Australian Director's Guild & IF Magazine intimidated into silence by Screen Australia?

Dear members of the Australian Director’s Guild board and Mark Kuban at IF magazine

The ADG and IF share in common a refusal to even mention in print to members or subscribers that an Australian filmmaker has been banned by Screen Australia. This refusal is of close to five years standing now.

I will leave it to others to conjecture as to why both the ADG and IF chose to pretend that this unprecedented ban (not just in Australia but in the world) has simply not happened. In the case of the ADG this omission is more pronounced, given that I was one of the founders of the organization. On these grounds alone, I would have thought the ban on me was newsworthy.

The 10^th May (next week) will mark the 5^th anniversary of the ban. I wonder if either the ADG or IF will consider this to be in any way newsworthy? Next week will also mark the commencement, on my part, of legal action to secure from Screen Australia evidence that I have ever intimidated or placed at risk members of Screen Australia staff; that I have ever given staff at SA any reason to believe that being present in the same room as myself would, in some way, place them in danger. This is, as you know, the latest (of several) reasons given as to why I cannot make any form of development application to Screen Australia. Such an application would, if successful, involve face to face interaction with staff. Shock! Horror! To be in the same room as James Ricketson! We have a duty of care to our staff, declares Screen Australia, and cannot place them at such risk!

With your silence, both the ADG and IF magazine have gone along with this nonsense; no questions asked. Perhaps you even believe that I pose a risk? If so, do you have any evidence in support of this proposition? No.

Again, I will leave it to others to join the dots here and figure out why the ADG and IF choose to maintain such an undignified silence.

If, at this late date, either of you chose to ask a question of Screen Australia, here’s one:

Jane Supit, Head of Legal, maintains that I do in fact have access to the Producer Offset, despite the ban on my meeting with staff. I and my creative collaborators can meet with her, she says. In making this suggestion she is protecting SA’s Producer Offset staff (how very noble of her) and also asking me to acknowledge, by going along with such an arrangement, that I am aware that I pose a threat. Needless to say, this nonsensical proposition is not one that I will go along with. 

More importantly, in making this suggestion Jane Supit is breaching the independence of the Producer Offset unit within Screen Australia. This unit is intended to be separate from Screen Australia and yet here is Jane Supit offering to fulfil its function. Is this legal? If legal, is it appropriate that Ms Supit should be supplanting the Producer Offset unit in this way?

I do not know the answer to this question and, based on the last five years of my experience with the ADG and IF, you will not even bother to ask the question.

Screen Australia has, for five years now, worked on the presumption that a combination of bureaucratic bullying and denying me access to evidence of my alleged offenses through FOI would neutralise me. In this wish Screen Australia has been ably assisted by both the ADG and IF – both of you more interested in currying favour with Screen Australia than with reporting on news that might show Screen Australia in a bad light.

I will leave it to others to make their own judgments as to why this might be?

Whether the legal action now commenced will result in my winning my case in court or in failure is not of great concern to me. The legal process I will, if nothing else, force Screen Australia to produce evidence of my guilt. This will mean, in practice, that Screen Australia will have to admit, in public, that there is no evidence. Of course along the way SA will almost certainly go to great lengths to withhold from the court the evidence sought by it and will spend a substantial amount of money paying lawyers to do so. 

This legal process will be of no interest to either the ADG or to IF magazine, will it? You will not bother to mention it in either newsletters or in the pages of IF: “Nothing to see here.”

In time your collective silence will be seen in the light in which it deserves to be seen.

My latest letter to Senator Mitch Fifield may be of interest:

http://jamesricketson.blogspot.com.au/2017/05/as-5th-anniversary-of-screen-australian.html

cheers

James

"Ships in the Night" questions regarding making an application

Graeme Mason &

Members of the Screen Australia board

Screen Australia

Level 7, 45 Jones St

Ultimo 2007                                                                                                  

1^st May 2017

Dear Graeme and SA board members

re “Ships in the Night”

I have received no response to my letter of 18^th April re “Offending Women”.

