The company, which has produced short narrative productions including The Ninth Tower, #MATCHED and Salma’s Season, is a recent recipient of Screen Australia’s Business Enterprise Program and Enterprise support will enable Kauthar to attend Confex as well as the Red Sea International Film Festival later this year, also in Saudi Arabia.
With a mission to tell authentic stories that humanise the Muslim experience and contribute to the diversity of representation within the Australian screen sector, Blacksand Pictures is looking to build key international partnerships specifically in the MENA region and catering to a global Muslim audience of over 2 billion.
The company is preparing to take the leap into long-form production by building its international producing and distribution partnerships.
“Through our online productions, we’ve tested the appetite of our audiences and proven that our content has a global demand. With the support of Screen Australia’s Enterprise Program, we’re now able to confidently take the next step,” Kauthar says.
“We’re keen to explore the MENA market as it’s a fast-growing industry with a lot of investment opportunities within the region. It’s an important market with which Blacksand is culturally aligned and we believe our content offering will be of great interest to potential buyers, distributors and investors.”
The Australian Embassy in Riyadh will host a reception in Kauthar’s honour, providing further business networking opportunities for her in Saudi Arabia.
As well as its creative achievements to date, Blacksand Pictures implemented what is believed to be Australia’s very first Inclusion Rider and Muslim-specific cultural safety policy within the screen sector – for the series #Matched and Salma’s Season. Kauthar is committed to working with representatives from communities that her projects represent, both in front of the camera and in key creative and crew roles.
“Living in a world where media dictates perceptions and amplifies very specific narratives defining who you are, Muslim Australians recognised a lack of positive and meaningful representation of our communities in the media. I felt that no one was telling our stories authentically. A recent report by The Inclusionists (2022) revealed that, despite Muslims comprising 25% of the world’s population (and Islam being the fastest growing religion in the world), only 1% of characters on our screens (popular episodic series from the US, UK, Australia and NZ) are Muslim,” Kauthar says.
“When we see Muslims portrayed on screen, they are mostly associated with deeply negative stereotypes. And so I thought, if someone’s going to have to do it right, why not me? And that was when Blacksand Pictures was born. My long-term goal is to be one of the leading and pioneering production companies from Australia that represents the Australian screen industry around the globe, connecting audiences from all over the world and sharing meaningful, human stories that create a positive impact – especially in the lives of those communities that have historically been unjustly portrayed on our screens.
Kauthar is both a director and producer. She is a Muslim Australian of East-African and South-Asian heritage. She is the winner of the BMW Short Film Competition at the 2018 Indian Film Festival of Melbourne, and a graduate of Cinespace Inc.’s Story Lab initiative.
Kauthar was awarded a one year ‘Social Change on Screen’ Writer’s Fellowship by Cinespace Inc. and the Australian government in 2019, and has received production funding from Screen Australia, VicScreen and TikTok for her series #MATCHED (season two) as well as funding for YouTube series Salma’s Season from Screen Australia and VicScreen (also funded for development in 2019 by Screen Australia).
Kauthar has worked on documentary productions with the ABC (You See Monsters) & SBS (Our African Roots, Who the Bloody Hell Are We?) as Impact Producer and Production Manager. She has a degree in Islamic Studies and graduated with a Masters in Arts Management from RMIT University with the Dean’s Award for Excellence awarded to her in 2022.
