Monday, 18 June 2012
6.30pm — 8.30pm
Chaired by Sidat de Silva
The Dolphin Hotel, Surry Hills
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Guest Speaker: Martha Ansara
With special guest John Platt
Martha Ansara Martha Ansara has been dubbed “the Mother Courage of Australian Film” by ABC Radio National critic Julie Rigg. One of Australia’s first female cinematographers, her colourful career as maverick film-maker and campaigner for social justice has taken her all around the country.
She has made films with Essie “Bush Queen” Coffey in far north-western NSW, bikie gang members in the Pilbara, suburban Palestinian refugees, Fremantle wharfies, One Nation activists in Ipswich, fashion designer Jenny Kee in the Blue Mountains, and iconic Australian actors in a variety of locations.
The now classic documentary she made in 1978 with Essie Coffey, My Survival as an Aboriginal, received the Rouben Mamoulian Award at the Sydney Film Festival and first prize at the prestigious Cinema du Reel in Paris. Ansara herself has received the AFI’s Byron Kennedy Award, been included in a tribute to Australian women filmmakers at Festival International de Films de Femmes, and was once cinematographer of four Dendy Award finalists in one year.
A career highlight includes making one of the first films to be shot in Vietnam by Westerners after the war.
Most significantly, Ansara has been recording oral histories with cinematographers over 35 years, fascinated by their revelations of little-known aspects of Australian cinema. This project, begun while she was a cinematography student, has now come to fruition with the beautiful photographic history of Australian cinematography, The Shadowcatchers. The book is published by the Australian Cinematographers Society, of which she has been a proud member since 1980.
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John Platt John Platt’s career in the Australian film industry started in 1983 when he joined a production company in North Sydney; first as stills assistant and then in-house clapper loader.
He soon made the change from stills to motion pictures and went freelance in 1984. John’s first film was The Coolangatta Gold, working as clapper loader for the Steadicam unit. Since then he has worked on over fifty productions from feature films, mini series, movies-of-the-week, and TV shows both in Australia and Canada.
Throughout his 28 years in the industry John’s passion for stills photography has remained strong and seen him amass a collection of over 20,000 images — predominantly of crews he has worked with.
In Martha Ansara’s The Shadowcatchers his images are second in number only to The National Film and Sound Archive. An exhibition of images from the book opens on 19 June at Red Apple Camera Rentals.
Five Oscar-winning cinematographers sign ‘The Shadowcatchers’