Our take on Screen Forever 37
Image shows Ade Djajamihardja, an Asian Australian man in a wheelchair, speaking to a group of conference delegates sitting around a white picnic table. A man’s body with one hand tucked into his jeans can be seen holding the back of Ade’s wheelchair. Another table of seated delegates in front of a background of bright green astroturf is visible in the background.
After a brief time away from work (due to post-conference exhaustion) we are back firing on all cylinders and ready to give you the lowdown on SF37.
Held at the Star Casino on the idyllic Gold Coast, Screen Forever 37 was a jammed-packed three-day industry conference for anyone and everyone involved in screen business. Discussions centred around current market trends and opportunities, the politics of on-screen representation, and the need to support Australian screen stories, both locally and on streaming platforms accessed by Australian audiences.
We’ve picked out a few of our favourite moments from the conference – both as reminders of the important advocacy that is happening in our industry already, and as a showcase for for those who are not yet familiar with the work of our allies, Disabled colleagues, and friends. This will be a bit of a monster blog post, as we feel it is important to capture and celebrate the great work that is happening across our industry.
If it is accessible to you, we recommend watching the wrap up videos from Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 from the Screen Producers Association YouTube channel. You might recognise our co-founder, Ade Djajamihardja participating in the Screenrights Speed Networking Breakfast and on stage as part of The Future is Accessible panel, produced by Stephanie Dower, of Dower Productions.
Image shows Phoebe and Ade arm in arm, smiling at the camera. They are both seated and wearing matching white clothes. A tea and coffee station and an indoor palm are visible in the background.
SF37 - Day 1
On Day 1, Aaron Fao’osa delivered the Hector Crawford Memorial Lecture to a standing ovation. He discussed the barriers he faced as a member of a marginalised community trying to make a career in the screen industry, and his lived experience of forced entrepreneurship. Aaron also spoke at length about the social power of our industry, which shares stories and “changes hearts and minds”. He highlighted the lack of on-screen representation for the Torres Strait Islander community, which makes up 10% of First Nations peoples in Australia today, but receives very little in terms of recognition or funding opportunities. As a member of The Treaty Advancement Committee, Aaron also educated delegates on his reasons for voting yes in our upcoming referendum, to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in our constitution.
Image shows Ade and his support worker Kevin standing together and smiling at the camera. Ade is leaning on his walking stick, “Indie”. Behind them is a three part promotional billboard with gold palm motifs and a mint green panel with gold lettering which reads ‘DORSETT’ and black text which reads ‘Vibrant’.
SF37 - Day 2
Of the many sessions we enjoyed on Day 2, the Arguing About Authenticity panel was particularly interesting – themes ranged from avoiding tokenism to creating cultural safety and ensuring co-development, as well as the need for authentic stories. Katrina Irawati Graham spoke about the ethics of producing screen content that can both advocate for and compound the trauma that many individuals from marginalised communities experience. It is the responsibility of all of us to approach this work with trauma informed practice.
After Ana Tiwary’s important advocacy, we feel impassioned to add – it is impossible to represent any culture authentically without including disability. Disabled people are very intersectional, we are not just Disabled – we are proudly LGBTQI+, culturally and linguistically diverse, and First Nations. We are neurodiverse, and we are people with living experience of diverse mental health realities. We are Deaf, deaf, and Hard of Hearing. We are young, we are old, and we are skilled and talented. We tell stories in a way that no one else can. Next time you are working on a project that prioritises authenticity, we urge you to ask yourself, who is not included? How can we respectfully include disability in this story?
The Value of Creating a Psychologically Safe Workplace workshop also piqued our interest – panellists shared their lived experience of burnout and overwhelm in a fast-paced industry that often, fails to prioritise wellbeing. The discussion on prioritising psychological safety in production environments was an important start to the deeper conversation around respecting mental health in our industry. If you are interested in engaging with this much-needed professional development, stay tuned. We look forward to sharing the work we have done with mental health and arts advocate Heidi Everett of Schizy Inc., in Module 6 of our Disability Justice Lens: Equity and Inclusion Training for the Screen Industry.
