/ScreenSA agency. ScreenSA would undergo a comprehensive world take notice of South Australia as a most review of the relevant funding structures innovative space for indie-media. The kind of adaptations which I am suggesting ScreenSA’s mission elsewhere, particularly with regard to are now being articulated, embraced and ScreenSA would develop a clear, serious administration and streamlined process. Below ScreenSA would provide a vision for those practised in other Australian and international vision or mission Statement, and long-term are some examples. sub-sectors which are lagging behind, such as jurisdictions. They should be examined and strategic plan, which would give priority to SA’s documentary community, so that they can their best features adopted for the SA context. the development of local SA creators getting • Canada, the Film Development Corporation be brought up to speed, re-purposed and re- SA stories onto the screen. Innovation and in Nova Scotia and the Bell Fund. invigorated. For example, the Nova Scotia Film Development incubation would be the guiding principles. • Film Victoria, which has a mission stating, Corporation, in a Canadian province with the among other things, that ‘Film Victoria ScreenSA would use leading edge production same population base as South Australia’s, In a brief sketch, ScreenSA’s mission would be embraces the values of creativity and and distribution technologies and serve the has accomplished much with little overhead to develop South Australian-based producers, innovation - promoting experimentation aspirational goals of the newly emerging, well- and administration. The British industry has directors and key creatives who would be and challenging established ways’. educated digital creatives. ScreenSA would been reborn, aided by proactive government supported with initiatives including: • Western Australia’s ScreenWest has been clarify and articulate lifelong pathways for fi lm intervention. The Danish industry is holistic. able to identify niche markets nationally and media makers. New Zealand’s industry is booming, and • production funding across all genres and internationally and it allows WA’s

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industry to grow to meet those needs. It is Silos with equal funding Adventure capital: feature fi lms ScreenSA would acknowledge that local also innovative in using proceeds from the Instead of allowing different genres to While ScreenSA’s priority would be as an producers, writers and directors are the anchors lottery system to develop screen culture in compete against each other in development incubator and developer, market-driven of any successful local industry and it would Western Australia. or production funding rounds, ScreenSA would objectives especially in fi ction features, and invest more in local directors and producers establish discrete genre divisions or silos, so other forms, could be met by retaining the and less in in-bound and ‘foreign’ or ‘external’ WA’s share of documentaries broadcast that, for example, animation could not be SAFC brand name label for a special unit. productions that employ a small number of nationally (1996-2003) was eight per cent. considered in the same funding round as local crew. South Australia’s was two per cent. All serious features. This division of ScreenSA, would not act as a documentary fi lmmakers in Perth are very producer, but as an investor or enabler. It could If ScreenSA did invest in an out-of-State well known to national funders like the Film One would consider a structure which has be a funder of low-budget, innovative feature production, it would only be as an offi cial inter- Finance Corporation, Film Australia, Australian four or fi ve dedicated divisions, equally and fi lm development and scripts, but also work State co-production. A ‘Co-production Fund’ Film Commission, ABC, SBS, to the commercial equitably fi nanced and budgeted, one each for: to increase its small capital base by offering would be open to SA co-producers willing to networks and to many broadcasters in Europe, drama (low budget feature and shorts), digital small production guarantees to risky, low- shoot or post-produce in SA. All projects would Asia and Canada. This is because WA’s producers (including cross-platform, next media, and budget, market-driven features and projects need to meet marketplace requirements and make it their business to meet the right people computer-generated animation), documentary with cost recoverability as a goal. Such genres prove to be of economic benefi t to South and have been supported in this desire. genres and development (both professional as children’s, horror, experimental fi ction or ‘art’ Australia. and industrial). fi lms would all be possible. ScreenSA, by prioritising the development of an Projects with the Adelaide Film Festival SA screen culture, would support innovation by With the focus always on SA people fi rst, Given the skyrocketing budgets of even the Investment Fund would be given preference. privileging risk-taking without the necessities ScreenSA would set annual targets for a most modest feature fi lm, SAFC, as the market The AFF Investment Fund already works with of pre-sales. ScreenSA would run initiatives specifi c number of locally directed and driven section of ScreenSA, would act with inter-State and international agencies and that are not dependent on broadcasters, or produced features, a specifi c number of locally boldness and managed risk. It would make funding bodies. The AFFIF invests in in-bound distributor interest. directed and produced documentaries and available appropriate and innovative fi scal productions, so ScreenSA would not, in and of specifi c numbers of short documentaries, tools, offered to the independent industry as itself, need to do many such fi lms, as ScreenSA ScreenSA would explore the Film Finance animations and fi ction shorts and digital production guarantees, grants and loans, script could partner with the AFF Investment Fund’s Corporation’s model which, in assessment interactive projects. development hothouses, investment incentives projects, allowing ScreenSA to focus on processes, balances ideas against commercial and venture capital initiatives. developing SA’s local industry and local talent. activity. ScreenSA could follow the lead of There would be regular calls for submissions Film Victoria, ScreenWest, the NSW FTO and and projects. Each of the programs would A South Australia fi rst and foremost policy Simultaneously, in recognition of the the FFC’s Innovation Fund for non-market have at least two rounds a year, tied to the The mission of ScreenSA would aim to earn substantial impact that any federal tax breaks attached programs, by selecting projects for production cycles in the industry. There would major credits for South Australia’s key creatives, could make to attract inter-State production development without necessarily requiring be articulate, visionary strategies for funding writers, directors and producers. ScreenSA to SA, ScreenSA would ensure that quality broadcaster endorsement. initiatives/grants programs, and the amounts would not work like a national fi lm funding working and production conditions are met available to each initiative would be made agency. ScreenSA would promote a South and maintained for SA media workers on any ScreenSA would maximise support for public. There would be limits to discretionary Australia fi rst and foremost policy. Faith would external production shot in SA. ScreenSA would emerging and established South Australian spending available to each silo, with only a be placed on South Australian practitioners and ensure that, for those projects, a meaningful documentary makers to attract national small number of funds being open all the time less emphasis on non-State broadcasters or proportion of SA fi lm investment would be investment and national/international cross- for quick response. off-shore producers. spent on development and production of South media broadcast opportunities. Australian key creatives, that SA fi lmworkers

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would not be exploited, and that project ScreenSA would release its draft funding Visualising Screen SA’s Budget what money is coming into and fl owing out developers would clearly agree to articulate guidelines every year, followed by a face to of ScreenSA. Everyone would then have a clear this in terms of Key Performance Indicators for face discussion with the whole community A minimum of fi ve per cent of ScreenSA’s picture of revenues and expenditures through the State. through the proposed Inter/Screen Forum. This budget would be dedicated to fund Indigenous funding approvals, administration costs, the forum would be followed by the release of fi nal projects across the genres and programs. maintenance of services/facilities, etc. Transparency guidelines that are published. This can be a Transparency, accountability, and governance simple, regular, well-planned process. ScreenSA would spend 80 per cent of its funds ScreenSA would fully fund many kinds of would be priorities for ScreenSA, so that lines of on projects with a South Australian director projects, but many of its investments would communication to the production community ScreenSA would establish an up-front, or producer attached, without necessarily also stimulate funding from other sources, and the public are always open. There would be qualitative assessment process for funding having the requirement of prior broadcaster or such as the AFC or AFFIF or FFC. continuing consultation between practitioners and investment. Decisions would be governed distributor commitment. and funding agencies in developing guidelines by a fair, peer jury assessment of applications. ScreenSA would not stop investing in feature and initiatives through the envisioned Inter/ The Canada Council for the Arts and many ScreenSA would spend all of its allocated fi lms, but would ensure that track record Screen Forum and Council. other large agencies now work this way. budget money each year, in each of its assigned performance indicators, including benefi ts ScreenSA would work with local practitioners silos, with a goal not to have any discretionary to employing South Australian key creatives, ScreenSA would ensure that relations between to develop a funding criteria scorecard as a funds, or unspent monies, near the end of the would be made part of the judging criteria. agencies and producers would be regulated guide to evaluate all applications (i.e. factors fi scal year. by a code of practice similar to the BBC’s. The could include market interest, new talent, BBC’s Code of Practice ensures that relations employment opportunities for SA, bringing an ScreenSA would standardise its administration between the BBC and independent producers SA creative into spotlight, giving an SA writer/ costs in all areas, with a cap for each division Visualising Incubation 10 12 are conducted on a fair and transparent director/producer a screen credit, etc). This (of or per cent or the standard allowable and Career Development basis. The Code recognises that the BBC has scoring guide would streamline the funding government rate), to ensure that more a role as the nation’s principal public service process. money ends up on actual production with the Incubation broadcaster to help stimulate and support the community of practitioners. In designing labs and incubators it would be development of the independent production ScreenSA would ensure that the process crucial for ScreenSA to articulate a framework sector. It is a good model. This would be set for of selecting different peer assessment ScreenSA would declare the amount of and guidelines for the type of projects and the South Australian context, to smooth the committees and juries is open and transparent funding they have for each program silo or creative people it wanted to develop, and to dialogue among fi lm agencies, their clients and by initiating an annual application and sector. All funds would have deadlines. This is articulate the big picture aim of these labs. communities of practice. selection process for jurors. a proven model the world over which ensures ScreenSA’s labs would focus on getting SA transparency. ScreenSA would advertise directors and writers their fi rst major credits. ScreenSA could explore the Canadian Industry All ScreenSA board members would have how much money is available in each round. Summit model which established clearer an understanding of the local as well as the Industry practitioners would easily understand ScreenSA would research models so that it communication between funding agencies. national and international scene. ScreenSA that the funds are not discretionary. The could develop labs that would grow to be There are also initiatives by Film Australia would ensure that time be set aside for separate funds would be clearly set out on the recognised at an international level. following Terms of Trade discussions with the the board to meet and engage with the agency website so that people understand how Documentary Council (SADC). These set out community of local makers. the funding works and what they can access. Great story ideas in a State which prides itself protocols, with particular reference to editorial as being a State of Ideas would be fostered issues and creative rights that codify best ScreenSA would standardise the reporting by ScreenSA generating, supporting and practice in the production process. methodologies so that all could simply see facilitating several specifi c labs in documentary,

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drama, animation and cross-platform story- Screen SA would create or partner with such Many of the best young award-winning ScreenSA’s incubator philosophy could prioritise telling. These labs would be for SA teams only documentary incubators at the Berlin Talent directors around Australia have come out of cross-platform projects, following the Canadian but would be led by national and international Campus, the Discovery Campus, Sundance aggressive, intense initiatives being run by model, with meaningful partnerships with TV mentors so that SA makers could create or the IDFAcademy and Binger Institute in State funding bodies. One way to bring new broadcasters and their new media arms. links with the international market. Some Amsterdam. SA director/producer teams to the fore would labs could be linked to the AIDC, the AFF and be to focus on local creatives in the same way. One only has to look at the prolifi c outcomes other agencies. The labs could be tied into ScreenSA would create incubators for SA based These new people never simply rise up on their from South Australia’s Crossover Lab in 2003 Key Performance Indicators with targets writing/directing teams. own, without support. to see how brainstorm opportunities can grow established for production in South Australia. into realised projects. The Crossover Lab spent ScreenSA could establish a trial program which, ScreenSA would aim to invest in one or two time shaking everyone out of the normal An example: Film Australia and NSW’s Film like a fellowship, funds $50,000 for two years incubated features per year from a new SA comfort zone of a ‘conference’ style experience, and Television Offi ce have had a pilot industry for writers to create scripts which then must be director and would put strategies in place and got people to think in new ways. It was Hothouse Scheme for Documentary and fi lmed in SA. to get these directors prepared. The best a huge success and produced SA convergent Factual Producers which fulfi ls Film Australia’s way might be to invest in intensive labs like producers within a year. strategic objective to be the creative hub of If a major goal and mission of ScreenSA is to Victoria’s Spark and NSW’s Aurora Labs both a healthy documentary sector. The Hothouse develop South Australian directors, producers of which are based on the model of France’s Crossover, or a similar lab, should be a biannual supports the development of a creative, highly and writers, with a target of producing two or Equinoxe laboratory. Berlin’s Talent Campus event, with an adequate budget, established skilled documentary industry in Australia three major projects per year for the next fi ve and the Sundance Institute also run labs of this as an ongoing initiative in partnership with through collaborative working relationships, years with South Australians in key creative type, linked to their famous fi lm festivals. others, perhaps alongside the AFF or the AIDC, funding initiatives and the provision of services roles, then workshop labs have a perfect part to taking advantage of shared resources, guests, and facilities. It supports entrepreneurial play in that vision. Aurora, for writers, producers and directors, expertise and schedules, thus adding to a independent documentary producers wishing consists of a week long residential lab featuring critical mass of activity. to establish a viable business structure and ScreenSA could establish a drama laboratory one-on-one sessions with four professional nurtures the expansion of the skills-based or incubator for four SA feature teams which international and Australian advisors working I will caution that while the examples cited documentary. would then have, as an outcome each year, collaboratively on refi ning the vision and above in other States have been successful, the a guaranteed fully-fi nanced, extremely low- drive for projects. No actual writing occurs at environment and context are very different ScreenSA would accelerate the career paths budget feature production with a budget up the lab. Then, each team is given $35,000 to from State to State, and it is not always of local fi lm, video and new media makers to $500,000. The writer, producer and director work on the next draft of their script. A fi nal possible to make direct comparisons. For by putting them through labs in other must be resident in SA for the grant process. workshop includes feedback, a read-through example, anecdotal evidence from some in jurisdictions with international mentors. ScreenSA would bring in national script editors and more meetings with mentors in fi nance other States is that South Australia also has It would make those projects and makers and international mentors, in much the way and distribution. facilities and initiatives that have been envied, relevant in the international marketplace by that the Indievision initiative has done. if not emulated. assisting their travel regularly to markets, conferences and festivals.

