Regardless of
whether or not Screen Australia ever lifts its ban on me, Fiona Cameron has
declared that I may never again apply to Screen Australia for development funds
for CHANTI’S WORLD – a documentary that I have been self-funding for 18 years.
Fiona justifies this particular ban on her own creative interpretation of
Screen Australia guidelines. It is the creative interpretation of SA’s
guidelines to favour friends and disfavor perceived enemies (critics, for
instance!) that should be of concern to the film and TV community. Yes, Ruth
Harley is gone but Fiona Cameron remains!
Could it be that the mind-set (shared by the Screen Australia Board and Fiona Cameron alike) that
even considers banning filmmaker-critics has a negative impact on the quality
of the films developed and green lit for production monies by Screen Australia?
Fiona
Cameron
Chief
Operating Officer
Level
7, 45 Jones St
Ultimo 2007
26th Nov 2013
Dear
Fiona
Now that Ruth Harley and Ross
Mathews are no longer players in the sequence of events that lead to my being
banned, only you remain in a position to answer the questions I have been
asking this past couple years. I trust, in the interests of transparency and
accountability, that Graeme Mason will ask them of you – given that it is now
he who must either lift the ban and keep it in place. Or, perhaps, even extend
it by yet another year!
Could you please explain to
Graeme just how it was that you decided, (along with Martha Coleman and
Elizabeth Grinston), in the early days of Screen Australia, that I was not a
‘proven producer’ and so unable to act as a mentor-producer to young
filmmakers? As you knew well, and as I pointed out to you many times in my
correspondence, I had been producing films for close to 40 years and been
called upon more than once by the Australian Film Commission to act as a mentor
to young filmmakers.
Could you please explain to
Graeme how you (along with Elizabeth Grinston) arrived at the conclusion that I
was not a producer of BLACKFELLAS – despite my presenting you with legal
documents (contracts) that left not a shadow of doubt that I had been the sole
producer of the project for its entire development process (more than three
years, including the bulk of the financing) up until a few weeks before the
commencement of Principal Photography?
Could you please point out to
Graeme where, in my correspondence, I had indicated that I believe CHANTI’S
WORLD had been ‘greenlit’? And why it was that you put so much effort, over a
period of close to two years, into not providing me with copies of this
correspondence? Why it was that I had to make two applications through FOI?
Could you please explain to
Graeme why it was, on 15th Oct, during business hours, that you saw
fit to call the police and have me arrested in the Screen Australia foyer when
all I was doing was sitting there, harming no-one, waiting for you to provide
me with evidence that I had intimidated and placed at risk members of Screen
Australia’s staff. Yes, you had told me in the foyer that you felt intimidated
but your feeling intimidated is something quite different from my intimidating
you. To refresh your memory: http://jamesricketson.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/as-i-sip-my-soy-latte-in-screen.html
Could you please explain to
Graeme why you felt it necessary, a second time, to call the police and have me
arrested again – again for doing nothing other than sit in the foyer of Screen
Australia’s offices waiting for answers to my many questions. On this occasion
I had to spend the weekend in jail – a somewhat harsh punishment for having the
temerity to expect you, as Chief Operating Officer, to be transparent and
accountable in your dealings with me.
Could you please explain to Graeme
why, when Ruth Harley handed to you my complaint about yourself, you did not
decline to investigate on the grounds of a severe case of conflict of interest.
Yes, Ruth’s decision to ask you to investigate a complaint about yourself was
stupid, but so was your decision to conduct the investigation yourself – as was
your response: “I refuse to correspond with you any further on this matter.”
I imagine that you will find my
reference to yourself as ‘stupid’ to be intimidating and, perhaps, reason to
ask Graeme to ask the Board to extend my ban by another year. You are not
stupid. You are very bright, but then so was Machiavelli and so are many
bullying bureaucrats – our most recent former Prime Minister being a prime
example.
If the words ‘transparency’ and
‘accountability’ meant anything to the Screen Australia board, you would (and
should) be sacked for the incompetence and dishonesty you have brought to your
handling of what was, at the outset, a minor and easy to resolve problem –
namely that Claire Jager failed to view my CHANTI’S WORLD ‘promo’ and that
Julie Overton decided to render an application from myself for the same project
as ‘inappropriate’ when both she and Ross Mathews had deemed it, some weeks
earlier, to be ‘appropriate’.
As I have stated many times,
these were minor cockups that could have been easily rectified had you not seen
your job as supporting Screen Australia staff in the face of any criticism –
even if this meant placing on file whatever nonsense you liked to justify your
lack of the impartiality requited of you in dealing with a complaint.
If you cannot provide Graeme with
satisfactory answers you should offer your apology to me for your multiple
cockups; as should the Screen Australia Board for having given its imprimatur
to a ban based no in facts or evidence but in Ruth Harley’s spiteful attempt at
silencing a critic who asked to many questions and was not prepared to put up
with spin answers.
best
wishes
James
Ricketson
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