Our fourth and final Fairy GOFFmother is filmmaker Sarah-Jane Woulahan!
SARAH-JANE WOULAHAN is an award‐winning director of drama, comedy, music video, documentary and transmedia who is known for her visual flair and original ideas across all genres in moving image. She works in Melbourne as a freelance director for commercials, documentary, corporate, fashion and music video promos.
Sarah-Jane’s short films have screened at festivals including South By Southwest, Melbourne International Film Festival, Brisbane International Film Festival, Warsaw Film Festival, Sedona International Film Festival, One Country One Film, BBC British Short Film Festival, DocNZ International Documentary Festival, Shanghai TV Festival, Athens International Festival of Drama, Flickerfest, St Kilda Film Festival and Melbourne Comedy Festival. Her most recent film, Acts of God, was chosen for the MIFF Accelerator program for emerging feature filmmakers. She is also a collaborator on choreographer Claire Marshall’s 20 minute dance narrative film, Ward of State, which is currently in post-production.
Sarah-Jane’s hybrid doco-fiction short film I Love Like Blood was broadcast on SBS in 2007 and she co-directed, co-wrote and presented the one-hour documentary, Embedded with the Murri Mob, produced by CIRCE films which first screened on SBS in 2009.
She was the creative Director of Falls TV from 2008 – 2011, a video media spectacle broadcast onsite at the Falls Festival in Lorne which includes live broadcast of comedy and documentary segments, interactivity through text, web and live visuals. A creative experiment in action, the project utilised the talents of over 60 filmmakers and artists working in collaboration under Sarah-Jane’s direction.
Sarah-Jane co-founded 5-time ARIA and MTV nominated production company Squareyed Films where she directed music videos for Australia’s most recognized musicians including Silverchair (“Across the Night” starring Guy Pearce), Missy Higgins, Evermore, The Sleepy Jackson, Little Birdy, Youth Group, Tim Finn and The Living End. She also co-directed music documentaries for artists including The Go-Betweens and George.
Sarah-Jane is currently writing and developing her first feature film projects including feminist drama She Loves Like Blood and the dark sci-fi love story A Terrible Beauty.
One of Sarah-Jane’s favourite girls on film is Millie of Thoroughly Modern fame.
At GOFF Sarah-Jane will introduce our Opening Night Film, The Runaways, directed by one of her heroes, Floria Sigismondi, another feminist filmmaker whose work spanned music videos, artistic installation and narrative feature. This will kick off the festival with a love letter to rock ’n’ roll, queering the music and film scenes from a female perspective, and the merging of artistic and aesthetic approaches into experimental cinema that puts women’s stories front and centre.