Thunderstorms. Image: supplied
From the Western Frontier began life as an initiative created between ScreenWest and NITV for emerging indigenous director/writer teams. Series producer Renee Kennedy explained that it was originally going to be part of the Defining Moments series on NITV ran last year, but it soon evolved and became From the Western Frontier instead.
At the same time as the callout was made for indigenous writers and directors, a call was also put out for a producer to help put the series together. “It was quite an unusual way to establish the creative team,” Renee said. From what she could gather, they were looking for a Western Australian mid-level producer or production company with a few credits to their name. Renee had started her company Metamorflix in July 2013, and they decided that she fitted the bill.
Renee doesn’t come from an indigenous background, but she has previously worked on indigenous programming as well as science and social issues documentaries. These include The Silent Epidemic and Constructing Australia: The Bridge (with Simon Nasht) which won the 2008 Logie Award for Best Documentary and a 2007 AWGIE award. As Supervisor of Production at ScreenWorld then Supervisor of Production at Beyond Fact & Fiction / Screen Production, she oversaw productions including Darwin’s Brave New World, Food Investigators, Shintaro – the Samurai Sensation that Swept a Nation, Are You My Mother, Chopper Rescue 2, Law & Disorder, Outback Kids and The Years That Made Us: Australia Between The Wars.
Renee wasn’t involved in the selection of participants in From the Western Frontier, which was also quite unusual. The original plan was to select two projects to go into production. They whittled the applicants down to a short-list of three ideas and these applicants then attended Perth workshop in August 2013, which Renee also attended. Following the workshops, the participants were to go away and write the treatments. NITV and ScreenWest would then pick two of them to move into production. As it turned out however, all three ideas were very strong and the organisations decided to fund all three of them.
Writer/director Todd Russell’s film is called My Three Families. It features Sue Gordon AM, who was removed from her mother’s care as a four year old and placed in a children’s home in Perth for the next 14 years. Believing she was an orphan, Sue eventually became a Magistrate at the Children’s Court of WA. Then one extraordinary day, she was found by her birth family.