We also had the pleasure of sitting on the panel for Stephanie Dower’s session, The Future is Accessible. This all-star cast was moderated by TCM (a little joke for those of you watching the Auslan interpreters from Auslan Stage Left) or as the Hearies know her, Tracey Corbin-Matchett, the CEO of Bus Stop Films. Panellists included Chanel Bowen, Paul Nunnari, Dan Lake, and our very own Ade Djajamihardja of A2K Media. Conversations ranged from Disability Pride to the barriers for Disabled screen creatives in our industry, and both the intangible and tangible value of including Disabled voices in the development stages of your production process. Ade also gave an overview of our upcoming e-learning programme, Disability Justice Lens. If you missed it and you’d like to sign up to register your interest, please follow this link. Well done to Stephanie for producing this panel and bringing this important conversation to SF37.
Image shows a fish-eye view of six Disabled people sitting on stage in front of a dark purple curtain, with two large screens in each corner which read ‘Screen Forever’ in bold white text.
The Screen Australia’s panel Seeing Ourselves: Discussing diversity and inclusion on screen unpacked the latest Seeing Ourselves 2 Report and the very real impact these statistics have on marginalised communities in our daily lives. Panellist Graeme Mason of Screen Australia spoke about the need for a top-down approach to remedy this across our industry. Panellist Fiona Tuomy of Arts Access Victoria and The Other Film Festival had these words to say about the lack of disability representation on our screens:
“I wasn’t surprised with the report. Even though for the disability community there’s been a slight improvement, as we’ve already talked about, we’re really stuck. …it’s still a really narrow representation. What’s incredibly important to acknowledge and understand with the disability community – is that we’re not homogenous, that we cut across all demographics of society, and we’re open to new members constantly. As you grow older, you’re more than likely to become Disabled.
I’m choosing to use the word [Disabled] and I really thank Screen Australia and my Disabled colleagues here, particularly Ade Djajamihardja and Kate Stephens, for embracing the term Disabled. It may make some of you feel uncomfortable, but it is a political term, in that we are reclaiming our lived experience, our identity. It’s saying how we’re Disabled by society – there is not something wrong with us, it’s the way society is set up, and exists. It’s Disabling. So, I use that term very proudly.
So, what we’re talking about, particularly with disability, is including the excluded. And if you think about traditionally, or even where we’re at now with screen industry culture, it’s a culture of exclusivity. It’s exclusive. It’s about excluding people.
It can be traced back to the early days of studios. The studio system in Hollywood. And yes we’ve evolved, but that was really a time of wanting to control. Controlling power, controlling narratives. And ways of working, that I think have permeated all the way through. So, what I think happens is, it becomes normalised. If that’s the only way you can do it. So, to become truly inclusive and fully accessible, we need to confront our culture. But also, many of those accepted practises that we just take for granted. They’re actually not ok, because they’re not accessible. So, it’s not just about mending those stats. We’re not going to have full representation, or really ‘see ourselves’ on the screen, or be employing Disabled people above the line, below the line, et cetera et cetera, if we just keep working in the same way, because at our core, it’s about exclusivity.
But there are ways to adapt and to be accessible. I also think there’s real opportunity there, to be able to work differently. We have a history of that, you know, in Australia. Warwick Thornton’s Samson and Delilah or Sophie Hyde’s 52 Tuesdays [are] just a couple of examples.
But another really big thing, is that for too long – this is in society – disability is treated as a subject matter. So, it will be about, “we did a show about disability last year” or, “oh no we’ve got a Disabled show there” or, it’s something that’s made about us. And there’s no power. It’s not a self-determination framework. But added to that, often when there may be a Disabled character, then their disability becomes a plot point. There’s a lot to unpack there. This is what we call Ableism. This unconscious bias is not just in our industry, it's in society, and it’s so ingrained, that people don’t even realise. I’m talking about Western society, or, Western cinema, and most of us don’t even know any different. So, once you start to unpack that, it shows how limited the stories we have been telling – but also part of the reason that things are so limited - because we’ve been more of a subject matter or a theme, rather than actually [showing us] as part of the fabric of society.
We need to reach out – you need to employ us. There’s a whole lot of really incredible Disabled story developers, writers, and then we can work with these producers and other writers to really show how you can expand your story world to authentically include – and have actual main Disabled characters. It’s not just about something you do in the casting.
