NOTICE OF RESCHEDULED 

2021 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

Full Members of the Australian Directors' Guild are invited to attend the 2021 Annual General Meeting and to consider and vote on the following agenda items:

1. Minutes of the Previous Annual General Meeting in 2020;

2. Presentation of the 2021 Audited Accounts;

3. Report from the President;

4. Report from the CEO;

5. Other Business

Current ADG Directors:

• Samantha Lang (President) (NSW)
• Daina Reid (Secretary) (VIC)
• Stephen Wallace (Treasurer) (NSW)
• Anna Broinowski (Vice President Documentary) (NSW)
• Pearl Tan (Vice President New Media (NSW)
• Nadia Tass (Vice-President Feature Film) (VIC)
• Jonathan Brough (Vice President Television Drama) (VIC)
• Rowan Woods (Ordinary Director)(NSW)

Meeting will be held Via Zoom Video Conference:

Topic: ADG AGM Zoom - Rescheduled from 23rd Nov

Time: Dec 10, 2021 11:00 AM Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney

Join Zoom Meeting

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Meeting ID: 936 4196 7231

Passcode: 110487

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Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/abKyXA4K5i

Minutes of the 2020 AGM and 2021 Audited Accounts are available to Full ADG Members. Please email the ADG office at admin@adg.org.au if you wish us to send you any of these documents prior to the AGM. Members planning to attend are encouraged to email an RSVP to admin@adg.org.au with the subject: AGM RSVP

MEDIA RELEASE - 1 December 2021

BIG BOOST FOR SCREEN SECTOR

Australia’s screen sector today warmly welcomed the passage through Parliament of measures to increase the level of support for screen content provided through vital tax incentives. That is the message from the ‘Make it Australian’ coalition, supported by the Australian Directors’ Guild (ADG), the Australian Writers’ Guild (AWG), the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) and Screen Producers Australia (SPA).

The Parliament today passed the Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 5) Bill 2021, which includes the much-anticipated increase in the Producer Offset for television productions from 20% to 30%.

Read the full media release here. 

Join us for the

ADG 2021 AWARDS LIVESTREAM

at 1pm (AEDT) on Friday, 3 December 2021

The 2021 ADG Awards are nearly here.

With twenty categories presented by some of the biggest names in the Australian film industry and livestreaming internationally, 

you don’t want to miss out.

The awards will be held at the Actors Centre Australia in Sydney but we’re also holding screenings in cinemas

around Australia (QLD, WA & VIC).

However, if you’re unable to attend in person,

you can watch the livestream here:

Don’t miss out and please use the hashtag #ADGAwards

Also here is a link to the event on Facebook.

The Australian Director’s Guild has announced nominees for the 2021 ADG Awards.

Nominations include directors for Wakefield, Mr Inbetween, Halifax: Retribution, Mystery Road, The Unusual Suspects, Rosehaven, Bluey, Hardball, and Hating Peter Tatchell.

ADG Awards recognise works by guild members regardless of whether productions were filmed in Australia or internationally, hence Line of Duty, Killing Eve and The Good Lord Bird are also noted.

“The ADG Awards received a record number of nominations this year from our members – up 50% on the previous year. It’s thrilling to see the breadth and depth of Australian directorial talent across such a range of productions,” said Alaric McAusland, Executive Director of the ADG.

Winners will be announced at a gala luncheon ceremony on Friday December 3 at the Actor’s Centre in Leichhardt, Sydney.

Read the Film Ink article here. 

Australian Directors Guild Limited

ELECTION NOTICE - E2021/146

Scheduled Election

Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009

Nominations are called for:

- President (1)

- Vice President - Feature Films (1)

- Vice President - Television (1)

- Ordinary Director (1)

Only Full Members who have been financial Full Members for the six (6) months immediately preceding the date of the election shall be eligible to nominate. Nominations must be in writing and may be made at any time from 15/11/2021. Nominations must be signed by the candidate and endorsed by two other financial Full Members of the Guild. No Member shall nominate for more than one office.

A full Election Notice can be found here.

A Nomination Form can be found here.

Members of the Australian Directors’ Guild have had the chance to hear from some of the country’s most established filmmakers over the past five months as part of the ADG-40 ‘First-Hand’ sessions.

Consisting of 40 weekly one-hour webinars fronted by industry mentors, the initiative is due to start again this week following a short break, with Claire McCarthy (The Turning) to share insights from her career on Thursday.