Given my inability to earn a living as a filmmaker, as a result of the ban you have placed on me, I have no choice but to accept Channel 7’s offer.

As the 5^th anniversary of the SA ban on me approaches – next week – I must use this money to commence legal proceedings to obtain the evidence I have been asking for this past five years of my having intimidated and placed at risk members of Screen Australia’s staff with my correspondence prior to May 2012; of the ‘highly offensive conduct’ that has led to the May 2014 and May 2016 bans on me.

I am writing this letter in relation to another project of mine, “Ships in the Night” - a low budget feature set almost entirely inside a taxi; with a small ensemble cast:

I cannot apply to SA for any form of development money for “Ships in the Night” as this would, you attest, place SA staff at risk.  And I cannot meet with SA staff to go through the process of accessing the Producer Offset in the way other producers can for the same reason – this would place staff at risk.

Jane Supit suggests that I and my creative collaborators could meet with her (Head of Legal) to discuss the Producer Offset. To do so would carry with it both my own and my collaborator’s implicit acceptance that I do indeed pose a risk to SA staff. This would serve to further entrench, within the film industry, the notion that I am a person who both intimidates and places at risk members of SA staff: a forced confession of guilt.

In the absence of any evidence that I pose a risk to SA staff (and none has ever been presented to me) I am entitled to follow the same procedures that my fellow filmmakers follow in their dealings with Screen Australia; to meet with relevant staff as I have with all film funding bodies in Australia this past 44 years.

There are four options open to me vis a vis producing “Ships in the Night”:

(1) James Ricketson as producer, director and screenwriter.

(2) James Ricketson as director and screenwriter – a second person producing.

(3) James Ricketson as screenwriter – a director and producer attached to the project.

(4) James Ricketson, in all key roles (including playing the lead actor) producing the film for a miniscule budget and applying to Screen Australia for post-production funds to complete the film.

Are there any circumstances in which option (1) is possible as far as Screen Australia is concerned? If you are seriously concerned about the safety of Screen Australia staff in a meeting with me in person (to discuss both development funding and the Producer Offset), perhaps the meeting could take place via skype or in a conference call?  

If I am the director and screenwriter only, option (2), would it be possible for the producer to meet with SA staff in person – with myself on skype or conference call?

Option (3). Could the producer and director of “Ships in the Night” meet with SA staff to discuss both development funding and the Producer Offset? If I am the screenwriter only, would there ever be a need for SA staff to meet with me?

If none of these three options is acceptable to Screen Australia, I can pursue option (4). This would entail self-funding (perhaps with some crowd-funding) the production. From the footage shot a ‘trailer’ could be prepared and presented to Screen Australia for consideration as a project worthy of post-production funding. There would be no need for any member of SA staff to meet with me as the ‘trailer’ would speak for itself of the feature film’s merits and sales potential?

It is your custom not to respond to any correspondence from me but I would appreciate it if you could make an exception in this case so that I know what parameters I can work within as regards Screen Australia’s possible involvement with “Ships in the Night”. If none of the four options I have mentioned is acceptable to Screen Australia it would be good to know this now; to be clear where I stand.

best wishes

James Ricketson

cc Senator Mitch Fifield, Minister for the Arts

Mr Colin Neave, Commonwealth Ombudsman

Ms Louise Vardanega, Australian Government Solicitor (acting)

The Australian Director’s Guild Board

The Information Commissioner

As the 5th anniversary of the Screen Australian ban on me approaches, a letter to Mitch Fifield, Minister for the Arts

James Ricketson

316 Whale Beach Road

Palm Beach 2108

jamesricketson@gmail.com

0499214325

Senator Mitch Fifield

Minister for Communications and the Arts

Level 2


4 National Circuit


Barton, ACT 2600                                                                                         

1^st May 2017

Dear Senator Fifield

Following on from my letters of 21^st and 27^th Feb. As with all my correspondence, you have failed to acknowledge receipt of these!

