Director, Robert Connolly, will executive produce, Hive Fund winner, Guilty.
Guilty, Remembering Agatha and Bunghole have won funding in the third and final round of the Adelaide Film Festival Hive Fund initiative.
Australian artists Matthew Sleeth, Emma Magenta and Bruce Gladwin are set to collaborate with screen creatives Maggie Miles, Robert Connolly, Andrew Bovell, Julie Eckersley and Ester Harding on three new projects as part of the initiative.
Hive is an Adelaide Film Festival initiative in collaboration with the Australia Council for the Arts, Screen Australia and ABC Arts.
It is a disruptive initiative designed to bring together Australian artists and filmmakers to cross-pollinate their creative ideas, develop screen-based projects and support bright talent to take the next step.
The three newly commissioned projects will have their world premieres at the next edition of the biennial Adelaide Film Festival in 2017 and will all air on ABC TV.
The first project, Guilty, is a one-hour multi-faceted screen work focusing on the last days of artist and executed Bali Nine prisoner Myuran Sukumaran.
It is written and directed by visual artist Matthew Sleeth, who ran art workshops in prison with Myuran throughout his rehabilitation.
It will be produced by Maggie Miles (The Turning, Force of Destiny) and executive produced by Robert Connolly (Pater Planes). Andrew Bovell (Lantana) will serve as script consultant.
The second, Remembering Agatha, is a half-hour hybrid live-action whimsical drama overlaid with animation.
It tells the story of a woman overwhelmed by family obligation and the domestication of her spirit.
She is haunted by her independent double, who whispers her true feelings out loud.
It will be directed by artist, writer and director Emma Magenta (The Gradual Demise of Phillipa Finch) and produced by Ester Harding (I Am a Girl).
The last, Bunghole tells the blackly humorous story of a team of people with intellectual disabilities from a supported employment service, who travel into a restricted zone to plug a hole in a deserted nuclear facility.
The half-hour pilot takes inspiration from the allegory of the Ship of Fools, a European renaissance practice whereby the mad, disabled and difficult were put on pilotless ships and floated down a river, canal or to sea. In Bunghole, the misfits return wiser and stronger, and with a desire for revenge.
A co-production between Back to Back Theatre and Matchbox Pictures, the work will be directed and co-written by Back To Back Theatre's artistic director Bruce Gladwin, produced by Julie Eckersley (The Family Law) and Alice Nash and executive produced by Debbie Lee.
Hive Fund #1 saw the production of the life-affirming documentary Tender from artist Lynette Wallworth, which went on to worldwide festival acclaim, an AACTA win and a US distribution deal.
I Want To Dance Better at Parties, from directors Gideon Obarzanek and Matt Bate, won the Dendy Award for Best Short Film at the Sydney Film Festival and song-stage-screen film The Boy Castaways, from director Michael Kantor, was shown at the Melbourne Arts Festival in a special event before going on to screen theatrically around the country.
Hive Fund #2 projects, both feature directorial debuts, premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival only six months ago and have already achieved success.
Spear, the feature film debut for Bangarra Dance Company artistic director Stephen Page, produced by John Harvey, received a Special Mention for the prestigious Asia Pacific Screen Awards UNESCO Award for the preservation of cultural diversity through film.
Spear was also selected for Toronto International Film Festival and is currently screening around the country.
Girl Asleep, from director Rosemary Myers, artistic director of Windmill Theatre, and producer Jo Dyer, won the Foxtel Audience Award at the Adelaide Film Festival, was nominated for the Generation 14plus Crystal Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and is set for an Australian theatrical release in 2016.
The Hive initiative, which also includes the Hive Lab, has collaborated with a who’s who from the arts and screen worlds including Richard Tognetti, Eddie Perfect, Chris Drummond, Lally Katz, Megan Washington, Tim Rogers, Bridget Ikin, Nakkiah Lui, Clare Bowditch, Glendyn Ivin, Rolf de Heer and Anna Broinowski.