It comes after contributions from Gillian Armstrong, Rachel Perkins, Rolf de Heer, Samantha Lang, Corrie Chen, Ben Lawrence, Ana Kokkinos, Megan Riakos, Josephine Mackerras, Robert Connolly, Garth Davis, Sally Aitken, Jub Clerc, Kriv Stenders, Tom Zubrycki, Anna Broinowski, Peter Andrikidis, Jasmin Tarasin, and Glendyn Ivin.

The sessions are moderated by ADG strategy and development executive Ana Tiwary who is responsible for collating questions from those tuning in.

Read more here. 

The Australian screen industry has led the way in getting back to work and rebuilding the national economy during the pandemic. But the government announced changes to tax incentives last year that will make it much harder for certain genres to be financed and it relaxed content rules for traditional TV platforms which will lead to fewer productions across the board and most alarmingly, there is now no regulatory obligation for any Australian commercial TV station to produce or show Australian children’s content. Documentary has been undervalued in these changes too. Screen Producers Australia modelling estimates an overall annual decline in production from this partial deregulation of $100m.

The ADG and other guilds took to Canberra in March under the Make It Australian banner demanding government reconsider its position and that it also looked to ensure the big streamers made a fair contribution to Australian stories by regulating their levels of investment in Australian content. Read more here. 

Whilst this united advocacy ultimately lead to the government walking back its decision to reduce the feature film offset and its decision to halve PAY TV’s obligation for new Australian drama, the government still plans to move forward with other detrimental offset reforms and is slow in implementing obligations on the streamers in spite of their incredible growth in reach and influence.

According to Deloitte’s latest Media Consumer Survey, four out of five Australian households now have at least one digital entertainment subscription, most have more than two, with an estimated 70 per cent of Australians subscribing to at least one SVOD service. Research from Kantar found a staggering 1.4million Australian households added at least one new video subscription service in the three months to June 2021.

We want to see a robust and sustainable Australian screen industry and we want to see high-quality, commercially viable and internationally competitive Australian content on ALL our screens. It is vital that Australians continue to see themselves and their stories on the platforms they are flocking to, and to secure a stable future for the industry that creates and makes that content.

The government issued a Green Paper on a number of proposed media reforms including regulation of streamers and our full submission can be found here. 

Our submission included the following proposed reforms:

1. Streamers to be required to reinvest 20% of their Australian-sourced revenue into commissioning new Australian content. 
2. The investment obligation should apply to all types of SVOD, AVOD and broadcaster video-on-demand (BVOD) services with no exemption for services owned by a corporate structure that also owns a broadcasting licence. 
3. Eligible service providers must comply with genre sub-quotas for drama, children’s television and documentary and these quotas must come with promotion and discoverability requirements. 
4. Eligible service providers should be required to spend 80% of their expenditure obligation on the local independent sector. 
5. An increase in the direct funding of the public broadcasters who have been left with the sole responsibility of programming vulnerable genres such as children’s television for local audiences. 
6. Regulation of the streaming platforms to be implemented by 1 January 2022.

Creatives announced for Screen Diversity Showcase

Directors: Tin Pang, Andrew Lee, Kauthar Abdulalim, Luis Bran, and Rhianna Malezer.

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The 23 creatives for this year’s Screen Diversity Showcase have been unveiled after being selected by a panel of independent industry judges.

Hosted by the Equity Foundation, the initiative is designed to promote a platform for diverse voices across writing, directing, and performing.

More than 450 applications were received for this year’s program, which is the second of its kind to be held. Read more here. 

Each week from April 8, the ADG will host 40 short/sharp Zoom ‘mentoring’ sessions in a moderated Q&A format.

Each ADG-40 ‘First-Hand’ 60-minute session will be provided free-of-charge to ADG members across Australia with a mix of questions-on-notice and ‘from the floor’ curated to plug emerging members directly into the ADG’s established member knowledge-base and get ‘First-Hand’, real-world guidance on the craft and business of directing and on career progression.

The webinars will be moderated by the ADG’s Strategy & Development Executive Ana Tiwary.

If you have are unsure of your membership status or wish to join the ADG please email membership@adg.org.au

Josephine Mackerras - Director, Writer, Producer & Actress

Award-winning filmmaker Josephine Mackerras grew up in Australia and China, starting in theatre before her career in film. Her short films—A Sign, Modlitba, L'enfant Perdu, and Diva—have been selected by over 90 high-profile festivals. Alice (2019), her first feature film, premiered at SXSW Film Festival, netting the Grand Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature and the CherryPicks Female First Feature Award.