Tasmania's Wide Angle joins Screen Development Australia

29 June 2007

Organisation

WIDE ANGLE TASMANIA has joined Screen Development Australia (SDA), the national alliance of film, television and media industry development centres.

SDA now comprises six member states: Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, and it is expected the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory will join at a later date.

The SDA centres assist independent filmmakers from all backgrounds to pursue a working career in the national screen industries, and in particular, Early to Mid-career filmmakers that have already trained at a university, a film school, or in the TAFE system. The centres use their advisory, developmental and production programs and services to build skills and networks and assist career-minded film and media makers to enter into the screen industry.

“We are very pleased to join SDA”, said WIDE ANGLE TASMANIA General Manager Beverley Jefferson. “With the wide range of exceptional industry talent we have to support our programs, and now our membership of SDA, we are confident of increasing our capacity to link our early-career filmmakers directly into industry.”

Karena Slaninka, Director of the Tasmanian film, television and media agency SCREEN TASMANIA has confirmed their support for this move into the national alliance. “We can expect great things for our state industry from this new alliance,” Ms Slaninka said.

“Tasmania always manages to punch above its weight creatively and industrially in this business,” said Kerry O’Rourke, Chair of SDA. “The opportunity to bring Tasmania into our alliance is very important for us all nationally.”

Mr O’Rourke said that the SDA alliance filled that gap between education and training, and the screen and media industries themselves. “SDA was created to help build the Australian industry to a point of strength where it was self-sustaining and globally competitive in its own right.”, he said. O’Rourke said that while the hosting of off-shore production in Australia was excellent for the service sectors of the industry, it was imperative that Australia build a viable industry of its own that can continue to function when fashion and the changing value of the dollar take the off-shore production away.

Film & Television Institute WA CEO, Graeme Sward, said, “The SDA screen resource centres are vital in fostering ongoing development and new growth in the Australian film & television industries. As a fully represented national alliance, SDA can support and promote national strategies that will assist all of the independent screen sector throughout Australia, and FTI welcomes Wide Angle into the SDA alliance,” he said.
Jefferson said the first step for WIDE ANGLE will be to begin work with SDA on the Australian Film Commission’s RAW NERVE annual national slate of locally produced short dramas. “Our operation in Tasmania now has a national reach, and through that, an international reach through the world’s festivals. The future for our filmmakers in Tasmania is very bright indeed.”