Australian Filmmakers: The Interviews

With the world premiere of Disgrace at the Toronto Film Festival next month, Australian filmmaking will again take center stage. Directed by Australian Steve Jacobs (La Spagnola) and written by his wife Anna-Maria Monticelli, the adaptation of J. M. Coetzee's Booker Prize winning novel will headline a very impressive program.

The film is already collecting accolades with Monticelli recently receiving the AWGIE for Feature Film Adaptation at the annual awards ceremony for the Australian Writers' Guild (AWG).

The award for Television Mini Series Adaptation went to Underbelly by Peter Gawler, Greg Haddrick and Felicity Packard, a production which served as one of Australia's chief broadcast controversies in recent years. The series chronicled Melbourne’s infamous gangland wars and was banned indefinitely in Victoria for legal reasons. Read my recent interview with the award-winning writers of the much-hyped series here (page 15).

For more of my interviews with Australia's premier filmmakers be sure to drop by the online edition of the AWG's quarterly magazine Storyline, Australia's sole publication dedicated specifically to the writer's craft.

For an interview with screenwriter Keith Thompson (Clubland) click here (page 8).

Writer/director Greg McLean (Wolf Creek, Rogue) here (page 6).

Writer Stephen Sewell (The Boys and Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America) and producer/director Dee McLachlan (The Jammed), here (page 23).

Writer/director Peter Duncan (Unfinished Sky, Children of the Revolution) here (page 9).