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6 The Screen Industries Sphere Susan Greenfi eld | Getting to the Future First

Career development support and that’s about it. There is funding Visualising Documentary ScreenSA would raise its share and contribution In the idealised fl ow-chart image of a typical available for only two offi cial short fi lms per and Digital Opportunities to the national percentage of documentary career path in SA’s screen industries, the year, with more than 30 practitioners applying production to fairer, equitable levels. development of a fortunate South Australian for them. Documentary director into a renowned media-maker is While there are skill and project development ScreenSA would help bring non-fi ction supposed to go something like this: ScreenSA would help foster more mentor opportunities, at present there is limited partners to the table - local and national programs on the local and national level, production and post-production funding broadcasters, Australian and international secondary school media studies and more genuine opportunities for paid available for the talent working in the non- funders. A dedicated documentary budget at Í attachments, placements, formation and fi ction form in SA. ScreenSA would provide ScreenSA would help stimulate partnership university screen studies internship. proactive support through assistance in and investment with international funds, Í development and production, and the setting such as the Sundance Documentary Fund or using the (over-stretched) resources at the ScreenSA would also facilitate more up of incubator labs. the Jan Vrijman Fund, and with international Media Resource Centre to make no-budget opportunities for directors and producers broadcasters. ScreenSA would oversee project projects to dedicate time as mentors in the media Some documentaries by local SA makers development funding, linked to a ScreenSA Í education system as outlined in Chapter 7, The would be fully funded by ScreenSA, in some documentary lab. some access to creative development funds Education Sphere. So-called cadet programs cases without the necessity of an attached at the fi lm agency which funds a short fi lm in other States can give early-to-mid-career broadcaster. New SA documentary teams Digital or, if you are a documentarian, accessing the producers an opportunity to acquire a diverse would be developed who can use their work as ScreenSA would work to fully develop Educational Content Fund (Don Dunstan Film range of skills by working closely with one or a calling card to broadcasters in Australia and multi-platform, cross-media, trans-genre Fund) which funds a documentary two other high calibre local producers. around the world. digital projects that are truly interactive and Í integrated - driven by content and not simply fi nally getting agencies and or broadcasters to ScreenSA would get representatives from SA’s documentarians would be sent regularly to as re-purposed marketing for existing works or invest in your fi rst feature fi lm, your fi rst major out-of-State fi lm organisations, broadcasters, Hot Docs, IDFA, and Sunnyside of the Doc in La feature fi lms. ScreenSA would work to bring as documentary or signifi cant digital work as a distributors, top-fl ight producers, directors Rochelle, to immerse them in the international much status to cross-media producers as those South Australian director. and writers to come to Adelaide regularly to documentary scene so they can make the most working in other aspects of the industry. engage in short-term workshops, to ensure of it in South Australia. And so that they can But this scenario is not happening often the production community gets face-to-face take advantage of SA’s hosting of the AIDC ScreenSA would ensure that its digital media enough. The fi rst couple of stages may work communication with decision makers and are documentary conference. funds were for new digital media projects and well or a lucky few, but then most practitioners exposed directly to examples of best practice. would include interactivity as a pre-requisite. get stuck in the wheel. At least 20-25 per cent of ScreenSA’s major No more than the standard 10-12 per cent of ScreenSA would help foster a nimble, development and production investment funds the digital media funds would be spent on A normal career path needs a continuous re- collaborative, innovative industry. One would be quarantined for documentary each administration. ignition of opportunity. Local producers and that would be trusting and open, marked year. This would cover documentary across directors rarely have a chance to fail in SA by intelligent dialogue and networking all genres and hybrid defi nitions, including ScreenSA would also fund special digital because they don’t get enough chances to be opportunities. feature-length, TV and digital docs. initiatives with local SA partners, such as in production. And media makers, more than Internode, the AFFIF, the Fringe, local ABC TV, etc. most, learn through their failures as much as their triumphs. As it stands now, fi lmmakers get a chance to make one short fi lm with State

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The perfect partner for these kinds of digital those organisations in Chapter 7, An Aboriginal Media Centre could be housed or the VCA in Melbourne. There are talented initiatives are the new media arms of the TV The Community Media Sphere. at a proposed Screen Hub, co-located near new SA producers and directors who are stations. They give digital work a platform for the MRC, perhaps with small satellites in Port living away from SA who could be motivated delivery and they invest in-kind services. My Adelaide, and in the remote northern areas of to return to produce their fi lms in SA with SA Space and Us Mob.com are fi ne examples of Aboriginal media the State. crews, if most of SA’s production funding was this. ScreenSA would prioritise, encourage and fund quarantined for SA only purposes. Aboriginal screen media organisations, training See Chapter 7, The Community Media Sphere Like the AFC, ScreenSA would run most of its and production. for other comments. A notable example of the screen industry digital initiatives without an a priori need for and screen educational sectors working well distributors or broadcasters to be attached A minimum of fi ve per cent of ScreenSA together is the Games and Interactive Media to a project. This would include initiatives in budget would be dedicated to fund Indigenous Screen education Simulation Centre of Excellence (GAIMSCOE) interactive screen culture and on-line projects. projects across the genres and programs. PY With more than 60,000 people in the State’s proposal which assists in developing more Media, a long-standing leading-edge Aboriginal universities, and tens of thousands in other relevant training models. GAIMSCOE aims to training and remote broadcast initiative, post-secondary educational situations, establish a virtual centre of excellence and part Screen Culture for ScreenSA would have increased support. The Umeewarra ScreenSA would foster better partnerships of its charter is to encourage the education Aboriginal Broadcast, Radio and Media Centre between ScreenSA and the institutions that sector to increase its responsiveness to ScreenSA would actively foster relationships in Port Augusta would be supported with State deliver screen education to the State’s younger industry requirements. and broker connections right across all screen funding to augment what little federal support citizens. Early career development would be sectors. it receives. fostered and funded in a meaningful way. Infrastructure for ScreenSA ScreenSA would recognise the importance After consulting all SA Aboriginal practitioners, SA’s university and other tertiary institutions of all aspects of SA’s screen culture. It would Indigenous organisations, training are delivering hundreds of screen and media ScreenSA would be an effi cient, lean funding recognise and value the Media Resource Centre, organisations, relevant State government students into the job-force every year. Through body, with fewer but more experienced staff community-based media resources, Indigenous departments, inter-State and federal Inter/Screen, ScreenSA could help advise adding greater value to their interaction with media organisations, and the university and organisations, ScreenSA would help foster and produce industry relevant curriculum makers, and more informed application of other educational screen sectors - and work an Aboriginal owned, run and controlled and competencies. Many of the screen more fl exible funding guidelines. It will have in partnership with them all. It would do Aboriginal Media Resource and Training Centre. entrepreneurs and producers I consulted, incubation, innovation and inclusiveness at its this through its everyday work and contact Those who would need to be consulted include, especially in the digital and animation sectors, core. with the screen community and, formally, among others: PY Media, John Macumba commented on the need to produce well- through the proposed Inter/Screen Council Productions, Umeewarra Aboriginal Media, rounded, adaptable students who are able to More of ScreenSA’s annual budget would be and Forum. Beyond supporting hundreds of its the Aboriginal Centres in Maree and other work in a team, and who are multi-taskers, and put into development and production than into young and innovative member media makers, regions, Yaitya Makkitura, the screen advocacy not just skilled only in one particular, or limited administration and physical infrastructure. In organisations like the MRC also act as the organisation, TAFE SA’s Aboriginal Education, aspect of a discipline or software. other words the money goes on the screen - industry feeder to the next stages or levels, DAARE, DFEEST and Employment and Skills so we build people not buildings. and as a training ground. A newly envisioned Formation’s Aboriginal Employment Programs ScreenSA would offer repatriation incentives Aboriginal Screen Media Resource and Training which provide a variety of employment and and post-education scholarships to those These days there is the temptation in many Centre would also be fully supported by skills development opportunities to the South Australians who complete screen jurisdictions around the world to enter into ScreenSA in this re-envisioned Digitopia. There Aboriginal community. training at recognised national and ruthless international competition with each are other specifi c recommendations made for international institutes like AFTRS in other to entice ‘Hollywood’ and big ticket

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productions to set down production roots in With those general thoughts in mind, over the ScreenSA would most likely adapt the existing Such a hub in downtown Adelaide might, one particular country or another. For example, next few years, the ScreenSA agency would levels of staff and part-time contract workers for example, occupy the city-run business there has been competition between the think about decentralising, or after close study, to fi t the new economy. There would still be incubator at the Greater Union Cinemas Babelsberg Studios in Berlin, and other similar be prepared to lose, sell off, or close its existing essential staff needs: a CEO, a comptroller, complex near Arts SA, or the vacated former giant infrastructures in Vancouver, Sydney physical plant. The offi ce and studios at the a legal affairs person, perhaps four project facilities of Arts TAFE near Adelaide’s Central and New Zealand to attract the next big present Hendon site contain small sound stage offi cers, a manager, a marketing and Market, or other empty buildings in the city thing, in the mistaken belief that this alone studios and sound mixing facilities which communications director and a few assistants, centre or adjacent neighbourhood. will stimulate local production and career will need upgrading soon. ScreenSA would etc., depending on its reconfi guration. Other development. A few years ago it was my city, choose to let them go, rent them at cost, or positions could be contracted temporarily, or Arts SA Montreal, where the US-Canadian dollar donate them and subsidise their free use by supplied from other government departments, ScreenSA would clarify its role and defi ne its differential, and well-trained service crews in the educational, community and independent as needed. relationship with its parent agency, Arts SA, secondary positions could entice the George screen communities. ScreenSA would separate which provides a vast majority of the funding Clooneys and the Spielbergs. The trouble the mixing theatre and sound stages budget Screen hub for agency programs. with with kind of thinking is that ‘Hollywood’ from the budget for its development and Moving ScreenSA ‘s administration offi ces into goes where its cheapest to go. Now, they investment programs and fold any savings into the city or near-city would be part of creating Arts SA is in the process of an exciting and have migrated elsewhere. This year it may be production. an organic physical space or hub within which dynamic re-organisation which bodes well Romania, The Czech Republic or the Ukraine. to house many related agencies, organisations for the future of all culture in South Australia. Next year it may be Beijing. I can’t tell you With consultation, the existing locations and companies working in screen. Arts SA is creating an imaginative, rational exactly how many of the 20 or more giant fi lm service work, not buildings but services, and economically viable vision for change. Its studio building that were built in the boom that are undertaken to attract inter-State This would resemble the Film House in new structure recognises the differing needs years in my city have been left as empty shells, productions to shoot in South Australia could Copenhagen which houses the Danish Film of three sets of organisations and individuals but I do know that our local fi lm people are be handed over to the Department of Tourism Institute, the Danish Cinematheque, the which drive culture: the art makers, the suffering because that boom has bust. In the or the Economic Development Board. Or these European Documentary Network, DOX, Danish collectors and the presenters. past, fi lm location agencies, industrial and services could remain as a very small arm of Distribution, the CPH:Dox festival, screening economic development departments and ScreenSA. rooms and a cafe. A large building or a number Arts SA’s newly envisioned Strategy, Policy and public fi lm funds all have rushed to outdo each of co-located buildings could house such a Initiatives Branch will strengthen their capacity other, as incentives were drawn from the public ScreenSA’s administration offi ces would move screen hub in Adelaide. The hub could include for research and analysis. It will provide a policy purse, and promises were made to build giant to smaller offi ces in the centre of Adelaide as SAFC/ScreenSA as the lead funding agency, link between the ‘presenting’ organisations, studios and a supporting infrastructure under part of an envisioned dynamic screen Hub. A the Media Resource Centre, representative which include the SAFC, the the illusion that the trickle down fi nancial strategic mapping of the screen industries in agencies and practitioner associations, offi ces Centre Trust, Country Arts SA, the SA Youth fallout would be a boom for everyone. This South Australia identifi es specifi c areas where for a proposed Aboriginal media resource and Arts Board, the Adelaide Festival Corporation rarely happens, or is at best ephermeral. Such most screen businesses and companies are training centre, screening facilities and offi ce and the . The Strategy, Policy grand infrastructure schemes may be fi ne for located. Those neighbourhoods are also on, spaces for other production companies. and Initiatives Branch will also oversee commercial risk capital to venture into, but or near the high speed broadband, wireless, funding to initiatives, such as the live music they do so at their own peril, and they can SAbrenet and cine.net backbones. ScreenSA strategy, a creative industries strategy and also take fl ight over borders. This is part of the should be there. intergovernmental relations. reason why I argue for long-term planning to support the real, local infrastructure, which is the creative class, the artists, the people.

