These interviews form part of the vision for the project. Much of the content for Into the Light has been sourced from archival material, and Almond also chose one woman from each category to interview as part of her research. Others who made the final cut include Senator Penny Wong Grammy-award-winning singer Sia Furler peace advocate Gill Hicks the first Aboriginal South Australian to seek election to Federal Parliament, Ruby Hammond physicist Tanya Monroe Australia’s first female astronaut, Katherine Bennell-Pegg dual Olympic hockey gold medallist Juliet Haslam Kenyan/Australian singer Elsy Wameyo, and drift car racer and disability advocate Christina Vithoulkas. Kenyan/Australian singer Elsy Wameyo will be one of the women featured in Into the Light. These trailblazers include actress and activist Natasha Wanganeen, cricketing legend Faith Thomas, SA Senior Australian of the Year Sandra Miller and musician Nancy Bates.” “We were also hugely passionate about acknowledging and honouring the contributions of First Nations women in our South Australian history. Not only did we want to incorporate incredible South Australian women who have a profile, we also wanted to include some ‘wildcards’ who may have gone under the radar in the public eye, but are out there quietly achieving amazing things. “The selection process of the women featured in the film was one of the most enjoyable and also the most challenging parts of the process. “We really wanted to be able to acknowledge some strong contemporary women who are well known in their fields or area of focus at the moment, but also pay homage to the trailblazers who had come before them that may have enabled them to get where they are now. “We came up with a very long list and then through consultation with some amazing partners – including Parliament House, the History Trust of South Australia, the State Library and the National Film and Sound Archive – we were able to put together a really strong list which we then gradually scaled back to 12 women from each of the areas of focus,” Almond says. Almond and the team worked with a variety of bodies across SA, coming up with five key sectors of public life/politics, science, social impact, sport, and arts and culture. The first major challenge was devising the list of women who would form the focus of Into the Light. The filmmaker collaborated with producer Katrina Lucas and the team from The Electric Canvas, who devised the technology needed for such an ambitious project.ĭirector Shalom Almond and producer Katrina Lucas, part of the team behind Into the Light. “So I think the initial conversations were around the fact that she’s only the third female governor that’s taken residence in Government House, so why not use that as a launching pad to explore and create and use that space to celebrate the role of women in South Australia,” Almond says. The idea was sparked by a phone call from SA Governor Frances Adamson to Illuminate organisers, offering to open the grounds of Government House to the public as part of the immersive winter festival’s events along North Terrace. Into the Light is a portrait documentary where still images and footage of inspiring and innovative South Australian women past and present will be projected onto the façade of Government House. That project is Into the Light, part of Illuminate’s City Lights program, which takes place around various city precincts. Also, the kind of body of work that I normally take on is very emotionally intense and to have someone ask me to work on a project that was so joyful and so inspiring, and something that is so celebratory, I could not turn it down.” “He just pitched it to me in such a way that was so exciting. But by the end of the phone call I was like, ‘There is no way that I’m not going to be involved in making this film’. “As soon as Sam started telling me about the project and told me about the timeframe, I was already thinking, ‘Oh no, that’s the same time I’m due to do my pre. It was January, and Wright was planning a new event for the winter festival – something he and the Illuminate team desperately wanted Almond to lead. Award-winning Adelaide documentary maker Shalom Almond was deep in development on her latest project in a women’s prison when she got a call from Illuminate Adelaide’s producer, Sam Wright.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |