latest news
Thank God It’s Friday!
For Melbourne film fans, Fridays are about to get even better with AFTRS’ popular ‘Friday On My Mind’ event now making its way down to Victoria.
Aaron Eckhart & Bill Nighy Descend on Melbourne
The cast of ‘I, Frankenstein’ are hitting our shores with the gothic thriller set to start shooting February 27.
Sydney Unplugged
Ray Lawrence, Rachel Ward, Russell Crowe and Toni Collette, are just a sample of the impressive filmmaking talent behind a new feature set to showcase Sydney...
When Life Gives You Lemons...
Alethea Jones scored the top prize for her quirky short at this year’s Tropfest.
search the site
newsletter
Enter your email address below to receive the weekly Filmink newsletter
NSW Film Industry Receives $60 Million Boost
Screen NSW kickstarts a bout of funding into a host of exciting films projects.
The NSW film industry is buzzing with the announcement that almost $60 million is set to be invested into 14 new productions to be filmed or post-produced in the state including Anne Fontaine's (Coco Avant Chanel) Australian/French feature The Grandmothers starring Naomi Watts, Xavier Samuel (-pictured, A Few Best Men), James Frecheville (Animal Kingdom) and Robin Wright. The two blonde beauties will star as lifelong friends who fall in love with each other's teenage sons.
This initiative is the result of the Screen NSW Production Investment Fund, with Screen NSW themselves contributing more than $3.3million into these productions, which will see the creation of 3,300 new jobs for cast, crew and extras and "once again Sydney is set to shine as the star of a big international film," according to Minister of the Arts, George Souris.
Among the other productions set to benefit from this new fund will be the Australian classic Puberty Blues, which is being brought to the small screen as an eight-part television series produced by John Edwards and Imogen Banks through Southern Star Entertainment.
In another Australian/French co-production, the international bestseller Almost French, about the culture clash an Australian journalist experiences when she falls in love with a Frenchman and thus moves to Paris, will be turned into the directorial feature debut of television director Kate Dennis (Offspring).
Adds Mr Souris: "NSW producers are able to see the opportunities that co-productions with other major filmmaking nations offer... Both The Grandmothers and Almost French have enormous international audience appeal and will showcase NSW's filmmaking talent to the world."
Other productions include two additional feature films (the thriller Devil's Dust and the drama 2:22), six television series - four of which are children's programs including Season 3 of ABC's Dance Academy, as well as two factual programs and two cutting edge multiplatform productions.
One such factual program will be I Can Change Your Mind About Climate Change. The production sees Liberal Party powerbroker Nick Minchin join the founder of the Youth Climate Coalition, Anna Rose, on an international journey into the science, psychology and emotion of the climate change debate in an effort to change the other's opinion on the matter.
Photo credit: Xavier Samuel, courtesy of Getty Images/Charley Gallay.