[Release by Screen Australia]
Malcolm McDonald – director of the Screen Australia Making History documentary Mawson – Life and Death in Antarctica was awarded the Best Director Award at the Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival held in Los Angeles over the weekend.
Created in 1992 the Jules Verne Awards celebrate exploration, conservation and imagination. They pay tribute to inspirational explorers, artists, movies, and special achievements, which contribute to recapturing the spirit of adventure, in the tradition of Jules Verne.
Mawson – Life and Death in Antarctica – which premiered on ABC1 in May this year – is having much success on the international film festival circuit. In early October it won the Best Documentary Prize at the International Festival of Mountain Films in Poprad, Slovakia and has been selected as a Grand Prix Finalist at the International Mountain and Adventure Film Festival in Graz, Austria commencing on 12 November 2008.
Malcolm McDonald’s next project is the dramatised Making History documentary Monash – The Forgotten Anzac which screens on Tuesday 11 November at 8:30pm on ABC1.
Visit the Mawson – Life and Death in Antarctica website.
For more information about Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival visit the website: www.julesvernefestival.com/
Mawson – Life and Death in Antarctica
85 mins
Production Company: Orana Films, Film Australia
Executive Producer: Alex West
Producer: Richard Dennison
Writer/director: Malcolm McDonald
Cast: William McInnes (Narrator); Antarctic Team – Tim Jarvis (Douglas Mawson), John Stoukalo (Xavier Mertz), Dr David Tingay; Dramatic Reconstruction – Jason Stewart as Douglas Mawson, Iain McGuire as Xavier Mertz
(A Screen Australia Making History Production in association with Orana Films. Produced with the assistance of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Channel 4.)
The Douglas Mawson Antarctic Expedition of 1912 is one of the most amazing feats of endurance of all time. Although his two companions perished, Douglas Mawson survived, but how? In a bold historical experiment, adventurer Tim Jarvis retraces the gruelling experience, with similar meagre rations, primitive clothing and equipment to uncover what happened to Mawson physically – and mentally – as a man hanging on the precipice of life and death.