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Such a culture change is promising, in that product into one of the most successful small For example, existing locations services could Lottery monies it seems to refl ect some of the same social brand marketing case-studies in the world. SA’s be funded with support from the Department In Britain, making lottery monies available discourse that motivates many of my own Screen Sector, operating at a similar cottage of Tourism. Professional development could be for fi lm, media and screen organisations has recommendations for screen culture, screen industry level, can do the same. partially fi nanced from DFEEST. Other specifi c helped spur a fantastic growth of new British education, screen arts, screen industries and allocations from the Economic Development cinema and media over the last decade. screen communities. After commissioning a study of the wine Board could help fi nance more market- Similarly, in Western Australia, innovative industry’s marketing strategies, the proposed driven initiatives, domestic and international policies have allowed substantial proceeds How Arts SA’s and ScreenSA’s new initiatives Inter/Screen Council could, with others, marketing advice, support and funding. from gambling to resurrect their screen and structures will develop remains a question establish a SA Screen Industries Marketing industries. South Australia needs to follow suit. for the future. Several scenarios could be Offi ce. With public and private partnership, Some of the budgetary pressures on the imagined. this offi ce could act as a sales agent and existing agency could be alleviated by With more study, I propose a more equitable distribution collective and could offer measures already suggested, such as sharing of SA’s unclaimed lottery monies, It is my hope that an open dialogue with all expertise, pool common resources and enable contributions from the proposed Fifty Cent casino profi ts and/or pokies taxes, and a these questions and visualisations can nurture fi lmmakers, producers and their products to Fund and the more market-driven features unit fairer share in the distribution of profi ts and support the conditions which will be reach appropriate markets. of ScreenSA. from existing community development and necessary for building a re-imagined and viable sports envelopes. These would be applied to screen culture in South Australia. Financing ScreenSA would also consider and suggest the under-funded cultural sector generally, ScreenSA would continue to be funded bold new mechanisms for tax rebates and including the screen sector. This would Marketing support and report under the general direction of credit incentives on the State and federal levels, be done without infringing on any of the Across the board in SA, there is a desire to place the Minister for the Arts through the peak employment credits, and labour and capital entitlements due to the health services and more emphasis on marketing. South Australian department, Arts SA. To ensure viability, cost allowances for screen investments. hospital regimes, and it should not necessitate makers need a dramatic increase in available ScreenSA would establish a long-term plan any new additional legislative action or any funding to be able to attend international and be annually funded to the extent that its Ways could be found to augment funding by unnecessary re-writing of Acts. Subsection16C markets and festivals. ScreenSA would run targets and goals are met. allocating a small amount of money as venture (4) of the State Lotteries Act 1966 requires the State delegations to one documentary event capital on a cost recoverable basis, by seeking Commission to pay 50 per cent of the amount per year, one feature event, one animation ScreenSA would at least retain its existing international co-production monies. Perhaps derived from unclaimed prizes into a reserved event and one cross-platform event. Getting funding levels. In addition, to account for re- monies for the general operation could be Pool to the Recreation and Sport Fund and to fi lmmakers, producers and their productions balancing and re-confi guration, on a program augmented by the State placing a claim for an retain funds for certain designated purposes. into the appropriate professional development to program basis, its annual operating equitable part of the social benefi ts package conferences, markets and festivals is key to appropriation would similarly be increased. and proceeds which fl ow from the public I would argue that, yes, even in Australia, developing a new screen movement for SA. The annual working budget would also T3 sale and for benefi ts deriving from Culture is as important as Sport. Yet, culture be augmented with contributory funding, the future privatisation or conglomeration is becoming an endangered species. A proper ScreenSA would investigate how to set up a SA personnel exchanges, and services-in-kind of other public utilities and media sector sharing of such resources could add hundreds screen industries distribution and marketing from other appropriate government agencies corporations. of thousands of dollars a year to the funding of initiative, or a collective sales agency for SA’s and departments. It is reasonable to think that community screen culture. screen ‘products’. an increase in the ScreenSA’s budget would create more critical mass and a more stable The South Australian success story, the wine yet progressive screen industry. ScreenSA could industry, has made a small niche boutique multiply its effectiveness, exponentially.

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ScreenSA in Partnerships South Australia’s production communities can always be called upon to provide functional, South Australia must embrace the wider practical ideas which have no ‘best-before’ notion of ‘screen’ rather than ‘fi lm’ and link this expiry date and are relevant to tomorrow’s to the development of partnerships. circumstances today. These suggestions revolve around creativity, innovation, and a faith which For example, in partnership with the Adelaide enables a climate of risk taking across the offi ce of the Australian Broadcasting sector. Risk in terms of the form and content Corporation and others, the time is ripe for where ideas and creators dominate, but also ScreenSA to co-fi nance and facilitate the risk in terms of the State’s ability to support production of a very local weekly half hour and invest in the future of screen. Highlights of Recommendations of documentary television or an anthology for Community Media magazine series for the local ABC on local I acknowledge that there are signifi cant issues. Preliminary discussions that I have issues with implementing each and every one • Enhance community-based media by The Globalocal Village had with the ABC indicate that there may be of the recommendations and visualisations dramatically increasing support for an opportunity to make this happen, with articulated in this report. Some might involve the Media Resource Centre (MRC) and ‘Satyagraha (non-violent resistance) means imaginative support from ScreenSA. unnecessary overlaps, or be a fi nancial stretch. sustaining the many local community Truth-force. Truth is the soul or spirit.’ But all of them are offered in good faith as initiatives in Adelaide and other South M.K. Gandhi Imagine fi fty different digi-doc fi lms by stimulations and positivist projections, as a Australian regions. fi fty different SA fi lmmakers a year. With means of testing what is now, or what could be. • Create an Aboriginal media resource and This is what I observe: In the words of another micro-low budgets and license fees, young training centre for emerging and existing Canadian media theorist, Marshall McLuhan, emerging SA fi lmmakers could marshal the With the will to change, with consensus Indigenous practitioners. the world is a global village. Community is cost effectiveness of the new technologies, from the community, and with enlightened, • Increase support for existing Aboriginal everywhere. But, Adelaide proper is a very develop their skills and fi nd matching funds to far-reaching and substantial support from practitioners and organisations in the walled garden. Literally, psycho-socially, and guarantee both viability and local content for the State, the current SAFC (or future SAFC/ State. to a large extent, economically, there is a local broadcast. Some of this local docmedia ScreenSA) as the umbrella organisation can • Foster the creation of a physical screen separation between the city and its suburbs, could also make it into a national arena. perform many complex functions as the lead industries and community-media hub the urban space and the region. Outside of agency, and can deliver the visionary outcomes to create community media synergies. the lovely, civil, yet gated core city, lies a whole that everyone wants, and needs. Sustain support for urban and regional world apart in the hinterland, and in the Final Words: organisations using community and digital distant regions of South Australia. Sometimes Challenges for Change Only SA’s screen industry can determine that. media as part of the process. they are disadvantaged, or opportunities lie Only the screen communities themselves, with distant. The most important partnership for proactive State government support, can meet ScreenSA to establish would be the one it these challenges for change. Community media can help bridge the gap establishes with the community that it has the of exclusion and empower the powerless, responsibility to serve. From that community shedding light on both the dark and light comes a wealth of talent and ideas to build places. Community media can be agents for upon. personal and collective story-telling outside the professional circles.

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We may now be in the middle of a revolution Community Media : Observations, Because the MRC offers many essential ARTSsmart and not even know it. In some ways, these Best Practice And Outcomes programs which suffer because of lack of days, everyone is a fi lmmaker. Think back to the fi nancial resources, because there is a very large I’ve seen the brilliant nurturing of disaffected indelible TV images of the natural disaster of There is new and rich practice in South community to serve, because there are regional youth in Elizabeth on one of the ARTSsmart’s the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the fl ooding Australia: from pilot programs like the excellent initiatives to extend, because there are so projects. ARTSsmart is a community-based of New Orleans, the Subway bombings in Digital Journeys and Digital Masters initiatives many emerging media makers who need their initiative of the Department of Education and London or New York’s World Trade Centre produced through the Carclew Youth Arts fi rst shelter, because there is so much to do to Children’s Services and Arts SA to promote buildings collapsing before our very eyes. Centre, to the essential Media Resource Centre build a future, I recommend that the Media collaboration in arts education. The images you remember were all amateur to volunteers struggling to maintain Channel Resource Centre have its funding substantially images from amateur documentary cameras. 31 as a viable community TV, to innovative work increased from its inadequate levels now and The ARTSsmart Peachey Belt project is a multi- Those images catalysed the world into action. done by Aboriginal makers at PY media in the that it be sustained over the long-term. The media, music, dance, theatre, art and video This is the power of community media. Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) MRC deserves continued support. If warranted, project which developed creative and life skills Lands in the northern part of the State. to create synergies and enhance effi ciencies, while at the same time improving literacy and Camcorders are causing the greatest upheaval the MRC could be brought out from under any communication skills. since the industrial revolution. The fi rst unnecessary burdens of bureaucracy and be handicam was invented in 1985 by a team The Media Resource Centre funded as an autonomous organisation. This approach is effective for engaging and led by Shoji Nemoto, an engineer who is now empowering young people who have been president of SONY’s ‘personal imaging division’. I have seen innovation fl ow out of the Media exposed to a range of social diffi culties Resource Centre in Adelaide. The MRC is a Carclew and are candidates who do not ‘fi t’ the In the minds and hands of community artists focus for young, talented media artists, but traditional education system and are at and activists of various persuasions, across all it is dramatically under-funded and under- I’ve seen the Carclew Youth Arts Centre in risk of leaving school. The project included ideologies, these technologies are given their resourced. lights, camera, and action. All of their programs a series of workshops that explored issues Gandhian truth force. are, ounce for ounce, dollar for dollar, totally including: alcohol abuse, drug abuse, child The Media Resource Centre serves hundreds top-notch. Carclew’s Digital Media Division abuse, domestic violence, homelessness Today, the communication of rights and the of media-makers and practitioners as gives voice and vision to young people, from and unemployment. It includes a dozen right to communicate is a fundamental human members, and delivers an incredible number the ground up. It nourishes their talent very energetic young people mentored by a right at the heart of social struggle. The right of much-needed services to the media making with mentors, and empowers them with creative team made up of an artistic director, of communities to tell their own stories, is a community, from camera and equipment entrepreneurial skills. Carclew’s Digital Journeys arts workers and a social worker. There is part of the struggle for greater digital dialogue, rentals, to editing and post-production facilities and Digital Masters projects, made by young an on-going focus so that those involved pluralism, tolerance, social inclusion, and to workshops in practical issues. With the people in the suburban town of Elizabeth, are can continue to be linked, post-project, with participation. Mercury Cinema, it serves the community as a short, light-hearted documentaries concerned alternative learning programs, opportunities whole in its role as the city’s cinematheque. with aspects of public transportation. Some and assistance. of these fi lms are shown on a big screen at Supported by a grant from the Australian Film Adelaide’s main train station, and on a TV The Peachey Belt project involved a partnership Commission and another subsidy which fl ows monitor on the free tourist bus that serves the between DECS and Arts SA, along with the from Arts SA through the SAFC, the MRC is still ’s central business district. Carclew Youth Arts Centre, the Australian dismally under-funded. Festival for Young People, Playford City Council I recommend that Carclew’s funding continues and the SA Social Inclusion Unit, among others. to be sustained. ARTSsmart initiatives deserve support.

