So,
By the afternoon I was getting the hang of all this conferencing. It helped that I ate none of the muffins, biscuits, cookies or friands on offer. In fact, I barely noticed them, because I was concentrating on the concepts that some very committed doco people were getting across in the sessions. And not eating the free baked goods.
First, in the session What’s Cooking In The World of Australian Documentary?, DAVID TILEY, editor of Screen Hub presented an elegant overview of Australian documentary world; although, a number of his insights also applied to drama equally as well.
He spoke of the different types of documentary maker and noted the homemade variety and the ‘indie’ indie among others. He also highlighted what he saw as a knowledge and skills gap that seemed to be based on generational change. He pointed out that there were filmmakers and others now in their late 50s who have had a lot responsibility for decision-making placed in them for almost thirty years. Whereas there were people who were now in their late 30s, who were supposed to be grateful for getting a job as a runner. There was much nodding around the room at this one.
After considering a tea cake or a macadamia cookie and rejecting both, I attended the session in which the ‘three amigos’, the CEOs of Film Australia, the Australian Film Commission and the Film Finance Corporation discussed the process of amalgamating these agencies into a Super-Agency by July 1st 2008.
Unfortunately, two of the amigos, FFC’s Brian Rosen and AFC’s Chris Fitchett were back east attending to this very business. DARYL KARP of Film Australia gave the update with assistance from Moderator TANIA CHAMBERS from the NSW Film and Television Office.
Karp made it clear how they saw their job as choosing low-risk strategies for transition. They are charged with making the merger happen without job redundancies, but have to consolidate management and finance. All programs currently running at all three organisations will be in place until December 08. Locating the super-agency under one roof, they saw as desirable but the actual decision – where will the building be – needs to be made by the new CEO and Board. A plethora of other major decisions will, of course, be the job of the new management.
The Three Amigos who are also three quarters of a Steering Committee have to report constantly to Federal Minister for Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett. The government is prioritising the legislation to approve the merger because it all has to go through Parliament by the end of March in order to make the July 1st changeover.
The bill is having a first reading in Parliament during the conference and the text of Minister Garret’s speech was zipped into the room during the session. Chambers and Karp read out salient parts of the speech and did some interpretation on the run.
Garrett’s words probably hadn’t been this carefully examined since the days when he wrote, “L. Ron Hubbard can’t save your life, Superboy takes a Plutonium wife.” But that was a very long time ago.
See you on on Day 2,
Phil Jeng Kane
The contents of this Blog are the sole opinions of the author Phil Jeng Kane, and it does not represent the views of ScreenWest or the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).
Tags: AFC, Brian Rosen, Chris Fitchett, Daryl Karp, David Tiley, FFC, Film Australia, Minister for, NSW FTO, Screen Hub, Super Agency, Tania Chambers
