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- NOT
JUST A PRETTY FACE
- Women
pioneers in Australia's film
industry
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- The
first moving picture in Australia and possibly
the world’s first feature film was the
Salvation Army’s Soldiers of the
Cross (1900) in which appeared Beatrice Day,
the first woman in an Australian film. Senora
Spencer has been quoted as the first female film
projectionist in Australia, working for her
husband’s company Spencer’s Pictures
from 1906.
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- However,
the real pioneer woman of the early Australian
film industry is Lottie Lyell who, as director,
producer, editor and screen play writer worked
with her partner Raymond Longford on at least 28
silent movies in which she also acted in 21
between 1911 and 1925, the year of her untimely
death. However, it wasn’t until her 18th
film, The Blue Mountain Mystery of 1921
that she received a screen credit as
co-director.
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- Some
Australians left for the bright lights of
Hollywood, such as Annette Kellerman, the first
Australian woman to star in an American silent
movie while Dorothy Gardner was the first
Australian stuntwoman to work in Hollywood from
1916-1926.
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- The
mid 1920s saw the establishment of
Australia’s first entirely female-run film
company, McD Productions by sisters Paulette,
Phyllis and Isobel McDonagh. Using their stately
mansion as a location, they wrote, produced and
directed 4 films with Isobel as the female star.
Their final film Two Minutes Silence of
1933 was the last Australian film to be directed
by a woman until Gillian Armstrong’s 1979
My Brilliant Career.
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- Dorothy
Stanward was the first woman to be heard in
Australia's first talkie Isle of Intrigue
of 1931.
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- The
post-Word War II period saw more women moving
from in front to behind the camera as well as in
executive roles in the Australian film industry.
During the 1960s Valerie Taylor became the first
female producer and filmmaker of underwater
documentaries in Australia working in
partnership with her husband Ron. Establishing
her business in 1971, Natalie Miller became the
first female independent film distributor in
Australia later becoming the first woman board
member of the Victorian Film Corporation.
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- The
rebirth of Australia’s film industry from
the late 1970s generated a wealth of female
talent including those working in the
traditionally male controlled areas such as
producer Jan Chapman and directors Gillian
Armstrong and former New Zealander Jane Campion.
Gillian Armstrong became the first Australian
woman to direct a Hollywood movie (Mr
Soffel 1985) while Jane Campion was the
first woman to be awarded the film
industry’s prestigious “Palme
D’Or” in Cannes for The Piano,
written and directed by her in 1993 and produced
by Jan Chapman.
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- Some
first women in Australia's film
industry...
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 - Documentation
Collection, ScreenSound
Australia
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- LOTTIE
LYELL (1890-1925)
- Australia’s
first female star, scriptwriter and producer of
silent movies is seen here in her starring role
in the silent classic The "Sentimental Bloke"
(1919). Although she worked on many movies with
her partner Raymond Longford, she did not
receive a screen credit as director until
1921.
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 - Documentation
Collection, ScreenSound
Australia
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- ANNETTE
KELLERMAN (1886-1975)
- The
first Australian to play the lead in a Hollywood
movie, including a nude scene, she appeared in
the title role of “Jephthah’s
Daughter“ in 1909. Childhood polio had made
her take up swimming to strengthen her legs,
becoming a champion marathon swimmer in Europe.
She also pioneered the one-piece bathing costume
and synchronized swimming.
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 - Courtesy
of Mrs Daphne Calder (née
Campbell)
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- DAPHNE
CAMPBELL
- The
first Centralian woman to play a major role in
an Australian movie, she starred with Chips
Rafferty in "The Overlanders" filmed largely in
the Alice Springs area in 1946.
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 - Documentation
Collection, ScreenSound Australia. Rosalie
Kunoth Monks from Jedda by Charles Chauvel.
(Permission granted by copyright owners Suzanne
Carlsson & HC McIntyre Trust, courtesy of
Curtis Brown, Sydney)
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- ROSIE
KUNOTH MONKS
- The
first Aboriginal female film star but later
social worker and crusader for Aboriginal
rights; at 15 she was chosen by director Charles
Chauvel to play the title role in
Australia’s first feature-length colour
film Jedda of 1955. She left the film industry
behind becoming the first Aboriginal Anglican
nun when she entered the Community of the Holy
Name in Melbourne in 1960. Ten years later she
set up the first family group home for
Aboriginal children in Melbourne with husband
Bill Monks.
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 - Documentation
Collection, ScreenSound Australia. (Permission
granted by copyright owner, Jan
Chapman)
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- GILLIAN
ARMSTRONG (b1950)
- She
became the first woman film director in Australia since the 1930s
when she directed My Brilliant Career in 1979, a movie unique
for its predominantly female production team including producer,
director, writer, production and art director.
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