Screen Canberra has announced eight recipients of its annual Screen Arts Fund. As well as funding production, the ACT Screen Arts funds a wide variety of professional activities that support the development of narrative screen production Canberran screen artists, including pitch development, concept work, mentorship, and production attachments.
The 2021 round of 8 recipients span all stages of development, and includes an interactive fiction videogame: Raqiyah Patel’s Amarantus. This is particularly notable as ACT is one of the four states and territories that currently does not offer dedicated funding to videogame development. However, the Screen Arts Fund’s broad remit allows it to support a wide variety of projects beyond conventional screen production, with funded projects including a social research mentorship with Andrew Pike OAM for longform documentary maker Adele Chynoweth, an international producer attachment for James Foulds with Arcadia, pitch development for a bilingual animated children’s TV series, as well as production funding.