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Directing The Hero Within This State-wide project to bridge the digital The surrounding neighbourhoods are the sites Dococom - a word which fuses documentary gap has gained support and momentum, in of the largest urban re-development scheme to community. It is an experiment in trans- I saw how quickly the Directing the Hero part, because of its networking and feedback in Australia, which is having a tremendous platform digital documentary, evolving from Within Project can empower young fi lmmakers process. This requires the ongoing support dislocation effect on community members. Five the work as Thinker in Residence and my own when I visited the Loft Community Centre in of local adults, who are also trained, and the years into a fi fteen year urban ‘renewal’ job, general support for community media-making. Mt. Gambier. In the middle of a Housing Estate, purchase of basic media equipment, cameras, the percentage of public housing is destined Dococom analyses and promotes existing the Loft offers community workshops and computers and software. Currently, the Hero to diminish from 75% to close to 20%. In the best practice media examples, emerging from space for local marginalised and disengaged Project runs workshops with youth/arts/health mainstream media, the community has been creative environments in the fi lm and digital young people. groups in Coober Pedy, Mallee, Mt. Gambier, branded as a dangerous area, full of street domains, media education systems and ever- Port Pirie, Port Augusta and at Gepps Cross people and substance abusers. This is far from developing community media. Directing the Hero Within is a multi-purpose, Girl’s High School. Ongoing training workshops the truth. South Australian training initiative and guide are tailor-made to suit the needs of each With main fi nancial and administrative to fi lmmaking for young people. It has fi nancial regional group. To right this balance, the Flinders students have support from the SAFC, with additional in- assistance from the SAFC, Arts SA, Healthy made proactive fi lms about the community. kind services donated from others, Dococom Initiatives, Country Arts SA, Regional Arts Funds, tallstoreez productionz plans for the young There are fi lms about the Parks organisation, is a pilot project which commissioned four the Offi ce for Youth, Youth Empowerment participants to screen their work during Come about housing, about young local artists modestly budgeted, quick turnaround short Grant, the South Australian Youth Arts Board Out 2007 and to participate as peer educators. responding to their surrounding conditions, digidocs, micro-fi lms and new media projects and the Australian Festival for Young People. Their documentaries have already infl uenced about immigrant communities, about a which look at best community screen practice and changed the communities they live in. soon-to-be-lost commons. Digital fi lmmaking in the State. The SAFC funded the project Filmmakers from tallstoreez productionz projects are about oral histories from offi cer for the initial phases of the experiment devised the project to train young people The Directing the Hero Project deserves Aboriginal citizens, examinations of the Somali and Adelaide’s community-conscious Internode to make media. They are given tools to tell support. community living there, or powerful hip-hop server helps host the web-site. their own stories. The aim is to establish a socially-engaged music messages, like a short, sustainable youth media network which Hitting the Bricks. Dococom’s pilot micro-project created four connects regional centres across South The Parks Project: teams of fi lmmakers, consisting of new Australia with the fi lmmaking/training hub in Challenges for Change The Parks digital fi lmmaking and internet media/web/graphic digital artists, working Adelaide. They also hope a website will connect development must be supported. together with representatives from grass-roots the communities and showcase their work. During my residency, I initiated, with Flinders communities-in-need and mentor/advisors. The University, the production of a series of several four commissioned projects were with Young The fi nal products of the process include an short, socially useful fi lms and documentaries Dococom.com Mums, A Poverty Action Group, the No Strings interactive DVD used as a peer education tool, made by third year production students at Attached disabled theatre group, and Nunga TV, containing step-by-step training modules and Flinders. They gathered stories and worked There is a rich Community Media practice in an initiative by Aboriginal students. tutorials, and samples of work produced by closely with the community support team South Australia, but not everyone knows about the young participants. These DVDs are made at The Parks, northwest of the city. The Parks everyone else. It has been my role to help point Dococom.com, an extended internet version, available for individual use, for schools and by is a community health and services provider out best practice and catalyse connections. is a web-plex showcasing the four projects on youth arts and health workers. which reaches some of the most economically the web. It could grow to be a clearing house disadvantaged people in the State. But there During my stay in SA, along with the SAFC or nodal portal for networking all community are also stories of hope, and a desire to use which wished to support a ‘Wintonick media in South Australia together, so people documentary to aid in developing those. experiment’ we catalysed a project I call can fi nd out about each other.

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Dococom.com on the web could be an open Recommendations for Regional Media in fi lm narrative, storyboarding and writing and cultural production, including source contributory ‘wiki’ and community and Community Networks equipment use to convert their ideas into audio-visual media-making and digital media interchange. It is expected that powerful fi lms. This needs to be supported. production. the website can grow to be an important • Initiatives like Carclew Youth Arts, • Regional representatives also requested switchboard for information on all manner ARTSsmart and other community media that centralised institutions like the Media Sadly, the young Aboriginal media makers in of community media in South Australia and initiatives are essential and must be Resource Centre in Adelaide extend their schools, along with the State’s professional beyond, with individuals, groups, associations sustained. services into the regions. Participants Aboriginal practitioners and the few and projects able to upload, by themselves, • On-line initiatives like SA’s dococom.com - were keen to network and get access to Aboriginal organisations that exist to support trailers, texts, images, blogs, forum chat and the web portal which will provide catalytic professional equipment and information them are not very well served by State links explaining and highlighting their roles in synergy for best community practice, the about further multimedia education and agencies. While there is some support on the developing community media landscape. directing the Hero Within website, and a career pathways. the infrastructure level, there is little money The four pilot projects also stand alone as a proposed web-site for the Inter/Screen available for actual screen and digital media DVD and linear video. Forum are necessary and should be development and production. Perhaps due to supported. Aboriginal Media antiquated concepts of traditional roles and The dococom ‘experiment’ allows developing • With the recent disengagement of support responsibilities, what support exists appears to media makers to explore alternative production for both digital and community arts come more from federal than State agencies. processes, story-telling devices and distribution development by the Australia Council, models - without imposing the usual the State should continue to step up Some indigenous people have been dismayed parameters of broadcasters, strict funding with support for media projects within at the exploitation of Indigenous stories by agency requirements or constraints on form. Community Network SA and Country Arts people from outside their communities. In the SA. past, several Indigenous content fi lms have These micro-movies act both as incubators • Additionally, ways should be found to been funded and been made without proper and as dynamic documents in, and of enhance and support community media regard to protocols, proper levels of Indigenous themselves. Collectively, they act as moving development both in Adelaide with control, or profi t-sharing. Several fi lms have snapshots of existing practice or imagined Channel 31 but also in South Australia’s been made by non-Aboriginal fi lm makers futures in SA’s community media. They blend smaller centres and regions, from the needs (writers, directors and producers) who make the ideas of democratic media, documentary of location service dependent centres like fi lms about Aboriginal people and issues. This and community with the state of the arts Parachilla/Wilpena area in the Flinders can also be a legitimate process, if Aboriginal communication media. Ranges, to Williams Creek to Mt. Gambier. In the Community Media sphere, there must be communities choose legitimately to collaborate • Currently, the Directing the Hero within a future for young Aboriginal media makers. with non-Aboriginal makers and/or Aboriginal Dococom deserves any, and all support. Project has begun to achieve initial goals people outside their own community. of establishing youth media groups in the South Australia’s fi rst storytellers lived on this regions with community support. During land for thousands and thousands of years. workshops in the regions, participants They were pushed off their lands through identifi ed the need for continuing support more than a century of colonial expansion and including venues; an active youth/health development. In recent years, their descendants worker; funding for basic camera and have been undertaking a cultural revival which editing equipment, approximately $5,000 has included both language and ceremony per community; and ongoing training revival and lately, a whole range of art, music,

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Scope of The Consultation Indigenous Multimedia Artist to work at the In 1979-80, he played a pivotal role in co- Through his spirit, social concern and fi rst in Aboriginal Media school. Other sites at Warriappendi Aboriginal founding and establishing CAAMA, the Central hand knowledge, Macumba sensitised me to School, Salisbury High School, Ceduna and Australian Aboriginal Media Association. In the complex realities facing many of the First I’ve consulted with many groups and Port Lincoln are also developing ways forward 1989, John was commissioned by the ABC to Peoples living in South Australia. The journey organisers in South Australia’s First Nations in the use of fi lm and new media with set up Umeewarra Media, an Aboriginal radio also attracted me to the work that media community. I’ve met with many organisations Aboriginal students. Appropriate government station at Port Augusta in South Australia. organisations such as PY Media and other working as advocates for Aboriginal screen agencies such as DAARE, the Department of In 1995, he received a Special Lifetime dedicated teams are doing there and elsewhere initiatives, Aboriginal education and Aboriginal Further Education, Employment, Science and Achievement Award from the National in SA. The whole experience left me with hope, employment programs. During my residency, Technology, the SAFC and the Aboriginal Offi ce Indigenous Media Association. anger, empathy and a great desire to work to I consulted and visited Aboriginal media at Arts SA must also be brought into the circle. support Aboriginal media, in any way I can. centres and groups in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara John Macumba believes that a small remote Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, Umeewarra Media training centre where young Aboriginal media The APY Indigenous population suffers from in Port Augusta, others in Adelaide, Maree, near Macumba Media makers can be trained to record the traditional the well publicised and serious problems of Leigh Creek, the Coorong and in the Northern stories needs to be set up in the Oodnadatta many Indigenous communities. Illiteracy is very Territory. I’ve met with representatives of the John Macumba, who holds a Masters Degree region of South Australia, so that young people high and unemployment reaches 90% in some Kungajuta Irati Wanti women in Coober Pedy in Media and Communications from the don’t have to succumb to the lures of the city sectors. However, signifi cant improvements who use media to campaign for rights. University of Technology, Sydney, was the to receive proper training. are being made by having local communities Indigenous consultant for my Residency. manage their own affairs and make their own In any consideration of ‘making it right’ for Established in Adelaide in 1986, Macumba Macumba Media deserves support. media. Indigenous people have a pragmatic Aboriginal media practice in the State, those Media was the fi rst Indigenous production attitude and are not afraid to use any available, who need to be consulted include, among house to be established in South Australia useful technology as long as it serves a purpose many others: PY Media in the APY Lands, and is the only media production company Media in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara for them. John Macumba Productions, Umeerewa in in Australia owned and controlled by an Yankunytjatjara Lands Port Augusta, the Maree Aboriginal Centre, Aboriginal person with traditional knowledge. We traveled to meetings at Amata, Ernabella, and Yaitya Makkitura, the screen advocacy It services the communications needs of I took an incredibly moving trip to the APY Umuwa, Fregon and Mimili in the APY Lands. In organisation. private and public sector organisations through Lands in the northern-most reaches of the the schools, I witnessed heartening examples fi lm and video, web, radio and print production. State, with John Macumba and Melissa of teachers and students working together. Those to be consulted in education should Juhanson, project offi cer at the South Some schools were equipped with new include TAFE SA’s Aboriginal Education which Macumba is one of the most respected fi gures Australian Film Corporation. The SAFC is doing computers and software like Apple’s Garage provides vocational education and training working in Aboriginal media today. He is also an audit of media resources with a goal to band, which enables ‘ordinary’ people to record programs specifi cally to the Aboriginal an award-winning fi lm-maker now pioneering create a strategic support program. and mix their own music and songs. community, TAFE SA Centre for the Arts which new ways to meet the communication needs offers courses in video production, Employment of Indigenous peoples. Of Pitjantjatjara / The trip to the APY lands was a powerful, Our main focus in the Lands was PY Media, an and Skills Formation’s Aboriginal Employment Yankunytjatjara descent, John was born in important experience for me, on professional effi cient, dedicated organisation which is an Program and the relevant departments at northern South Australia and started his career and personal grounds. Although the conditions innovative, world class leader in the delivery of Adelaide’s universities. As well, Lefevre High as a Community Development Offi cer in the were extreme and harsh on most levels communications technologies and training in School has developed Indigenous fi lm and new Oodnadatta region. - meteorologically, geographically, socio- remote areas. media as a subject for Aboriginal students. economically and culturally - the whole trip Funding from Social Inclusion supports an was organised with professionalism and care.

