Claudia Karvan
Screen Australia Board Member
Level 4
150 William St
Woolloomooloo
22nd May 2013
Dear
Claudia
My letter to the Script
Development section of Screen Australia speaks for itself.
I have had no trouble at all
finding actors prepared to work for nothing on SHIPS IN THE NIGHT and intend to
make the film for virtually no budget at all if need be.
I have not included any money for
myself in my $5,400 development budget so I will not suffer at all financially
if Screen Australia decides to refuse to consider my application on the grounds
that I remain a banned filmmaker! It will be the actors who do not get paid for
the readings who will suffer financially. The casting consultant and actors –
all of whom are keen (if they get the roles) to work for nothing on SHIPS – are
mystified as to why I have been banned! This is, of course, the case for the
bulk of my fellow filmmakers – with the exception of those who steadfastly
believe that Ruth Harley, yourself and the other Board members would not impose
a ban on me for no reason.
It is far too late now for you or
Rachel or Richard (or any member of the Board) to apologize for imposing and
maintaining a ban on me based on no evidence at all. However, you might at
least, individually and/or collectively, have the decency to acknowledge that
Ruth Harley and the Board were wrong to impose the ban in the first place.
Or, if such public
acknowledgement would involve too much egg on all of your faces, why not just
quietly lift the ban with no comment?
Alternatively, if you have evidence that I have intimidated
and placed at risk members of Screen Australia’s staff, please do make this
evidence public so that I can, deservedly, be
pilloried by my fellow filmmakers.
best
wises
James
Ricketson
Two weeks later
It comes as no surprise that Claudia, Rachel
Perkins and Richard Keddie (to whom I also sent the same letter) have refused
to even acknowledge receipt of it. It comes as no surprise that Screen
Australia has not acknowledged receipt of my application or responded in any
way to it. Not only am I a banned filmmaker, persona non grata, I have now
virtually ceased to exist as far as Screen Australia is concerned. And why? The
stated reason is that reason is that I have, in my correspondence, intimidated
and placed at risk members of Screen Australia’s staff. No evidence has ever
been provided in support of this proposition because there is no evidence. I am
not guilty. But being ‘not guilty’ is irrelevant in the eyes of Screen
Australia’s senior management, the Screen Australia Board and Minister for the
Arts Simon Crean.
What has actually happened here is that (a) I have
been a vocal and public critic of Screen Australia and (b) I have accused both
Ruth Harley and Fiona Cameron of lying in a pubic forum.
Apropos (a) the purpose of the ban on me was not
just to silence me but to send a clear message to anyone else in the film
community who might wish to follow suit:
“Don’t criticize us in public or
you will regret it.”
As for (b), if I am lying about Ruth and Fiona
playing fast and loose with the truth this would be so easy to demonstrate by
their simply backing up their assertions about what I have written in my
correspondence with actual evidence. Given that all of my communication with
Screen Australia has been via letters and emails this would be incredibly easy.
“On such and such a date Mr
Ricketson wrote XXX and on such and such a date Mr Ricketson wrote Y and on
such and such a date Mr Ricketson wrote ZZZ.”
Three examples would be sufficient to prove fairly
conclusively that I was guilty as charged. And I would not be able to deny that
I had written such words as they would be on file. The public release of this
one paragraph would demolish me; destroy my credibility entirely. (b) will
never happen because Fiona Cameron and Ruth Harley will never find on file
anything in my correspondence that bears witness to my having intimidated or
placed At risk anyone within Screen Australia.
One would like to think that when there is cogent
evidence that the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive have lied, that
the Board of the publicly funded entity such as SA would insist that both
either provide evidence of the existence of intimidating correspondence or
apologize for having placed false statements on record! But no, the Screen
Australia Board likewise has no interest in evidence, in providing the
filmmaker charged with serious offenses an opportunity to be appraised of the
evidence in support of the charges or an opportunity to defend himself against
them.
Why is this? This question has puzzled me a good
deal this past year and the only explanation I have been able to come up with
that makes any sense is that on 10th May last year the Board simply
ratified Ruth Harley’s ban without asking for evidence in support of it. This
would not have been an unreasonable position to take. After all, the Screen
Australia Board should be able to believe that its Chief Operating Officer and
Chief Executive provide it with accurate information upon which Board Members
can make informed decisions.
At some point shortly after 10th May it
must have become apparent to the Board that there was no evidence of my having
intimidated or placed at risk members of Screen Australia’s staff so why didn’t
the Board lift the ban and apologize?
I can only presume (because no other explanation
occurs to me) that the Board felt it could not reverse the decision it had made
without considerable egg on the faces of the members for having made an ill
judged decision in the first place. And so it has been, if my theory is
correct, for the past year. Now, of course, any reversal of the Board’s
decision would highlight the fact that it has known all this time that I was
banned on the basis of false charges – not a good look for a Board that has to
make decisions involving millions of dollars of Australian tax-payers money.
The question could (and of course should) be raised:
“If this is an example of the due
diligence the Screen Australia Board shows in banning a filmmaker, what due
diligence is applied to decisions relating to the allocation of large sums of
money to select members of the film industry.”
I write ‘select’ because, clearly, only a
relatively small number of film and television projects can be blessed with
Screen Australia funding – either in the development or production phases. If a
filmmaker can be banned by the Chief Executive on a whim, no questions asked,
what is to prevent this same Chief Executive applying her whimsical nature to
blessing a project with Screen Australia funding? If the Screen Australia Board
asks no questions but simply believes what the Chief Executive tells them, (not
an unreasonable position to take) how can we in the industry ever be sure that
projects have been funded on their merits and not on the basis of the Chief
Executive’s whims?
Whilst my being banned is a nuisance for me it is
not the end of the world. Script writing is not a capital intensive occupation
(though documentary filmmaking is, alas) and I continue to write my
screenplays. What is important here is not the fate of one individual filmmaker
but that, in the absence of a functioning complaints system, with a Chief
Executive and Chief Operating officer who play fast and loose with the truth
and with a Board that is not interested in facts, in evidence, the stage is set
for all sorts of corruption to occur within Screen Australia.
To be clear here. I am not suggesting that there
is corruption within Screen Australia. What I am saying, however, is that there
are no mechanisms in place to prevent such corruption.
If, instead of being a filmmaker merely fighting
for my right to be provided with evidence of my crimes, I were a whistle-blower
with evidence of corruption within Screen Australia, what do you think would
happen to me if I wrote to the Screen Australia Board? To the Minister for the
Arts?
Any fellow filmmaker with cogent evidence of
corruption (just as I have cogent evidence of lying) who wished to do battle
with Screen Australia’s senior management would only have to look at what has
happened to me to get some sense of what he or she had in store for them. So,
would they speak out or remain silent? If they wished to keep working within the
film industry they would be well advised to keep their evidence to themselves.
Is this what is happening? Or, to phrase the question in a different way:
“Why is it that the film industry
as a whole has taken no interest at all in my having been banned? Can the
industry not see, if I am not guilty as charged, what a dangerous precedent has
been set here?”
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