Mr. M. Ebeid AM, Chair
Members of the Screen Australia Boad
Screen Australia
GPO Box 3984
Sydney 2001 14th August 2025
Dear Mr. Ebeid and Members of the Screen Australia Board
As you know, thirteen years ago CEO Ruth Harley banned me from making applications to Screen Australia. She claimed, without presenting any evidence, that I had harassed, intimidated and placed at risk members of Screen Australia staff. She steadfastly refused to provide any evidence in support of her allegations. Indeed, she characterized my continuing to ask that I be provided with evidence as harassment.
Ms. Harley’s intention in banning me was, it seems, threefold:
(1) Make it difficult for me to produce films in Australia.
(2) Cause me reputational damage and
(3) Intimidate fellow filmmaker Screen Australia critics into silence.
She achieved all three of her objectives.
In 2017, finding it impossible to earn money as a filmmaker in Australia, I sought legal advice. (see attached documents below). I was much less concerned with winning my case than I was in forcing Screen Australia to provide the court with evidence in support of the allegations made against me. Fundamental to any legal proceeding, is the requirement that the accused be provided with evidence of their crime. Mere allegations will not suffice.
A few days away from commencing legal proceedings in early June 2017 I was arrested in Cambodia, charged with being a spy and spent 15 months in prison.
When I was released, I had neither the money nor the desire to proceed legally against SA. I figured that the ban on me would now be in the past. I was wrong. Graeme Mason made it quite clear that I was persona non grata and that the ban remained. He had decided, it seems, that the narrative presented by Ruth to the Board, and to the film industry, reflected the truth; that I had intimidated, harassed and placed Screen Australia staff at risk.
In mid 2025 it seems that you and the Board also accept this narrative as reflective of the truth. Indeed, the word ‘harass’ has been used again by Screen Australia and this letter is probably, in your mind, further evidence of harassment on my part?
The ban on me has never been formally lifted, and may well still be in place. It certainly seems that way from the way my ‘Chanti’s World’ application has been treated by Screen Australia.
Am I guilty as charged, or innocent? Where does the truth lie? In Screen Australia’s files.
There are four options available to us to resolve this matter once and for all:
(1) The relevant person at Screen Australia reads through all the correspondence that led to my banning and identifies evidence of my guilt. Time consuming.
(2) I make a Freedom of Information request for this evidence. If this involves my paying a fee for this search to be conducted, I am prepared to pay it - whatever the sum may be. Time consuming and expensive.
(3) Feed my correspondence – letters and emails - into ChatGPT, GROK or any Large Language Model that Screen Australia trusts, asking it to identify anything I wrote that is clear evidence of intimidation, harassment or placing Screen Australia staff at risk, or could reasonably be construed as being so.
(4) The simplest way to determine my guilt or otherwise is probably to be found in one document. When Ruth Harley presented to the SA Board her argument as to why I should be banned, back in 2012, she must have included in her request evidence of my having intimidated SA staff in my correspondence. This one document will provide the current SA board with evidence one way or another. Locating this document would take minutes only. I would like a copy of it. SA can redact all names contained in it. The only part of it that is relevant here is what I wrote that led to the ban. I shoulc point out, lest there be any confusion here, that there was only one conversation between me and a member of SA staff – with Fiona Cameron in which she declared that she ‘felt’ intimidated.
There are two possible outcomes of this exercise in transparency and accountability:
(a) Clear evidence of my having intimidated, harassed and placed at risk SA staff, in which case my being banned in 2012 was justified.
or
(b) There is no evidence at all to support these allegations, in which case SA must acknowledge this, so that we can put this unpleasant incident behind us. I require no pro forma apology and will not proceed any further with this matter. I merely want to be able to pick up my career from where it came to a virtual standstill a dozen years ago - without this Damoclean sword hanging over me; to bring to an end the reputational damage that Screen Australia’s false allegations have caused me.
As did Ruth Harley a dozen years ago, you have declared, on behalf of the Board, that this matter is closed and that you have no intention of communicating with me further. I trust, in the interests of fair play, that this request for evidence does not falls on deaf ears.
Cheers
Jamesa
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