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PY Media started as a spin-off of Ernabella Nunga TV multiple endings, developed with, and starring, The Aboriginal media centre would be run with 1980 Video and Television (EVTV) in the early s. Many students at Warriappendi Aboriginal some of the brightest young Aboriginal input from all the Aboriginal communities. 1987 In , members of the APY Lands decided School in western Adelaide have multiple and ‘non-actor’ actors around. It is directed by it was necessary to develop the services diverse needs, often lacking the emotional the very accomplished David Vadiveloo, and The centre would bring together, and forward, provided by EVTV in all communities across bonding that provides the basis for learning was broadcast on ABC and functions as a the existing best practice experiences from all the APY Lands. PY Media was incorporated as in a safe, happy and secure environment. To collaborative web-site. the State’s Aboriginal media groups. the regional body to assist communities to engage in learning, students need programs develop their own community media centres. with familiar contexts embedded in daily It is a prime example of the highest values of The Centre could perhaps co-locate with MRC 1990 In the mid- s PY Media moved to Umuwa experience. community involvement, and the very highest to share resources in a screen community hub. to set up a regional offi ce that enabled fair production values create a multi-platform Perhaps an Aboriginal media centre could also representation for all communities. They now Nunga TV is a half-hour amateur TV show project which is exemplary in its design, have affi liated offi ces in Port Adelaide or in any also have offi ces in Alice Springs. which is currently produced by Aboriginal teens innovation and educative values. other existing regions where Aboriginal media at Warriappendi. It screens every two weeks making is taking place. PY Media manages a number of on C31 community television. The program is a Us mob deserves support. communication and media projects including catch-all for content of interest to Indigenous Other recommendations on Aboriginal media 14 services to communities on the APY Lands teens. In the capable hands of mentor David All organisations serving the needs of and four NT communities; radio, video and Salomon, Nunga TV engages students at every Recommendations Aboriginal media-making are facing severe IT training, maintenance and upgrades; the stage of production: the art department, set for Aboriginal Media budgetary constraints in the delivery of iConnect telephone project; WaruTech UHF construction, camera and studio crew. essential services to Aboriginal people in broadcast maintenance; four TV and two Establish an Aboriginal media South Australia. They must be sustained and 31 radio services; PYComputers; Channel Nunga TV demonstrates the empowering resource and training centre supported. broadcasting on the Imparja satellite footprint; engagement that TV production brings to An essential recommendation is that a totally video conferencing installation, training student learning. Being on the screen, instead inclusive, well funded, autonomous Aboriginal- PY Media is doing much with so little support. and maintenance. PY Media is developing a of watching it, moves students from the role of controlled media production, resource and With its innovative satellite, IP Radio and strategic fi ve-year plan that will include future follower to leader. training centre be created in the urban milieu workshop training programs; with its policy income-generating business ideas. to serve the needs of the urban community, of developing appropriate use for appropriate Nunga TV deserves support. where most Aboriginal people are living. communications technologies, PY Media PY Media operates a UHF CB network which is demonstrating world-class leadership in has coverage for most of the APY Lands. Similar to the role that Tandanya, Ernabella communications technologies for remote This is highly valued and widely used by US Mob. Com Arts and the State’s other Aboriginal regional areas. It must be supported on the State level. the Indigenous communities. The Talk Back art centres perform for the visual arts, an service enables live band, council and political An important community-driven project Aboriginal media centre would serve the Umeewarra Media, the Aboriginal radio and meetings to be broadcast over standard radio comes from the Aboriginal community in production, resource, educational, training, media centre in Port Augusta, is woefully into the remote corners of the Lands, into Hidden Valley, NT. Originated and supported networking and media educational needs under-funded. This is a critical time in that homes, offi ces and vehicles. By using the CB by the local Tangentyere Council, Us Mob was of young, emerging and existing Indigenous city’s development, as confl ict risks arising network, citizens can listen and talk to each facilitated by SA producers, the Adelaide Film media makers and their support organisations. without the mediating effect of community other, critique and talk back, thus enhancing Festival Investment Fund and the Education media. It deserves support. their local democracy. Fund at the SAFC, among others. Us Mob is an interactive series of short fi lms with PY Media deserves signifi cant State support.

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7 8 Community Media Sphere SphereThe Infrastructure

Yaitya Makkitura Incorporated, as an Aboriginal A large re-possessed building or a number advocacy, production and training body in the of related co-located buildings forming the State, should secure State funding to develop Screen Hub could be renovated or established the talent of local Aboriginal fi lm makers and to house the administrative offi ces of SAFC/ to produce media about Aboriginal people and ScreenSA as the lead funding agency, the their South Australian stories. Media Resource Centre, representative agencies and practitioner associations, offi ces for the In the Oodnadatta region, Macumba Media proposed Aboriginal Media resource and could be funded to set up a remote pilot school training centre, and screening facilities and workshop to record the original, traditional offi ce space for other production companies. stories of the people of that vast region. Such a hub in the centre of Adelaide, or nearby Highlights of Recommendations This is necessary because it is not always Kent Town or Norwood, could, as a suggestion, for Infrastructure appropriate to remove from their familiar occupy the City Incubator at the Greater Union natural surroundings and Aboriginal lands, the complex near Arts SA, or the vacated former • Create a South Australian Digital young students who want to make media. It facilities of Arts TAFE near the Adelaide Market, Visual Archive. Observations is risky to force them to migrate south to an or any one or another of the many empty • Expand the availability of broadband, and urban centre to study and pursue their lives building complexes at, or near the city centre. extend the existing and planned super The screen industries, media education and with all the inherent consequences that they capacity broadband out from the State’s community media spheres are inter-related. will encounter with such a culturally shocking universities, research communities and They create synergies. They react to the urban lifestyle. government departments and into all of world at large. There are big issues at work, the State’s schools. as well as local outcomes. There are also real- • Support State, public agencies and private world circumstances which affect us all, the Creating a Community Media Hub partnerships in setting up a top-level globalisation of media culture, for instance. inter-agency Screen Council and Forum, or (See also Chapter 6, The Screen Industries Inter/Screen. (See Chapter 6, The Screen Under the Infrastructure Sphere, I make Sphere): After extensive study, consultation and Industries Sphere for more detail.) specifi c, contextual observations about some of consensus, I would recommend that the State • Examine the implications and potential of the factors which infl uence the other spheres. look at fostering, fi nancing and facilitating issues affecting South Australia’s cultural/ These observations focus on the interplay of the creation of a physical community-media screen future such as the privatisation of structural questions with the spheres. Screen Hub in central Adelaide. This hub would public telecommunications, freedom of be a nexus point which would rationalise, expression, the creative commons, open The Infrastructure Sphere is more an open energise and catalyse several community source software, urban policy and free trade. set of questions about social, cultural and screen and media industry organisations into economic contexts which determine how one one accessible, street-friendly location, without can enhance and build a State of knowledge in losing existing public facilities in partner South Australia, the Knowledge State. A State organizations, like cinemas. of Visual Culture.

They include comments on the roll-out of broadband into the regions, the wiring-up

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of schools to high speed internet access; Across the board, whenever media mergers or any stance which will enable and preserve But what use is all that capacity, if there is no developing a State-based digital visual archive privatisation moves are suggested, Canada’s Australian culture will no doubt come in content? to help SA preserve its collective memory. whole screen community expects a certain confl ict with the hard-nosed bargainers on the percentage of the proceeds and profi ts from US side of the free trade tables, but the right I believe that the existing, and planned, high the sales to benefi t the whole Canadian society, of South Australians to make their own fi lms capacities broadband, including so-called Privatisation of Public Resources including the screen culture. and their own media must take precedence. black fi ber info pipeline, Sabrenet, should be In Canada, federal and provincial tax credits extended out from the State’s universities, I’ll start with this question. Can socially useful together make up about 20 per cent of our research communities and government benefi ts fl ow to the State from the next rounds Free Trade or Fair Trade fi lm, television, documentary and new media departments and reach into and serve all of the of privatisation of the nationally owned public budgets, and other tax incentives are offered to State’s schools. telecommunications giant, Telstra? Another couple of questions: How can the ‘foreign’ productions. screen industries in South Australia defend With some strategic State government A signifi cant, equitable percentage of the sale themselves from the negative impacts of the The State should look at how it can advantage proactivity, the broadband revolution can serve price should be diverted to the creative cultural US-Australia Free Trade Agreement? How can SA producers in these realms. Indeed, it may be all of South Australians in a fl ash. industries in Australia, and on a pro rata basis, those effects be moderated or modifi ed? able to invent non-federal tax incentives and to South Australia. These proceeds can be schemes to enhance and protect SA producers An example of private sector proactivity is funneled into supporting a dynamic screen The experience in my country Canada was that, which will be outside the culturally damaging Internode, a South Australian company which culture here in South Australia. We do similar despite the so-called protections to culture terms of the Free Trade Agreement. builds regional networks for a living and has things in Canada. afforded by clauses in the NAFTA agreement, pioneered distant high speed access to even there has been a continual erosion of Canadian the most remote corners of South Australia. When the Bell Canada public monopoly was culture since the late 1980s. Broadband Infrastructure Internode has enabled super fast ADSL2+ right broken up, Canada’s diligent government now for its customers, way ahead of the larger regulatory agencies required that the new In Australia’s past, such measures as the 10BA We are living in an era where high speed monopolies. That’s the attitude that’s needed parent company create the Bell New Media and other such tax credits once drove the fi lm internet and wireless broadband should be across all the industries, sectors and spheres, Fund to fi nance public, digital new media industry and created a boom. Unfortunately, as ubiquitous, available and free as water. throughout the State. initiatives and organisations. With several through abuse, that bubble burst, and the Broadband and wireless will be the backbone million dollars a year of operating capital, the economic write-offs and tax deferment of all communications needs in the screen, Governments can have a role in making the Fund fi nances a range of multi-platform digital advantages saw tax benefi ts reduce from 150% community and educational spheres in the future happen now. The ACCC can take action and broadcast productions. to 100%. Investors now fi nd more lucrative future. against those who have an economic lock on advantage in more stable, less risky resource power, and have forgotten the public. Similarly, the monopolistic Canadian cable industries. In my consultations with the State’s broadband television providers are annually required, experts, and from my position as a practical On State and federal levels, brave governments through regulation, to place a certain amount Those tax credits and other such measures media maker, I would endorse the State’s should place more confi dence and investment per subscriber into a common fund, which, for fi lm, media and screen makers must be general goals and recommendations in the in local entrepreneurs and domestic media, and when matched by the Canadian Federal revisited and augmented and the State should fi eld. let them get on with the job of fi xing problems. government, creates the Canadian Television investigate how new local measures can be Governments could support regulatory fi xes, Fund. That CTF is the fi nancial backbone of the supported. One rebate scheme was recently I am assured by some, that many of the which cost only bravery and not money. But Canadian fi lm, documentary and television announced, but it only applies to projects with technological barriers are being overcome. bravery can be a rare commodity with so many industry. budgets of more than a million dollars. Taking trans-national media monopolies knocking