As you will be aware, it is virtually impossible for me to make films in Australia as a result of the ban placed on me by Screen Australia. This ban, in operation for five years years now, prevents me from making any form of development application to Screen Australia. It also prevents me from accessing the Producer Offset in the way that my fellow filmmakers are able to. It is Screen Australia’s contention that meeting with SA staff would place them at risk. SA refuses to provide any evidence in support of this proposition. My attempts to secure such evidence through FOI applications are knocked back by CEO Graeme Mason the grounds that it is not in the public interest that I be appraised of the evidence of my alleged offences.

Jane Supit, Head of Legal at Screen Australia, has suggested to me that one way to protect SA staff from whatever risk I pose (the nature of this ‘risk’ has never been explained to me!) would be for me and my creative collaborators to meet with her rather than the SA staff members other filmmakers meet with to discuss funding and the Producer Offset. For me and my team to meet with Ms Supit under these conditions would be to provide our tacit agreement to the proposition that I pose a risk to staff. This I am not prepared to do and nor should I be asked to. My creative collaborators and members of the film industry could quite justifiably conclude that Jane Supit’s offer was a generous one  - extended to a ‘dangerous’ filmmaker; that I was, by going along with such an arrangement, acknowledging my guilt.

Jane Supit has made reference in a letter to my “highly offensive conduct”; providing this as a reason for the continuance of the ban on me. This is a lie. It is defamatory. It is in line with comments made on and off the written record by various members of Screen Australia management and the Board this past five years. In order to justify its ban, in the absence of any evidence, Screen Australia must vilify me; must present me as a danger to staff; must refuse to communicate with me, to answer questions and to characterize my asking of questions, my asking for evidence in support of the allegations made against me, as “harassment.” This tactic has worked. I am now alienated from the Australian Director’s Guild, a craft body of which I was a founder. The ADG will not even mention the ban on me in its newsletter, let alone request of SA evidence in support of the ban.

If indeed my letters have ever made it to your desk you have chosen to ignore them. You have not even had the courtesy to acknowledge their receipt. I am now left with no alternative but to commence legal action to secure, from Screen Australia, evidence of the intimidation and placing at risk I am allegedly guilty of; of ‘highly offensive conduct’ that Ms Supit refers to. This will be an expensive and time-consuming process – both for myself and for Screen Australia. It need not have transpired if you, or any previous Minister for the Arts this past 5 years, had simply picked up the phone and said to Graeme Mason (and previously Ruth Harley), “Please provide Mr Ricketson with the evidence he has requested of the offenses that have led to his being banned.” As I have made clear on countless occasions, I would  accept the ban on me willingly if there were any truth to the allegations made against me.

The damage done to my career this past 5 years cannot be undone. Leaving aside the fact that I have not been able to complete “Chanti’s World” as a result and must sell my “Offending Women” footage for a pittance, I calculate that the ban has cost me at least $300,000 - $60,000 for each year that I have not been able to work as an Australian filmmaker.

The damage done to my reputation, however, can be undone when it becomes clear, through the courts,  that the reasons given for the original 2012 ban were fallacious; that the reasons given for the two subsequent bans are equally fallacious. That the acquisition of the evidence of my alleged offenses should require legal action is absurd.

Quite apart from the damage done to my career and reputation there is another factor that comes into play now as far as I am concerned –  freedom of speech. Once the facts are known (namely that I have not intimidated or placed anyone at risk) it will become clear that the original ban on me was Ruth Harley and Fiona Cameron’s ham-fisted attempt to silence a critic; to punish me for exercising my right of free speech. This has nothing at all to do with my being a filmmaker but goes to the heart of a much more important problem we confront in Australia – namely that bit by bit, incrementally, ours has become a society in which severe punishments can await anyone who has the temerity to speak their mind freely; who ask questions that senior bureaucrats do not wish to answer.

best wishes

James Ricketson