Tagged Fairy GOFFmothers

Fairy GOFFmother: Sarah-Jane Woulahan

Sarah-Jane WoulahanOur 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.

Fairy GOFFmother: Cerise Howard

The third of our Fairy GOFFmothers is Cerise Howard!

Cerise HowardCERISE HOWARD is director of the Czech and Slovak Film Festival of Australia (CaSFFA) and a film critic who speaks about cinema on Melbourne radio station 3RRR, both as a regular presenter for the film program Plato’s Cave and as a regular guest for Richard Watts’ Smart Arts. Her writing on film can be found in Senses of Cinema, Bright Lights Film Journal and the Slovenian journal Kino, as well as at her blog A Little Lie Down.

Cerise was a juror at the Mezipatra Queer Film Festival in Prague and has participated in critics’ juries for the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) at the Fribourg International Film Festival in Switzerland, and most recently the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Bohemia in the Czech Republic. She has worked for a variety of film festivals and organisations over the years in a wide array of capacities, including as a “foreign correspondent” for the Czech animation festival AniFest, and as a committee member for both the Melbourne Cinémathèque and tilde, Melbourne’s Trans & Gender Diverse Film Festival.

Outside of film, she is a composer and rock bassist of many years’ standing, having performed in Rockstrip, Molasses, ilk, Dirty Nicola and the Spud Hussies, and The Purring Furmaids, among other queer feminist rock ’n roll ventures.

Cerise’s favourite girls on film are the pranksters Marie I (Jitka Cerhová) and Marie II (Ivana Karbanová) from the 1966 film Daisies (Sedmikrásky), a feminist classic directed by Věra Chytilová and a milestone of the Czech New Wave.

Radio, film festivals, rock ‘n’ roll…we think it’s pretty obvious that Cerise is a perfect fit for GOFF! We can’t wait to hear her speak in September.

Fairy GOFFmother: Anna Barnes

Our second Fairy GOFFmother is Anna Barnes!

Anna BarnesANNA BARNES is an award winning young adult non fiction writer and playwright.

Her plays and monologues have been performed around Australia and in 2013 she was awarded the Sydney Theatre Company’s Patrick White playwrighting award. She is currently developing new work with Bell Shakespeare and the Griffin Theatre Company.

She spent her teenage years making zines and joining countless bands that would never play a single gig. In 2009 she and close friend and amazing babe, Eliza Sarlos (Amazing Babes, Scribe 2013) created a blog (fyi or die) where they talked about all things music, feminism, reality TV and basketball.

In 2012 her first book, a non-fiction book for girls, Girl! The Ultimate Guide to Being You, was published by Penguin Australia. In April 2013 Girl! was named as one of the Eva Pownall Notable Books of 2013 by the Children’s Book Council of Australia. She regularly speaks to girls at schools about topics as varied as how to make your own media tools and how to improve self esteem. In 2013 she was host to Rookie Mag’s Tavi Gevinson (USA) for the Melbourne Writers Festival’s Rookie Day and this year returns to MWF to host Amazing Babes with Eliza Sarlos.

We’ve some special plans for girls at GOFF, and Anna is a big part of them – we can hardly wait to tell you what’s in store! Suffice to say, with Anna at the helm, it’s gonna rock.

Announcing our Fairy GOFFmothers! First: Nakkiah Lui

At GOFF we thought very hard about what our core message is and who really embodies those values. We then decided on four women who represent these ideas – unfailing commitment to feminism, collegiality with other women, making art against the odds, love of popular culture, appreciation of fandom, a wicked sense of humour and a strong desire to party. We asked them to be our champions, our ambassadors, and the shining jewels in the GOFF crown. They said yes. So it’s with immense joy and pride that this week we announce the very first Fairy GOFFMothers – starting with Nakkiah Lui!

Nakkiah LuiNAKKIAH LUI is a celebrated writer for television, stage and performance. She has been an artist in residence at Griffin Theatre Company and an associate playwright at Belvoir Theatre, where her debut play This Heaven opened the 2013 downstairs season. This Heaven was an instant hit, with a sell out production that was extended twice.

Nakkiah’s other works for theatre include I should have told you before we made love (that I’m black) at the You Are Here Festival in Canberra, Stho Sthexy for MKA in Melbourne and The Traditional Owners of Death at the Bondi Feast festival in Sydney. Nakkiah also wrote My Dreaming, Our Awakening, the first radio play on the ABC Radio National program Awaye! Nakkiah’s awards include the inaugural The Dreaming Award from the Australia Council, and the inaugural Balnaves Foundation Indigenous Playwright’s Award.

On screen, Nakkiah wrote and directed both the documentary From Drag King to Law Queen, and the short film BabyGirl, which has been broadcast on the ABC and NITV. This year Nakkiah will make her television debut in Black Comedy (ABC/Scarlett Pictures), a new comedy series for which she is co-writer and star.

Nakkiah is also a proud Gamilaroi/Torres Strait Islander woman and a young leader in the Australian Aboriginal community, having also contributed to The Guardian, been a featured panelist during Sydney Writers Festival (2014), and appeared on ABC TV’s The Drum.

Nakkiah’s favourite girl on film is Romy and Michele, because everybody knows they really count as one superior person.

We couldn’t be more thrilled to have Nakkiah at GOFF, and we know you’re gonna love her!

The last ten days!

Here we are, two thirds of the way through our Pozible crowdfunding campaign, and at GOFF HQ we are proud and excited that so many people have backed the festival, pledged money and chosen rewards that we know they’ll love. Our hugest thanks to everyone who’s jumped on board so far – you’ve brought us to the very impressive total of $5,410!

Last week we announced details of the exclusive invite-only Opening Night Party, which includes a screening of Floria Sigismondi’s absolute belter, The Runaways, special guest speakers, light installations, Girl Gang DJs and a performance from Melbourne’s mavens of mayhem, the alt-country-dirty-rockers, MODESTY! Remember that tickets to this Opening Night Party and Screening WILL NOT GO ON SALE after the Pozible campaign so if you’re already coming and you want to get your gang together, they have to pledge now too. Starting at the $50 Reward you’ll get a ticket to this party: drinks on arrival, brilliant speakers, film screening, live band and DJs taking you into the night. That’s a bargain but the bigger your pledge the better your reward so check out the $100 level, and one of our most popular rewards so far, the $150 Golden GOFF, that gets you into Opening Night and every other session of the fest! (Get in quick for one of those, there are only eight left.)

We have a bunch of new announcements this week, so keep an eye on our web site (girlsonfilmfestival.com) or follow us on Twitter () or  to hear them all as they happen. We’ll be announcing some of our films in advance of the Program Launch, telling you about an awesome daytime event especially for young feminists of the school-type age, and sharing with y’all the incredible women who have agreed to be our Fairy GOFFMothers and play a big, beautiful role in the festival.

As you can see, we’ve got a long way to go in terms of pledges before we hit our target, which is only the minimum we need to bring GOFF to life, and we only have ten days left in our Pozible campaign. So if you’ve been thinking of pledging and haven’t got around to it, or if you can pledge now where you couldn’t afford to before, we’d be so grateful for your support. If you’ve already pledged or can’t afford to, the MOST AWESOME THING you could do to help us is share the link to the campaign (pozible.com/goff) with every person you’ve ever met – we’re talkin’ tweets, status updates, blog posts, Instagram snaps, plugs on your radio show, sticking a note up in your tea room at work, calling your friends, emailing your girl gang, and helping us share the GOFF love and smash through our target in ten days time.