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at the door. Grant projects for broadband A State wide digital visual archive would build Imagine the school, educational, media literacy, Ara Irititja archive enhancement do exist, but unfortunately, upon the ground-breaking and visionary community media, and professional projects In South Australia, the Ara Irititja Archive governments do not always spend all the work of the State Library of South Australia’s which can be facilitated by such access. This Project is a world class, home-grown example money available, which happens too often in comprehensive SA Memory project and the is about history, but also about today and of how to do an archive right. It has collected a risk-averse culture. Aboriginal APY Land’s Ara Irititja Archives. These tomorrow. together all the images made in the APY projects can be seen as the core and key to such Lands and presented them in an open, elegant, The State should do what it can to bring all a digital visual archive project and should be The State Library’s SA Memory project culturally sensitive way. South Australians, and especially its young, into supported and properly fi nanced. The State Library of South Australia’s SA the broadband future. Memory project could be the ground base for Ara Irititja, a project of the Pitjantjatjara There are still many questions related to the State’s digital visual archive. SA Memory Council, commenced in 1994 when it was archives, and we can’t begin to answer is a series of interpretive websites, acting as realised that a large amount of archival Archives them all here. Questions about the physical portals to key primary and secondary sources material about the Anangu was not controlled management of our past works, most often held in collections throughout the State. by, or accessible to them. This material was held The Digital Visual Archive Project kept in poor storage conditions, or on formats They include sites on the River Murray, South in museums, libraries and private collections. I love archives. ‘We don’t know what we’ve got, which have an effective shelf life of less than Australians at War and the Bradman Collection. Items held by private individuals were often ‘til its gone’ to paraphrase Canadian folk-artist fi ve years, questions about the science and art The Memory project also provides links to at risk of being damaged or irretrievably lost. Joni Mitchell. I use archives in my fi lms. I use of preservation. But there is no question about other relevant organisations and websites. Developed in response to the specifi c cultural them for research. But more importantly, I the value of digital archives. The Library aims to involve other institutions needs of the Anangu, where possible, the believe that the historical notions and lessons and communities throughout the State to Pitjantjatjara language is used. Innovative that are inherent in archival documents, The State’s digital visual archive would include a produce a gateway for South Australian software protects and/or restricts access to whether original or digitised, are necessary space to collect all the professional and amateur memories. Audio visual materials will form private, sensitive and offensive materials. to build a better future. A picture’s worth a fi lms ever made in SA; video and new media an integral part of the success of the project. thousand words. An archival image is worth a products made here throughout history; all the The Library is currently working on websites Whereas most archives manage static thousand more. fi lms made by all of SA’s fi lm students over time, for the themes represented in the exhibitions collections, Ara Irititja’s archive is structured all the community media practice through the within its Mortlock Wing and are working with around a dynamic database. When viewing The digital revolution extends into what ages, all the best home movies and video. the National Library and other State libraries records, Anangu can add, expand, or correct I call the collective visual memory - the on access and digitisation projects such as data and historical details. Its culturally- motion pictures, the photos, the graphics and These archives would not be collecting dust on MusicAustralia and sensitive software design is at the forefront accompanying sound archives that are a visual some shelf somewhere. In the digital form they PictureAustralia . of its fi eld. The Ara Irititja database already testament to both our history and our future. could be searchable online and be available These provide a common search interface to holds over 40,000 records. This includes many free for use, for all to use. With the existing resources held nationally in libraries and other thousands of still photographs, hundreds of I propose that South Australia digitises all and planned high speed broadband already institutions. The State Library is also exploring hours of movies and sound recordings, art of the signifi cant visual archives residing in rolling out across the State, one can imagine ways for the Library to be involved in online and craft works, traditional objects, diaries, all the major and minor public institutions that every library, every school, indeed, every curriculum development through such projects journals and manuscripts. The archival storage along Adelaide’s North Terrace and at smaller household could soon have access to the digital as the Le@rning Federation. of these materials in high quality digital format collections around the State. archive. facilitates the development of educational materials, multimedia, CD-ROM and other Many institutions have already begun this, but innovative electronic productions. Oral history they must be funded, coordinated, collated and recording is an integral part of the project. made universally accessible.

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8 The Infrastructure Sphere Susan Greenfi eld | Getting to the Future First

Priority is given to recording, transcribing and This world wide Creative Commons movement Perhaps, South Australia could look forward All of this is to say: Why not preserve our translating the stories of elderly Anangu living now challenges arcane intellectual property to the future and promote now the use of an cultural audio/visual heritage in the way it on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands. Ara Winki: laws. In building public value, the BBC says: Open Source Software philosophy which would was intended? As a public, human resource. Life of the Pitjantjatjara Lands, is a fantastic wean the State off proprietary, locked down or interactive educational program which tells the “We look forward to a future where the public infl exible software solutions. Or dependency story of the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara have access to a treasure-house of digital on monopolies. In many jurisdictions around Freedom of Expression people and their land. content, a store of value which spans media the world, a world-wide open movement is and platforms, develops and grows over time, afoot. The Government of Brazil intends to turn The creation of fi lms, documentaries and On the Lands, extreme conditions and unsteady which the public own and can freely use in its IT needs open source by 2010, and foresees new media works can only take place in a power sources threaten computer operations perpetuity. A future where the historic one- a saving of hundreds of millions of dollars democratic space where the essential right of in the bush camps, dry creek beds, as well as way traffi c of content from broadcaster to annually. In SA, turning to more open solutions freedom of expression is paramount. community halls and classrooms. In response consumer evolves into a true creative dialogue could also result in building a software industry to these restrictions, Ara Irititja created the Niri in which the public are not passive audiences here with open source companies providing a Is freedom of expression another victim of the Niri, the Pitjantjatjara word for a scarab beetle, but active, inspired participants.” - “Building fl exible suite of products to the government. catastrophic events of September 11, 2001 and a unique autonomous mobile workstation Public Value”, a speech by BBC Director General, All of these initiatives would enhance the the ensusing war on terrorism? And where that houses a computer full of images, a data Mark Thompson. screen culture of South Australia. freedom of expression has been eroded, what projector, a printer and an uninterruptible consequences does that erosion entail? power supply unit. Anangu are using digitally- based information technology to protect and Open Source Software Access to Information How freedom of expression has fared in this secure their past, and ensure their future. climate, as the famous writers advocacy All these free access movements are predicated On many fronts, we are being insulted and group PEN (Publishers, Editors and Novelists) The BBC Creative Archive upon the Free and Open software community assaulted by what I call the privatisation of views it, is pressing. I urge every South In Britain, the BBC and others have led the way which has been successfully using alternate memory. Access to information is essential to Australian citizen, every screen maker, every to digitise all their materials and lend them licensing agreements to foster creativity research, journalism and to democracy. And educator to speak out loudly and forcefully out without charge, with the creation of their among software developers for the last yet it is getting harder to access archives and against any suppression of the inherent right Creative Archive, facilitated by the Creative 20 years. This has led to the creation of an public fi les. A recent federal Australian case to communicate that any government or Commons concept. South Australia could extraordinary body of software including in point was the ABC’s crude attempt to limit institution wishes to force forward. And in a follow suit. Linux, now a major player in the software access of its archives to a fi lmmaker making a climate where limits are being placed on the marketplace, and to other software we all use fi lm about immigration. Access to information free space which has developed in web culture, A process predicated on re-use and sharing of and take for granted every day. More recently, really became a contradiction in terms. And there is the need for what I call for a Social ideas, expression and creativity, the Creative organisations such as creativecommons.org private archives are only worse. Most often it Protocol for the Internet. Archive initiative allows the UK public to and new licensing agreements that major is an economic question - the right to sell at download, listen, watch and re-use the material music corporations and pharmaceutical market prices what the market will bear. If there are limits on anyone’s freedom to in their own creative endeavors. BBC is doing companies are now being forced to enter, have express themselves in any medium they this because it believes that this will provide ported alternative licensing frameworks to the But must all human transactions be measured so choose, then there are limits on all our the fuel for a truly Creative Nation. Others, like world of content - providing new models and in hard currency? What about the currency of freedoms. Fortunately, South Australia is still a Rick Prelinger, who donated his collection to legal concepts for new communications and the collective good, the commons, our shared haven for free expression, and in many ways, a the US Library of Congress, and created the screen industries. right to know and see our own visual history? paradise of dissent. Internet Archives, are at the forefront as well.

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8 The Infrastructure Sphere Peter Wintonick | Southern Screens : Southern Stories

All those working in the screen media in South In my Adeltopia, I would create affordable About Sustainability: Inter/screen along with public and private partners, would Australia, and the governments and agencies housing for regular people in all those empty work to ensure ongoing progress and set the which support them, must be on the vanguard wool shed buildings in Port Adelaide. And quick The intersection of the spheres. spheres in motion. of defending the rights of creators to make any mass transit to get them to and from the city. fi lms or media they wish to make. I could even build them in the downtown core. Where two or more circles or spheres overlap Inter/Screen’s role will be to foster and sustain Lofts for artists and emerging fi lmmakers and is a place where synergy, and cinergy is born. a vision and a dialogue for South Australia’s shared apartments for students and the 25 per There is a technical name for the intersection digital media and fi lm industry development. Urban Issues cent of South Australians who live near the of circles or spheres. It’s called a Mandorla, It would foster media literacy and the poverty line. from the Roman word for almond, because development of a unique SA screen culture and In any Digitopia, I would also want to think the little overlapping areas between circles or a new screen movement. about how urban issues are refl ected in the Of course, such plans are not utopian. They spheres are almond-shaped. At the intersection larger screen. are practical and economic. The creative class of all the spheres, at those mandorlian Proposed roles of this top-level inter-agency is the biggest growing class since workers crossroads, I believe the State, public agencies group would be: to create a sustainble I’ve commented in the Screen Industry and joined the industrial revolution. They make and private partnerships should set up a top- vision for SA digital media development, to Community Media Spheres on the need to things. They buy things. They employ people. level inter-agency screen council and forum, identify and showcase talent, to identify create a screen industries incubator hub, such As the ideas of previous Thinkers, and the or Inter/Screen, as I call it. You can investigate and implement measurement research, to as the one developing in Adelaide for the State’s own strategic plans for sustainability more details on Inter/Screen in Chapter 6, The invigorate the industry; to review funding science and technology sectors. Such a cluster begin to take hold, future priorities will move Screen Industries Sphere. Inter/Screen must structures; to build community engagement zone would be a place to gravitate to, in order South Australia away from old resource-based be created and properly funded for the long- and mutual goodwill, to prioritise Indigenous to accentuate effi ciencies and synergies in the dependencies depleting resources, away from term sustainability of screen culture in South and youth participation; to review the roles screen industries. ancient ideas like the petrol guzzling cars, and Australia. and purposes of related agencies; to review the cost ineffi ciencies inherhent in wars and the curriculum from preschool to tertiary and Similarly, given that policies will be put in place the ‘defence’ industry. During my time in South Australia, a broad- provide advice to educational institutions; that, in the long term, will make emerging SA based representative Steering Group came to celebrate South Australia’s points of fi lmmakers want to live in South Australia, the Instead, the dividends of a peaceful, creative together many times in roundtables to offer difference and to showcase results for ongoing State should also look to public policies which economy will take shape and take precedence. up ideas and solutions, based on widespread motivation and inspiration. will proactively foster SA as a centre of creative One which prefers putting money into culture, systems analysis, experiences, community capital and a dynamic creative class. education, health - and the screen. Into new input and research. These discussions were Inter/Screen would operate on these kinds technologies and sustainable ecologies, open, positivist and frankly facilitated of guiding principles: The State could foster a domestic cluster into water management and wind power, using such discussion tools as blue-sky • First Nation, fi rst principles zone for the digital creatives and screen into science and humanity, rather than into brainstorming and even a ‘thinking exercise’ • Open and democratic makers, making affordable social housing and ineffi cient, non-sustainable industries where called the Dalmau enneagram process. I was • Transparent workspace available in the city for young and the economic output is always exaggerated was orginally skeptical, but they generated • Consultative emerging artists. and forever short-sighted. many results. • System critical • Flexible I believe that the inter-agency dialogue that • Responsive we’ve already started with my Thinker’s • Positioned for emergence Residency should be continued and formally • Committed to positive outcomes - established through Inter/Screen. The State, with a ‘can do’ approach.