You can’t just keep constantly putting it back onto “oh, that’s the underrepresented group” – you kind of have to do the work. I think that we do need some radical steps. Particularly when it comes to disability – there is a lot of knowledge. Like I was saying, it’s not homogenous. We also have networks. So, if we came in first, there’d be other people in the community across Australia that we could recommend. We might be able to go, well that’s the Deaf director, or that’s the First Nations Disabled writer you could talk to. I think we can’t wait. We need to collectively work together.”
Thank you to Fiona for your important advocacy!
After reading Seeing Ourselves 2 Report, and attending this panel, we wholeheartedly agree. It is clear that authentic disability representation is fundamentally missing in action from Australian screen content. Disability culture is about visibility and self-value. Neither of which are appropriately represented on our screens at present. We feel that the disparity between what we have access to on-screen (6.6% of characters are noticeably Disabled) and the general population (8.9 million households, or 39.5% of Australians who live in a house with at least one Disabled person) is just one symptom of an industry that fails to include Disabled practitioners. The rest of the picture, so to speak, is that of a widely inaccessible industry that perpetuates barriers to opportunity and fails to acknowledge the rich expertise of our lived experience, or the cultural value of the international Disability Community, as one of the largest minority groups in the world. We hope that discussing the Seeing Ourselves 2 Report will spark the beginning of much-needed widespread change!
SF37 - Day 3
On the final day of SF37, we were pleased to hear from Beth Neate at South Australian Film Corporation, on the Meet the Funders: State Agencies #2 panel, who reminded us of SAFC’s excellent Disability Equality Plan. Congratulations to the team at SAFC who have worked hard to set their intentions and create a plan for removing barriers to opportunity for Disabled screen creatives. We recommend you have a look at their Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2022-2032, a landmark paper for systemic change in our industry!
Image shows two wheelchair users smiling at the camera. On the left is Ade, an Asian Australian man wearing dark glasses, a white business shirt and dark blue pants, and on the right is Emma Myers, a blonde woman wearing a black leather jacket, a patterned blue and white blouse and black pants, holding a bright pink handbag. Behind them is a tinted glass wall with a bright gold stripe, a white sign that reads “DO NOT USE DOOR EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY” in red capital lettering, and grey concrete flooring with square outdoor tiles.
SF37 was rounded out by the annual SPA Awards on Friday evening. A further congratulations must be given to Emma Myers – one of the newest members of Screen Australia’s Gender Matters Taskforce. You may also know Emma as one of the co-creators of Latecomers, a “gloriously sex-positive, sassy, sweary, romantic and emotionally messy” six-part miniseries, available to stream on SBS OnDemand.
Latecomers picked up the SPA Award for ‘Online Series Production of the Year’ (Mad Ones Films & Lazy Susan Films) and the annual Screen Diversity and Inclusion Network Award. The SDIN Award recognises an Australian-based project, producer and/or production company and/or screen organisation that has made a significant contribution through excellence or impact to diversity and inclusion either on or offscreen within the Australian screen industry. After running into Emma at morning tea and learning about her commitment to changing the portrayal of Disabled women on screen, we are absolutely thrilled to see her work recognised. We can’t wait to find out what she gets up to next.
Congratulations must also go to Bus Stop Films, who won the 2023 SPA Award for ‘Breakthrough Business of the Year’ for their work in inclusive filmmaking. We encourage you to check out their latest films exploring diversity and inclusion.
Image shows Ade, an Asian Australian man sitting in a wheelchair wearing a black suit with a white shirt, smiling and looking off camera. Standing behind him is Tsu Shan Chambers, an Asian Australian woman in a glittering emerald green dress, who is smiling at the camera. They are both on a bright red carpet in front of a white media wall with grey lettering which reads "#SPAAWARDS” and “SPA Annual Awards”.
And as they say, that’s a wrap. Thank you to everyone who made SF37 such an exciting and politically-charged event. We are confident that the work we are doing as an ever-growing network of Disabled screen creatives and allies means the future is looking brighter for the Australian screen industry.
Thank you to everyone who made it to the end of our blog. Just a quick reminder, please don’t forget to register your interest for Disability Justice Lens: Disability equity and inclusion training for the screen industry. Let’s work together to make meaningful social change.