The previous 8 pieces of communication (#1 - #8) constitute my attempts, this past
six months, to bring this farcical dispute to an fair and just end based on
verifiable facts.
The Hon George Brandis MP
Minister for the Arts
Commonwealth Parliament Offices
Level 361 Eagle St
Brisbane QLD 4000
29th April 2014
Dear Senator Brandis
Following on from my letter of 6th
Jan. Some questions:
- How much script development
money did Martha Coleman earmark for Goalpost Pictures when working at Screen
Australia before joining the company in Jan this year?
- How much development and
production money has Screen Australia provided to Goalpost Pictures since
Rosemary Blight became a member of the board?
- At the March 2014 board
meeting, was Goalpost’s HOLDING THE MAN really one of the two only film
projects deserving of Screen Australia production funding?
- Is there any limit to the
amount of funding that the Screen Australia board can vote to provide to board
members film and TV projects?
- Has the board ever knocked back
a project presented to it by a board member?
Is it possible to even ask such
questions without being accused of intimidating or placing at risk members of
the Screen Australia board; of being banned for having the temerity to ask such
questions?
The intention of the Screen
Australia board two years ago, when it voted to ban me for asking questions such
as these, was to do all in its power to destroy my career as an Australian
filmmaker. The Board has succeeded in this goal, leaving me with little option
but to re-write most of my screenplays in such a way as to hide their
Australian origin and to render them American (and in one case) British stories.
In the event that any of my
screenplays is produced as a non-Australian film, the Screen Australia board’s
victory in banning me will be a pyrrhic one! At present it seems that the most
likely contender will be LIFT FOR A LADY (developed in large part by the
Australian Film Commission), retitled BAG LADY. If the film is produced as an
American story the board will have achieved…will have achieved, precisely what?
These are the people in whom future
of Australian film has been entrusted!
I am now developing most of my film
projects in countries where it is the quality of my screenplays that counts; in
which producers have zero concern as to whether they like or dislike me personally
or feel that I ought to be punished (regardless of the quality of my screenplays)
for having the temerity to question their honesty, their integrity, their
commitment to the precepts of transparency and accountability. My screenplays
are either good, have potential or are deemed to be without merit. This is as it
should be. Only in a film culture as parochial as Australia’s is the quality of
my screenwriting of secondary importance to whether I am friends with, or a
critic of, those who control the script development purse strings.
Parochialism at its worst!
The real shame here is not that I
have been banned (I will survive such small-minded bureaucratic nonsense) but
the mind-set that such a ban reveals in those within senior management at Screen
Australia who make decisions as to which films get made and which are allowed
to wither on the vine.
A couple of years ago a fairly
senior bureaucrat at Screen Australia wishing, with the best of intentions, to
be helpful, said to me, “James why do you
make it so difficult for yourself by criticizing us all the time?” To which
I replied, “It is not your job to be
backing projects by filmmakers who don’t criticize you and punish those who do.
It is your job to back the best projects – regardless of your personal feelings
about particular filmmakers.”
Members of the Screen Australia
board may well have good personal reasons to dislike a particular filmmaker but
their own personal animosity should not interfere with their core job as board
members – to develop, nurture and assist into production film and TV projects
of the highest possible standard that speak of and to both Australian and
international audiences. This is not the
way Screen Australia functioned under Ruth Harley’s stewardship, however. Alas,
it is Australian film, Australian culture, that has suffered as a result.
That three fellow filmmakers
(four when Rachel Perkins was also a board member) would wish to destroy the
career of a fellow filmmaker simply boggles my mind. Regardless of their
filmmaking talents, the lack of accountability on the part of Claudia Karvan,
Richard Keddie and Rosemary Blight, (refusing to provide evidence of the crimes
that led them to ban me) speaks volumes of what is wrong with Screen Australia. The pettiness, the small-mindedness, the
vindictiveness they have displayed in banning me (along with their fellow board
members) runs counter to the whole notion of developing and financing vibrant
ground-breaking films with the ‘Wow!’ factor that will excite Australian and
international audiences.
The board members you should
consider appointing during your tenure as Minister, are those capable of
putting aside all notions of shared history between applicants and senior
bureaucrats (good and bad); putting aside animosity (deserved or undeserved)
and being able to base their judgments purely and simply on the quality of
projects and not on an assessment of the personality of the filmmaker. The
Australian equivalent of Lars von Trier would be banned by the board as it is
constituted now because he/she almost definitely not be ‘nice’ to them. On the
contrary s/he would probably be quite rude to them and possibly treat them with
contempt. I am not a great fan of Lars von Trier and suspect that I would not
want to count him amongst my circle of friends, but so what! I don’t
particularly like most of his films either, but so what! If it were my job to
assess one of his projects I would do so on the basis of the quality of his
project, in my opinion, and not on the basis of whether or not he was ‘nice’ to
me.
The corollary of punishing Screen
Australia critics, of course, is rewarding sycophants, friends, former lovers
and business associates. In short, the nepotism that has been rife within
Screen Australia for all its short history as Australia’s peak film funding
body. Nepotism is not just wrong for the most obvious of reasons, it also plays
a significant (and deleterious) role in the production of the poor quality
films that have come out of the development and funding processes Screen
Australia has had been in place for more than five years now. The lack of
transparency and accountability within the organization, (including assessors
and the assessment process) has allowed mediocrity to flourish and for repeated
failure on the part of filmmakers (and Project Manager and assessors) to be
rewarded - the triumph of bureaucratic process over the creative impulse,
exemplified by Chief Operating Officer, Fiona Cameron.
If the basic principles of
natural justice were operating within Screen Australia, the entire board would
be sacked for having banned me without providing me with one iota of evidence
of the crimes I was accused of in May 2012. This will not happen of course.
There are now too many people, including those within your office, who know that
my allegedly intimidating correspondence does not exist, to back down now.
Better to sacrifice one filmmaker than to acknowledge, publicly, what all the
evidence makes clear – namely that Fiona Cameron, a very senior and powerful
members of Screen Australia’s senior management, is a Machiavellian liar. Such
is the Screen Australia that you now have under your wing, Minister. Good luck
in your attempts to get high quality films produced through organization riven
with systemic problems. There will be some good films made, of course, but
these will not be because the system in place is working but despite it.
The board’s decision to try and
convict me in the absence of any evidence does not, I am sure, have anything to
do with animosity towards me personally. I have never met most of those who
have banned me. The ban on me is about sending a very strong message to any future
critics of Screen Australia, to any filmmakers who might have the temerity to
ask questions or complain about their shoddy treatment: criticize senior
management in public, criticize the board in public, and you will suffer the
same fate as James Ricketson.
If you believe, Minister, that
senior management at Screen Australia and the SA board should be transparent in
their dealings with the film community and accountable for the decisions they
make, ask them to provide you with whatever evidence they have suggesting that
I intimidated and placed at risk members of staff with my correspondence. If
they cannot do so, the question must surely, arise: “What other and more significant issues are
senior management and the Screen Australia Board not being transparent and
accountable about?” With millions of dollars of tax-payer monies up for grabs,
with no complaints process to speak of within Screen Australia, and with a
board that bans critics, the stage is set for corruption to flourish and to go
undetected.
The issue here, now, is not the
ban placed on me (the horse has bolted, the damage done) but the fact that the
Screen Australia board could implement such a ban without without providing any
evidence at all in support of it; without being accountable to anyone and with
no-one within your office even expecting such accountability.
best wishes
James Ricketson
