Maria

Synopsis

Maria parallels life in Australia with the maelstrom of Czechoslovakia’s history. It links three generations of women in two countries.

Impact

MARIA won the Dendy Award for Best Documentary at the 1992 Sydney Film Festival. It also won the Australian Human Rights Commission Award and the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission Award for best film, as well as an AWGIE for Best Documentary Screenplay and the Cinevex Award at the St. Kilda Film Festival.

FILMMAKER'S PERSONAL STATEMENT ABOUT SPONSORSHIP

My earliest experience with sponsorship dates back to 1975, when I was a student in the inaugural full-time course at the AFTRS. My primary interest was in documentary and was supported by Tresillian, (The Royal Society for the Welfare of Mothers and Babies) and the Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital. With their support I produced, wrote and directed a series about Child Development as well other films about children with disabilities.

Following my graduation from the AFTRS in 1979, I formed DOCUMENTARY FILMS, a small production company. Richardson-Vicks,(a multinational company), became my main sponsor and provided full funding for A SHARED BIRTH, a half hour documentary about couples in different social circumstances having a baby. This documentary, as well as those made at the AFTRS, were sold to more than a thousand hospitals where they were used in Pre and Ante Natal courses around Australia.

In the ensuing years, many of the documentaries I worked on were sponsored by corporations which were financially generous and did not interfere in the creative process.

Creative control is the single most important factor that I think is potentially compromised in working with sponsors - be they commercial or government, including the funding bodies eg FA, FFC, AFC, ABCTV, SBSTV etc.

For many years, and particularly during the eighties, the FTO used to approach government departments on behalf of filmmakers instead of the other way around, which was the modus operandi governing the FTO in the nineties. The former approach was one that led to a more collaborative, creative approach in which the FTO supported the filmmakers in pursuing their creative goals. The latter resulted in the FTO acting as the intermediary between the department and filmmaker; where the government department was seen as the client and the filmmaker, “ the potentially wayward artist who had to be kept in check by the whip hand of the FTO.” This is still the experience of many filmmakers in their relationship with funding agencies.

Since the late eighties, the funding of documentaries has relied completely on pre-sales with the public broadcasters. Sponsorship has come to mean sourcing small amounts of money that are drip fed to the film maker through a maize of “intravenous tubes”, both government and private. Sadly, filmmakers tend to spend nearly all their time appeasing the "powers to be" of each of the funding bodies, who each has their own agenda- instead of spending their time on developing the film. This shouldn't be the case.

One of the many challenges is that of recruiting sponsors, whose focus is on the indispensable creative, artistic and social contribution being made by documentary filmmakers and their work. I think the trick is in linking the genuine enthusiasm of corporate and philanthropic sponsors to the filmmakers who share the same goals.