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
