Wednesday, December 9, 2015

My career as an Australian filmmaker ends with a whimper; not a bang!

Graeme Mason
Chief Executive
&
Nerida Moore
Senior Development Executive
Screen Australia
Level 7, 45 Jones St
Ultimo 2007     

4th Dec. 2015

Dear Graeme and Nerida

re NEST OF VIPERS (formerly ANGKOR)

Neither of you has had the professional courtesy to acknowledge receipt of, let alone respond to, my letters of September and October re ANGKOR, now NEST OF VIPERS.

You have both, along with the Screen Australia board, and with the tacit approval of the new Minister for the Arts, Mitch Fifield, pronounced my career as an Australian filmmaker dead.

I can, of course, continue to make films; just not in a way that makes it possible for me to take advantage of tax concessions designed to gear into production quality Australian TV and feature film projects. A Pyrrhic victory for Screen Australia’s film bureaucrats and board members.

What a shame it is that Screen Australia has, in such important executive positions, people such as yourselves who not only believe that the banning of a filmmaker is appropriate, but that the filmmaker need not be provided with any evidence of the crime he has been accused of. This is a mind-set that is not conducive to the development or production of exciting film or TV. That you do not understand this only serves to compound the problem.

The project that the Screen Australia computer accepted as an application (ANGKOR), but which you both rejected for assessment and consideration, is now entitled NEST OF VIPERS.

Whilst I have no choice but to accept Screen Australia’s decision to end my career as an Australian filmmaker, the fat lady has not sung yet. VIPERS can and will be made as as non-Australia series.

Please place these three episodes of NEST OF VIPERS on file. I hope that they, and the five others that make up the entire series, cause you some embarrassment in a year or so.

best wishes


James Ricketson