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8 The Infrastructure Sphere Peter Wintonick | Southern Screens : Southern Stories

Inter/Screen would hold several Forums every And Then, a Thought of the Day... I want to recommend that we take all of the year, open to anyone and everyone working in car park buildings in Adelaide, and collect them screen culture. It will have a directorate and As I mentioned in my foreward, with more than all together in one place. And then we’ll pile an elected representative advisory Council. a little tongue in cheek, during the course of them up and up and up, one upon the other Inter/Screen would create and appoint a my residency I have had some unusual ideas upon the other, to make one great big gigantic management position of Screen Catalyst, a role or ‘Thoughts of the Day’ which just might sky-scraping car park. At 120 stories tall, it will to be funded for at least the next fi ve years. help raise some funds. Here’s my most recent be the biggest carpark in the world. It should thought. be big enough to hold every car in Adelaide at one time. And How Will We Pay for all Every world class city has its iconic building These Recommendations? - the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the giant And they will come from everywhere in the Ferris Wheel, the Empire State Building. And of world to see our carpark. It will be a giant Several ideas have been offered throughout course, Sydney has its Opera House. tourist attraction. And how will the biggest these chapters. But I’ll mention a few. One can carpark in the world help pay for some of begin by augmenting the State’s budget for Well, I want to propose creating something my Digitopian recommendations? Why, I will culture from its current low-end levels. which will attract the world to Adelaide’s combine Adelaide’s love of gambling with my doorstep. Big Car Park Idea. Lottery monies 400 Lottery money is what resurrected the British Of the cities of the world with a population Every noon hour, there will be a big lottery, and fi lm industry and the fi lm industry in West of more than a million, Adelaide is near the top the random number of a unique car park space Australia. This is discussed in more detail in of the list as the least in population density. It’s in the Biggest Car Park in the World will be 50 Chapter 6, The Screen Industries Sphere. more than kilometres from end to end. drawn out of a hat. If your car happens to be parked on the right fl oor in that right winning The Fifty Cent Fund As a result of these distances, everyone in the space, then you win! And what do you win, You can see more details about this in Chapter Adelaide area seems to really, really, really love you may ask? Why, free parking for a month, a 6, The Screen Industries Sphere. This would, their cars. As a result, not only is this a city of thousand dollars and the right to make your based on historical fi lm going patterns by Churches, and the City of Pubs, but is also a city own movie! South Australians, add a million dollars to of Car Parks. the production pie. There is already some preliminary indication that SA-based exhibitors There are so many car parks in the city. 40,000 and distributors would support it. More than spaces, at last count, and that’s only in the downtown core. The whole infrastructure which is needed to support the automobile takes up so much precious space, not to mention pumping so much dangerous carbon into the dying air. Not to mention the parking tickets.

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9 Epilogue Peter Wintonick | Southern Screens : Southern Stories

Screen culture forms, and informs, our personal As we prepare to build this new Tower, we The screen is a place where all South and social lives. discard a pile of useless stones into a corner. Australians can share their vision-quests, and These represent all the base elements of all their stories. South Australia’s screen culture can be a site of the conventional mass media that we have renaissance, the sight of diversity, and foresight come to distrust. ‘Reality-based’ unreal TV. The As a new day emerges, a juggler appears, for the future. Mercantile Movies. The Exploitative Web. The balancing four spheres. Vampryic. The Pedantic. The Propagandistic. A new Screen Movement in South Australia The Greedy. The Sexist. The Racist. The Violent. Cinema, in all its myriad masques and guises, is can be an international agora where all worlds re-inventing itself for the 21st century, over and can meet. It can provide us with digitized We start our foundation using an alternate over again. snapshots of the State of the Eighth Art - one pile of building blocks. These represent all which converges celluloid with electroid. It will the qualities of the screen media we love. As a new Screen Movement for South Australia. illuminate visible evidence which brings fi ction The Poetic. The Innovative. The Imaginative. As a new Screen Culture for the Digital Age. closer to faction. Poetics to the Public. These The Experimental. The Educative. The are the screen arts and the screen industries Communitarian. The Humane. The Emotive. The As Southern Screens and Southern Stories. which will bring us all together - interface to Questioning. The Inclusive. These blocks provide interface. the foundation and base for our new Tower. Peter Wintonick Adelaide/Montreal 2005-2006 It will take several years to develop a new As our Tower to Screen Culture is built, we will screen culture, to wean ourselves off come to understand that creative, cultural and conventional ways of raising money, producing, fi nancial forces intersect with one another. shooting and distributing fi lm. But the Sometimes they are compromised; sometimes next wave is here and now. In the emerging they mutate. generations of South Australia’s creative people. But, as our new structure takes shape, a prominent feature comes into clear focus. Near Imagine, in your mind’s eye, Breughel’s famous the top is a watch-tower, from which we set painting of the Tower of Babylon. It is the sight on an elusive ideal: to make poetic and blueprint for a new Babylonian Tower built for informed truth. Screen Culture.

98

10 Appendix Peter Wintonick | Southern Screens : Southern Stories

South Australian Film • producer development funding for understanding that such ventures provide Marketing Corporation (SAFC) general development expenses and other benefi ts to South Australians, including Promotion of the State’s talent and assets is project related and business development economic benefi ts and employment generating a very important function of the SAFC. The Information about its Current Strategies, expenses opportunities. services include a location showcase providing Priorities and Programs • market attendance funding for fi lm, examples of South Australia’s wide range of Like all the partner organisations which television, documentary and interactive The Educational Content Fund is available locations and a production liaison service, contributed to the evolution of this report digital media producers to travel to for the production of educational, sponsored connecting producers with facilities and crew. with observations and commentary, the SAFC international markets to attract market and government-related projects across all was invited, and provided further information place fi nance for projects platforms. In 2004-05, six such documentary about its programs, strategic directions and the • two short fi lms are funded for up to projects were funded, a record number of Partnerships signifi cant changes that it feels have occurred $50,000 per project to assist emerging approvals. The SAFC has very strong relationships with over the past twelve months. This is refl ected in screen practitioners to develop their skills equivalent organisations in other States and on the paragraphs which follow in this section. to progress towards long form feature fi lm, The SAFC also provides a $3 million revolving the national stage. The constant information television drama, documentary and digital loan fund to sustain and increase fi lm, exchange ensures that the SAFC remains media production television and documentary production in abreast of all models and developments in Career pathways and development • funding to support the development South Australia. other States. The SAFC has a strong focus on career of feature and television projects, pathways and development across all aspects documentary, interactive digital media In South Australia, the SAFC is actively working of screen culture. Some of its initiatives include: projects including interactive/online Production incentives with other screen organisations such as the • funding for activities such as laboratories, dramas, documentaries, animation, The SAFC now offers incentives to encourage Media Resource Centre (MRC), the Australian incubators, short courses, seminars, computer games and innovative education productions shot in SA including a payroll Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) and conferences, workshops and speakers’ programs tax exemption of approximately six per the Screen Studies Department of Flinders programs for practitioner and industry • development of an Indigenous media cent on the fi lm’s payroll. A ten per cent University to better develop career pathways development strategy, including in particular career employment rebate was also introduced in for emerging screen practitioners and better • facilitating on the job experience in fi lm, pathway and development initiatives. April on all eligible SA labour expenditure on utilise resources. television or digital media production fi lm, television and documentary productions through internships and attachments produced predominantly in South Australia. The SAFC has made signifi cant contributions • facilitating mentoring programs, including Production investment to the success stories listed throughout a new mentoring scheme, Rocket Science, The SAFC also invests in production across this report, whether by direct investment which is provided to emerging and a variety of genres such as feature fi lm, Production support in the feature fi lm or documentary or by established writer/producer/director teams television drama, documentary and digital SAFC’s comprehensive production facilities, way of support or investment in the various • attendance grants, which allow media production (an Australian fi rst). including a Dolby licensed mixing theatre, organisations. This includes investment practitioners to travel to key festivals and Projects that are creative and original, possess sound stages, production offi ces, an art in the fi lms of the Adelaide Film Festival interState award ceremonies where they overall appeal to diverse audiences, display department and wardrobe facilities, assist and contributions towards the Australian are being recognised for their work good market prospects, and have signifi cant and encourage the production of feature International Documentary Conference. • practitioner development funding which economic benefi ts to the South Australian fi lms, documentaries and short fi lms in South provides support for professional and production and post-production sectors are Australia. The newly created Sound Post- career development across screen cultures invested in by the Corporation. The SAFC has Production Fund will allow emerging fi lm a strong pro-South Australian policy. Funding makers the opportunity to access a world class of non SA based productions is always on the mixing theatre to complete their work.

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10 Appendix 11 Additional Acknowledgements

South Australia’s Strategic Plan Thank you to the many individuals School AFTRS • Australian International South Australia’s Strategic Plan has a particular and organisations who supported the Documentary Conference • Barbara Comber • focus on the screen industry. The three targets Thinkers Program Barbara Wiesner • Barking Cat Productions • are to continue to expand South Australia’s Barry Burgan • Barry Mitchell • Bell New Media share of the feature fi lm industry, increase Fund • Ben Jones • • Benjamin a_rage • ABC New Media and Digital Services • television production and grow the audiovisual Wheal • Bernadette Daniel • Beth Neate • Aboriginal Affairs & Reconciliation • Aboriginal sector in this State. Beverley Rogers • Bike SA • Bill Cations • Bill Centre • Aboriginal Education • Adam Free • Cooper • Bill Dwyer • Bill Spurr • Bio Innovation Adam Graycar • Adelaide Centre for the Arts • The SAFC has a signifi cant leadership role in SA • Blue Onion New Media • Bob Ellis • Bob Adelaide City Council • Adelaide Film Festival • achieving these targets. The Plan will continue Parr • Brave Vision • Brenda Kuhr • Brendan Adelaide Fringe • Adelaide Institute of TAFE • to inform the particular priorities and strategic Moran • Brian Cunningham • Brian Dutton • Adelaide Motion Picture Company • Adelaide direction of the Corporation for the next ten Brian Plush • British Broadcasting Corporation • Review • Adelaide Thinkers in Residence • Adele years. Broadband SA • Bruce H. Thomas • Bruce Moir • Hann • Agile Communications • Alan Peucker • Bryan Mason • Bryan Whiteman • Budgie Lung Alan Reid • Alan Smith • Albert Lovegrove- Theatre Company • Burnie & Carol Stevens • Buckskin • Alexandra Hurford • Alice McCleary • Burton Primary School • Business SA • CAAMA Alice Paige • Alice Teasdale • Alison Nairn • Central Australian Aboriginal Media Alison Wotherspoon • Alastair Dow • Ally Derks Association • Cam Rogers • Camille Hardman • • Alyssa Late • Amy Gebhardt • Anangu Canadian High Commission • Carclew Youth Mayatja • ANAT Australian Network for Art & Arts Centre • Carl Kuddell • Carmel Dundon • Technology • Andra Sheffer • Andrew Bovell • Carol Omer • Carol Perry • Carol Treloar • Andrew Doust • Andrew Ellis • Andrew Parkin • Caroline Farmer • Cath Moore • Catherine Andrew Piper • Andrew Plumer • Andrew Porter Hockley • CEDA • Centre for Studies in Literacy • • Andy Marshall • Angela Duigan • Anifex Pty Charity Bramwell • Charlie Murray • Che Ltd • Ann Clancy • Ann Hankinson • Ann Metcalfe • Cherry Robinson • Cheryl Bart • MacKenzie • Ann Nelson • Anne Peters • Ann Chika Anyanwu • Chris Brandwood • Chris Faull Walton • Anna Creek Homestead • Anne • Chris Geisler • Chris Iley • Chris Joyner • Chris Edwards • Anne Harvey • Anne Hazell • Anne Marlin • Chris Reese • Christian Keefe • Tsoulis • Annette Shriner • Annie Fox • Apple Christine Burt • Christoph Jörg • Citisites • City Computer Australia • APY Council Anangu of Playford • Claire Harris • Claire Woods • Clare Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands • Ara Tizard • Clorine Jackson • • Irititja Archives • Ara Winki: Life of the Cole Larsen • Colin Reck • Collection Specialists Pitjantjatjara Lands • Archangel Australia • Aria State Library of SA • Colleen McDonnell • Come Stirling Colton • Art Gallery of South Australia • Out Australian Festival for Young People • Arts Industry Development Arts SA • Arts Commission for Public Employment • Projects Australia • ArtsSA • ARTSsmart Peachey Community Arts Network of SA • Community Belt Schools • Ashley Page • Astrid Pill • Services, City of Mt Gambier • Community TV Austrade • Australian Broadcasting Corporation Channel 31 Adelaide • Consul General of ABC - 2 • Australian Film, Television and Radio Canada • Coober Pedy Camel Tours • Cooper’s

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11 Additional Acknowledgements Peter Wintonick | Southern Screens : Southern Stories

