Judges
His credits as director include BATTLE OF THE BRAINS, a 4 part observational documentary series for ABC Television, EMBEDDED WITH SHEIK HILALY, a 60 min documentary for SBS Television and Red Ithaka Productions, MAKING VENUS, a feature length documentary which had a theatrical release and also screened on SBS. He also made several award winning shorts – GREAT WHITE HUNTERS and MURBAH SWAMP BEER which won awards at Tropfest, and PARKING PATROL OFFICER 808 which won Best Documentary at the St Kilda and Bathurst film festivals.
Gary is the co-founder of the AFI Award winning filmmaker screenings event POPCORN TAXI, where he programmed more than 300 film events between 1999 – 2008.
Isha Kamara – Filmmaker, actor, producer and presenter.
Her involvement in the Information and Cultural Exchange (ICE) program since 2004 has allowed her to engage in diverse communities and tell the stories of extraordinary places.
Isha has worked in the award winning SBS series East West 101 and the ABC drama Crownies. She was the winner of TropWest 2010 and the host of the television show Chatterbox on Aurora. Isha has just finished shooting her first Nollywood Feature in her Country of birth Sierra Leone and is now working on an up and coming talk show InnerView. She is also an organisers for the African Film Festival in Australia.
Jiao Chen – Producer and Script Assessor
Jiao is an emerging producer and documentary filmmaker who began his career in the industry as a member of the crew on high profile feature films, TV dramas and TV commercials. After 5 years of freelancing on film sets, Jiao started to make the transition into producing and trained under some of the industry’s most dynamic producers and production companies including Fiona Eagger (Every Cloud Productions), writer/producer team Michael Petroni and Jamie Hilton (See Pictures) and Marian Macgowan (Macgowan Films). Jiao is now focused on developing his own slate of stories for the big and small screens. His projects include AFTER SIX FOUR, an interactive online documentary with SBS; KEEP ME SAFE TONIGHT, a half hour broadcast documentary in with the ABC and numerous short films. He also recently completed the SBS Multicultural TV Production Traineeship where he worked in the development of the landmark TV documentary series ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINATOWN and he is currently undertaking the Producer Extension Placement at Screen NSW. Jiao is committed to telling engaging, bold and culturally diverse stories for screens of all sizes.
Genevieve Clay-Smith – Director
Genevieve is a creative director who facilitates the telling of stories about real people, alongside real people, to make movies that connect to audiences and bring new human perspectives to the screen. Genevieve co-founded Bus Stop Films with producer, Eleanor Winkler in 2009 – an inclusive film making not-for-profit organization that helps people with a disability learn about and be involved in professional film making. Bus Stop’s films have screened nationally and internationally and have received a number of awards including Best film at Tropfest 2009 and recently Jury Prize at Canada International. Genevieve is also Principal Creative Director of Taste Media a business she co-founded with her husband Henry Smith.
