COINCIDENCE – romantic comedy
Can you trust Fate to bring you to ‘the one’? That is the question posed by romantic comedy feature Coincidence.
After her soul mate is felled by a random act of Fate, Jane Marshall throws her romantic energies into her matchmaking agency Coincidence Inc, along with business partner Belinda Tan. She bumps into a maths professor, Will, and they get on well, but when he suggests swapping contact details she rebuffs him on the grounds that she is happy single. The next day she is hired by successful entrepreneur Tania Dorovich who desperately wants to marry a guy she is besotted with. After signing the contract Jane realises that Tania’s target is none other than Will, the guy she met the previous night.
Coincidence is a romantic comedy in the vein of Anyone But You, When Harry Met Sally or Hitch. Showcasing glitzy urban Melbourne and the Great Barrier Reef, it’s a fable for contemporary female audiences over 30.
WELCOME TO THE WELFARE – novel
Jack Smith sails down to Melbourne from Sydney on the first leg of his trip around Australia. When he hands his dole form to the local CES office they tell him there is a job available for a social worker in the area, helping a community group to stop the traffic on Lester Street. He tries to throw the interview, explaining he is burnt out from his former job in Sydney, but Freya Nilsen tells him he is hired.
Set in Melbourne in 1978, Welcome to the Welfare is a novel that exposes the depths of local corruption in the western suburbs that allows powerful interests to trample on the rights of ordinary citizens like 12 year old Maree Cosic or 18 year old parolee Eddie Razinski. It is based on the experiences of the author who trained as a social worker and worked for five years in a regional office of the Department of Community Welfare.
THE FEMALE GAZE – short film
Recently the short film The Female Gaze was screened at two international film festivals, Sunny Side of the Doc in France and the Seoul Women’s International Film Festival. The film screened at more than twenty international film festivals and won a prize at the Busan International Shorts Festival. The Female Gaze features the work of six iconic female directors discussing whether there is such a thing as a ‘female gaze’ and if so how it impacts the filmmakers’ output and world view. Lisa French is the writer and director and I am a co-producer and editor on this project. The Female Gaze features interviews from Kim Longinotto (UK), Gillian Armstrong (Australia), Nishtha Jain (India), Phie Ambo (Denmark), Ileana Stanculescu (Romania), Pirjo Honkasalo (Finland), Marie Mandy (Belgium/France), and Nancy Kates (USA).