Brewery Limited • Corporation of the City of UniSA • Finance Corporation FFC • Flinders Jessica Machin • Jill Newman • Joan Cooper • Matthew Bate • Matthew Graeme Holmes • Adelaide • Country Arts SA • Craig Lahiff • Craig University • Flinders University Library • Joanna Hughes • Jodi Glass • Joe Velikovsky • MAV Media • Mawsons Lake School • Media Monahan • Craig Raneberg • Crank! • Francesca da Rimini • Francis Miquet • Fraser John Browett • John Chataway • John Dabinett Resource Centre • Megan Lloyd • Melentie Curriculum Dialogue Group • Cyril Kartinyeri • Mustard • Fred Packer • Fremont Elizabeth City • John Dallwitz • John Hill MP Minister Pandilovski • Melissa Juhanson • Melvin Dale Roberts • Dan Jordan • Dan Thorsland • High School Elizabeth • Gabrielle Kelly • Assisting the Premier in the Arts • John Mansell • Mercury Cinema • Meredith Booth • Dana Wortley • David Blackstock • David Gabrielle Overton • Gail Bartel • Gail Fairlamb • Macumba • John McConchie • John Wheldrake Merilyn Dayman • Metafi lm • Mette Hoffman Boardwell • David Cappo • David Donaldson • Gail Fuller • Gail Kovatseff • Gender and Labour • Jon Pyle • Jonathan Shteinman • Joost Den Meyer • Michael Cusack • Michael Darren • David Evans • David Margan • David Minear • Studies, Politics and Media University of Helden • Joy De Leo • JP McGowan Archives • Michael Galvin • Michael Harbison Lord Mayor David Mitchell • David Nye • David Raffen • Adelaide • Geoff Strempel • George Lewkowicz Judd Overton • Jude Leak • Judith Brine • Judith of Adelaide • Michael Harvey • Michael Klein- David Rathman • David Salomon • David Sly • • Georgette Elston • Georgie Basey • Gerard Roberts • Judy O’Brien • Judy Potter • Julia Ewin • Michael Miller • Michael Rowan • David Throsby • David Vaidavaloo • David O’Brien • Gerard Reed • Gerry Bloustien • Gina Erhart • Julia Frances de Roeper • Julia Tymukas Michael Walsh • Michelle Carey • Michelle Warren • David Waterford • David Wilson • Ploenges • Ginger Gecko Productions • Gino • Julianne Pierce • Julie Ryan • Julie-Anne Farrer Fraser • Mick O’Neill • Mike Bull • Mike Carroll • Day Zero Films • Dean Forbes • Deb Welch • DeGennaro • Go Patterson Films • Graham • Julie Roberts • Jurgen Michaelis • Justin Lynch Mike Flehr • Mike Hannell • Mike Piper • Mike Deborah Lavis • DECS Curriculum Policy • DECS Badger • Graham Cox • Graham Tulloch • Grant • Justin Wight • Karen Hadfi eld • Karen Vered • Rann the Premier of S.A. • Mike Richards • Mike Futures Connect • DECS Senior Executive Forum Brindal • Grant Pietch • Greg Lane • Greg Egan • Katalyst Web Design • Kate Harris • Katherine Walsh • Miles Kemp • Mimi Crowe • Minter • DFEEST DEH • Denis Wall • Denise Bradley • • Greg Lomax • Greg Siegele • Guy Vadura • Kathryn Bowd • Kathryn McIntyre • Ellison • Mira Burt-Wintonick • Mojgan Denise Maddigan • Denise Wood • Dennis Bayly-Jones • Harry Postema • Hawke Centre • Kathy Hayter • Katrina Sedgwick • Ken Lloyd • Khadem • Molly Reynolds • Monarto • Monica O’Rourke • Denny Lawrence • Department Heather Croall • Heidi • Heidi Angove • Helen Kerry Heysen • Kevin McLean • Kevin O’Brien • Kordova • Monkeystack • Mount Gambier Education and Children’s Services DECS • Bock • Helen Leake • Helen Paphitis • Helen Kieran Weir • Kim Mavromatis • Kino Group • Council • Multicultural Affairs • Nancy Wilson • Department for Aboriginal Affairs and Richardson • Helen Wildash • Helpmann Kojo Group • Kristian Moliere • Kristine Nanette Van Ruiten • National Wine Centre • Reconciliation DAARE • Department of Further Academy • History Trust of SA • Homelessness Deutschman • Kukan Studio • Kupa Piti Kungka Neil Smith • Nick Carne • Nick Fraser • Nick Education Employment Science & Technology SA • Horden Wiltshire • Ian Chesterman • Ian Tjuta • Kym Nadebaum • L. Richard Kohler • Prescott • Nigel McBride • Nine Network • DFEEST • Department of Premier and Cabinet Davey • Ian Dinning • Ian Edwards • Ian Le Fevre High School • Learning • Learning to No Strings Attached Theatre • NS Film DPC• Department of Screen Studies Flinders Hutchison • Ian Procter • Ian Richards • Ian Learn DECS • Leigh Sutton • Lewis O’Brien • Development Corporation • Nunga Circus • University • Department of Trade and Economic Scobie • Iikka Vehkalahti • Imagination Libby Raupach • Linda Bowes • Linda Cooper • Nunga TV • Ocean Pictures • Offi ce of Development DTED • • Entertainment • Imogen Selley • Independent Lisa Gellie • Lisa Philip-Harbutt • Liz Wilson • Chancellor and President University of SA • designCentric • Diane Weyermann • Diat Weekly • Indigenous Youth Performing Arts • Loft Community Centre • Loressa Clisby • Louis Offi ce of Southern Suburbs • Offi ce of Alferink • Digital Journeys • Digital Monkey • Institute of Public Administration of Australia Laybourne • Luigi Iuliano • Lyn Pike • m.Net Sustainability DEH • Open Access College • Directing the Hero Within Project • Dococom IPAA • International Documentary Project • Corporation • Macumba Media • Madeleine Outback Areas Community Development Trust Group • Don Dunstan Foundation • Don Edkins Internode • Irati Wanti Campaign • ITC Council Woolley • Mal Hemmerling • Malcolm Ludgate • Outback Location Services • Pamela Ball • • Donna Underwood • Economic Development of SA • Jackie Cook • Jacqueline Stratfold • Jain • Malin Bagling-Jonsson Ellen Taylor • MAPS • Pamela James-Martin • Pamela Martin • Board • Elizabeth Wilson • Ellen Taylor • Moralee • James Geurts • James McWha • Maree Aboriginal Centre • Marg Beagley • Parafi eld Gardens High School • Parks Embassy Hotel • Emma Forgie • Employment James Tizard • Jan Andrews • Jan Patterson • Margaret Anderson • Margaret Peters • Community Health Centre • Parliament House and Skills Formation, Aboriginal Employment Jane Lomax-Smith, Minister for Education • Margery Evans • Margie Andrewartha • Margot Staff • Pat Gobell • Pat Tapper • Patrick Tam • Programs AEP • Eric Neal • Ernie Clark • Jane Russell • Janet Worth • Jared Thomas • Foster • Margot Phillipson • Marilyn Baker • Paul Armour • Paul Bestanko • Paul Cox • Paul Experimental Art Foundation • Faculty of Jeff Taylor • Jeff Walsh • Jenni Robertson • Mario Andreacchio • Mark Patterson • Mark Daly • Paul Kilvert • Paul Pearce • Paula Le Dieu Education, Humanities, Law Flinders University Jennifer Jones • Jennifer Lyons-Reid • Jennifer Pogorelec • Marlin Bagling-Jonsson • Martin • Paula Smith • Pauline Tuft • People of Amata, • Faith Trent • Feature Film-makers Roundtable Stehn • Jennifer Stokes • Jenny Aland • Jenny Potter • Mary Anderson • Mason Curtis • Matt Ernabella, Umuwa, Fregon and Mimili • People • Fee Plumley • Film and Video Production Greening • Jenny Munro • Jenny Webber • Hawkins • Matt Hitting the Bricks • Matt King • of the Kaurna Lands • People’s Republic of

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11 Additional Acknowledgements Peter Wintonick | Southern Screens : Southern Stories

Animation • Peta Gad • Peta Pash • Pete Best • Seaford 6-12 School • Senior Development Information Science • University of South Peter Bishop • Peter Buckskin • Peter Cahalan • Offi ce, Arts SA • Senior Management Council • Australia Television Association (USATA) • Peter Craig • Peter Darley • Peter Dunn • Peter Senior Management Group • Shane McNeil • University of South Australia, School of Rowe • Peter Russo • Peter Scott • Peter Smith • Sharon Bax • Sharon Powell • Shorts Film Communication, Information and New Media • Peter Solly • Peter Thurmer • Peter Trinatafolou Awards • Simon Hackett • Simon Molloy • UsMob.com • Vala Vinogradoff • Vicki Crowley • • Peter & Bev White • Peter Williams • Phil Simply Splendid Productions • Smoking Gun Vicki Niehus • Vicki Sowry • Vicki Sugars • Vicki Carter • Phil & Ifeta Gee •Phil Marriott • Philip Productions • Social Inclusion Unit • Sonja Wilson • Vince Coulthard • Vincent Ciccarello • Elms • Piper Films • Planet Earth Films • Plexus Vivienne • Sophia Matiasz • • Vini Ciccarello MP • Virgina Battye • Virginia Films • Pooraka Primary School • Porthmeor South Australian Documentary and Digital Hollister • Viron Papadopolous • Wallis Theatres Productions • Prairie Hotel • PY Media • Queen Media Group • South Australian Film • Warren McCann • Warriappendi Aboriginal Adelaide • Quentin Kenihan • Rachel Thompson Corporation • • School • Wayne Dobbins • Wayne Groom • • Radio Adelaide • Ralph Leonard • Randal & South Australian Tourism Commission • SPAA • Wayne Lewis • Wayne Piekarski • Wayu Tanya Crozier •Ratbag Pty Ltd • Re Angle SSABSA (SA Senior Secondary Assessment Kaintyirendi - The Hanging Tree • Wendy Hill • Pictures • Readymade Productions • Reg Dodd • Board), • State Library of SA • Stateline ABC • Wendy Wakefi eld • Will Rogers • Will Sheridan • Remo Media • Reuben Radanaiaciekevski • Stephen Bowers • Stephen Halliday • Stephen William Creek Pub • Yaitya Makkitura • Yvonne Ribnga Green • Richard Back • Richard Loo • Steve Marshall • Steve Watt • Steven J.P. Angelakis • Chataway • Richard Florida • Richard Maltby • Comeau • Strategic Projects, Department of Rick Kohler • Rightside Response • Rising Sun Premier and Cabinet • Sue Brown • Sue Emmett Pictures • Rita Zanchetta • Rob De Kok • Rob • Sue Lemmer • Sue Rosenthal • Sue Skinner • Kerin • Robert Champion de Crespigny • Rod Sunday Hopkins • Susan Luckman • Susan Nancarrow • Rohan Hamden • • Redden • Suzanne Elliott • TAFE SA (Technical Rory McGregor • Rosanne Haggerty • Rose and Further Education) • tallstoreez Alwyn • Rose Wight • Rosemary Charles • productionz • Tam Nguyen • Tamsin Jones • Tea Rosemary Ince • Ross & Jane Fargher • Ross Tree Gully TAFE • Technology School of the Treadwell • Rosslyn Cox • Rowland Richardson • Future TSoF • Terry Charatsis • Terry Coulthard • Roz Averis • Russell Phillipson • Ruth Blenkiron • Terry Tysoe • Terry Woolley • The Adelaide Ruth Vasey • SA Community Housing • SA Advertiser • The Juggler • The New Pollutants • Memory Project • SA State Library • SA Writers’ The Oodnadatta Postman • The Town Hall • Guild • SA Youth Arts Board • SAAMBTS • the-phone-book limited • Tim Costello • Tim SAAME (SA Association of Media Education) • Flannery • Tom Steeples • Tony Clark • Tony Salisbury District Staff (Learning Band Curtis • Tony Dyson • Torrens Valley TAFE • Coordinators) • Salisbury High School • Sally Tourism SA • Town Hall • Trees for Life • Trevor Chance • Dr Sally Cole • Sam White • SAMFS • & Helen Williams • Trevor Wright •Tyson Sandra Winter-Dewhirst • Sandy Cameron • Hopprich • Umeewarra Aboriginal Media Sara Diamond • Sarah Wishart • SBS • School Organisation • UNESCO Youth Conference • of Humanities, The University of Adelaide • United Film Group • University of Adelaide • Science, Technology & Innovation Directorate • University of South Australia • University of Screen Industries On-line Forum • Screen South Australia Mawson Lakes Wearable Production Flinders University • Screen West • Computer Lab School of Computer and

106 107 This book of commentary and recommendations, along with a companion documentary fi lm, texts, video excerpts and images, is released as a printable PDF Portable Document File on CD-ROM and DVD and is available at the Thinkers website .

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