Insight: The Business of Film

Susie Porter is one of Australia's most well-respected actors, working consistently in film, theatre and television.

She has played an impressive range of characters, and has been nominated for six AFI awards, winning three, including two Best Lead Actress awards, as well as winning a Most Outstanding Actress Logie award.

Graduating from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1995, Porter had small roles in Australian television programs in the late 1990s, including Big Sky, Wildside and Water Rats. She made her film debut in Idiot Box (1996), before a major role in Two Hands (1999) for which she won an FCCA Best Supporting Actress award, Mullet (2001), and had a small role in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.  

The sexual candour of her characters was explored in her leading roles in Feeling Sexy (2000), Better Than Sex (2001), and The Monkey's Mask (2001). Porter had a supporting role in the Australian film Little Fish (2005), and The Caterpillar Wish (2006) which won her Best Supporting Actress in the AFI Awards. Effortlessly making the transition to theatre, Porter starred as Olive in the play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll at the Belvoir Theatre, Sydney.

She is the darling of the Australian mini-series, playing a leading role in Australian mini-series RAN (2006) which won her a Best Leading Actress in a Television Drama at the AFI Awards, followed by East West 101 (2007), East of Everything (2008), and Bikie Wars: Brothers in Arms (2012)

She has played everything from a tough-talking detective to a bikie moll to her most recent role as Pam, the free-spirited mum on the television series Puberty Blues and has established herself as one the country's leading actresses.

Screen International listed Brendan as one of 25 “Rising Stars” from around the globe following the 2011 release of his debut feature Mad Bastards.

Mad Bastards was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. It won the Independent Spirit Award at the 2011 IF Awards; received five AACTA Award nominations including Best Film and Best Original Screenplay; won Best Film at the Deadly Awards and garnered Film Critics and Director’s Guild nominations for Best Director.

Brendan’s latest film Oscar Wilde's The Nightingale and The Rose stars Mia Wasikowska, Geoffrey Rush and David Wenham and has its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival 2015. It is a short animation made in collaboration with two-time Archibald-winning artist Del Kathryn Barton and features a haunting original score from multi-platinum Australian songstress Sarah Blasko. The film was awarded Best Australian Short Film at the 2015 Melbourne International Film Festival.

Brendan has a long-standing reputation as a collaborator with top Australian talent. This began with Brendan co-directing a series of documentaries with Russell Crowe (Texas and The Men Who Couldn't Finish Things) followed by the award-winning documentary Black Chicks Talking co-directed with Leah Purcell which world premiered at the Inaugural Tribeca Film Festival.

This follows a robust career in television and documentary including ABC TV award-winners: 900 Neighbours, Judith Lucy's Spiritual Journey and The Elders. Brendan’s love of music has also seen him direct music videos for some of Australia’s leading musicians Sarah Blasko, Kasey Chambers, Alex Lloyd and The Pigram Brothers. Brendan often produces his films as well, and Barefoot Communications is the company home for all of his work.

Brendan is currently developing a range of feature drama and TV projects with Australian and international production partners.

Jan Chapman is one of Australia’s best known producers, with 23 credits to her name. Films produced by Chapman include The Last Days of Chez Nous starring Bruno Ganz (for which she was nominated for the Best Picture at the AFI Awards in 1992), The Piano starring Holly Hunter and Sam Neill (for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture), Love Serenade starring Miranda Otto, Holy Smoke! starring Kate Winslet, and Lantana starring Anthony LaPaglia and Kerry Armstrong. Chapman most recently produced The Daughter (2014) and was an executive producer on the acclaimed horror movie The Babadook.

Chapman met her first husband, film director Phillip Noyce, whilst studying English and Fine Arts at university in the late 1960s. It was during this period that she began working on small, independent films, as part of the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op. In the early 1970s she directed short fiction films and documentaries. Later, she worked in the education department of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and began producing television series, including Sweet and Sour.

She’s been a strong advocate for women in film. “Without the influence and political lobbying of these women I don’t believe I would have had the subconscious conviction...that I could make films, and that what I wanted to say, even if intimate, domestic and personal in scale, was just as interesting as the mythic male legends,” Chapman said in a 2002 Women Australia interview.