Wellywood Woman

I've amended this post slightly since I first wrote it, as a sequel to an earlier post which celebrated the high proportion of women-directed features that were in contention for the Australian Film Institute's annual awards. We share a name, Aussie and New Zealand women, though I don’t hear it often now: we’re Sheilas. According to my dictionary, ‘our’ Sheila came from shaler , of unknown origin. But I look up shale, defined as soft finely stratified rock that splits easily, consisting of consolidated mud or clay and I think earth mother, split . And I see all those immigrant men engaging with the earth of their new lands. With few women around. And I go AH. Jan Chapman producer of Bright Star —one of the films in contention for an AFI award—with  director Jane Campion But Australian women filmmakers have a very different history than we do. Renowned producer Jan Chapman summarised their early feminist years in her Longford Lyell Lecture in 2002. There was a Sydney Fi...