About

This Fellowship provides the recipient with up to $20,000 with which to explore, expand and challenge their filmmaking practice and raise the bar of excellence in Australian documentary cinema. 

Established by Kim Williams AM it is to honour his parents’ involvement with the creative process, cinema and Australian culture.

The Fellowship, which will usually be awarded annually, is intended to reward creative ambition, intellectual rigour and innovation in documentary cinema.  

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2012 Recipient Announcement

 

Bob Connolly, co producer and director of last years hit Mrs Carey’s Concert, announced the 2012 recipient of the David and Joan Williams Documentary Fellowship at the launch of the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).

The recipient is Matthew Bate, director of the award winning Shut Up Little Man.

The Fellowship, decided annually by a small industry panel, provides $25,000 to its recipient and is the most substantial annual award available in Australia for documentary practitioners. 

About Matthew Bate

 

Matthew Bate’s documentaries deal with obsessive people, pop-culture and outsider artists and are marked by unique storytelling devices and a bold visual style.

His 2006 film What The Future Sounded Like, is a visual and sonic experimental exploration about the genesis of British electronic music from Dr Who to Pink Floyd.  

Matt’s 2010 short film The Mystery of Flying Kicks, unearths the relationship between telephone wire sneakers and murder, drugs, sex and politics and was made entirely from contributions of imagery and phone message bank stories from the global online public.

It premiered at the 2010 SXSW Festival and won best short documentary at the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival and New Zealand Documentary Edge Film Festival.   

Matt’s first feature-length documentary, Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure, premiered in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance 2011 and was recently selected in the 40th New Directors/New Films at the MOMA and Lincoln Center New York.

The film was acquired for US distribution by Tribeca Films and screened theatrically in over 20 states in the US.

Most recently Matt completed Stunt Love a bio-pic about Australian silent film director J.P McGowan and his pioneering work creating daredevil action films in early Hollywood.

Stunt Love premiered at BAFF 2011 and took part in the Adelaide Producers Screenings at MOMA New York.

Matt is currently in pre production on his latest feature documentary Sam Klemke’s Time Machine, which deals with a man who has recorded his entire life on film.
 

Selection Process

The selection of the recipients is to be decided on the basis of past work and future ambitions. To be eligible the filmmaker must be an Australian Permanent Resident and have made at least one critically well regarded and/or commercially successful documentary of fifty minutes or more duration.

There is no entry form. Those under consideration will provide a one page statement outlining how they might utilise funding to move to the next level in their practice of documentary filmmaking. Copies of previous work should also be provided (maximum of two examples of previous work, non-copy protected). The Fellowship will be administered in a flexible manner by a small panel looking primarily for evidence of imagination, initiative and engagement with the documentary form in a twenty first century context.

The Fellowship will be given in the form of grants and overseen by respected film practitioners Bob Connolly and Victoria Treole and administered under the auspices of the Australian International
Documentary Conference (AIDC) by a panel initially consisting of Bob Connolly, Victoria Treole, AIDC Board member Julia Overton and AIDC Executive Director Joost den Hartog.


For more information please contact: Joost den Hartog - AIDC Executive Director

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History 

Announcing the Fellowship Kim Williams said “For me much of the most important work in film in Australia has always reposed in documentary - the heartland of our national consciousness and sense of what makes Australia. I am delighted to be able to enable a modest contribution which honours the continuing work of the diverse women and men working in this vital area of creative endeavour and in doing so commemorate my parents who were special people. It is a link they would have valued."

David and Joan Williams were people for whom creativity was a fundamental part of life. David Williams AM had an irrepressible love for film and joined Greater Union as an office boy and rose to be managing director until his retirement in the early eighties. His lifelong association with Australian cinema helped bring about its regeneration in the sixties and seventies. David was honoured in his
lifetime with the Raymond Longford Award from the Australian Film Institute – Australia’s highest film honour and was also made a member in the Order of Australia for service to the industry he treasured. Joan similarly loved film and was also involved in myriad craft activities which she also undertook with enormous flair and enthusiasm.

Documentary is a powerful cinematic form, one in which the filmmaker plays a central yet often invisible role. Given the limitless availability these days of factual audiovisual material covering
every subject 24/7, the role of the thoughtful independent observer and creative interpreter of reality is a crucial one.