The young ones

Focused ambition … Gracie Otto at The Compound in Chippendale, Sydney. Photo: Damian Bennett. Styling: Jolyon Mason. Hair and make-up: Charlie Kielty. Magdalena Velevska dress, Pink LouLou necklace

Ed Gibbs, The Age, reports

Australia's brightest young things in filmmaking hail from cinematic backgrounds, but parental string-pulling plays no part in their success.

For someone who excelled at sport, representing her country in indoor soccer in both Europe and North America, Gracie Otto admits she still isn't sure how she wound up in an industry that's notoriously fickle and, for women, ageist and sexist. "I'd seen what it's like to be in the film industry and not work, as an actor, from my family," she says, of her parents Barry Otto and Susan Hill, and older half-sister Miranda. "I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I was playing soccer. I wanted to travel – which we didn't do as a family – but that was about it."

After a chance life-changing experience while still at school – "We literally learnt how to edit from a VHS tape to a VHS tape, for school videos" – she finally caught the film bug she'd been exposed to from a young age. But she swiftly realised that – unlike her famous father and sister – her calling lay behind the camera.

As we talk in her office in Sydney's Chippendale, Otto is busily trawling through 400-odd pages of transcripts culled from more than two dozen interviews carried out across five cities around the world. They will form the basis for her as-yet-untitled documentary on British theatre and film impresario Michael White.

Family business... Gracie Otto with her older sister Miranda, and father Barry, in 1988. Photo: Fairfaxsyndication.com



At 24, Otto is typical of Australia's bright young things who, while hailing from relatively privileged homes, are determined to make their own mark, on their own terms, in an industry fostered by their parents in the 1970s and 1980s. While working on the White documentary – her first feature-length project, following a string of well-received shorts – she also found time to star in a friend's pop-art film, LBF. It premiered at last year's SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. Otto's performance was rather good, so anyone seeking to hurl potshots at her privileged background appears to be wasting their time.

"People can be negative if they want to be," she says, "but it's not like you can help where you come from. You still have to prove yourself. We're trying to get more finance right now. But when you've grown up around [the film business], enjoyed it and had a good upbringing, I don't see why it matters. I went to film school in Sydney. This is what I want to do."

Once best known as a brand-ambassador socialite, Otto has a newfound supporter in the shape of Matilda Brown. The middle child of Aussie actor-producer Bryan Brown and actor-turned-director Rachel Ward, Brown met Otto for the first time only last month, when Otto interviewed Ward for her Michael White film. No one was more surprised than Matilda Brown herself.

Role model … Matilda Brown (centre) with mother Rachel Ward and sister Rosie in 1993. Photo: Fairfaxsyndication.com

"I don't know whether I'd been a snob or in the back of my mind had been competitive, but we just hadn't met," Brown says. "I hadn't put out the hand of friendship. It's good to finally meet her and realise that we are like-minded people, that we do like the same things."

The pair share, of course, that common bond of battling prejudice. "I had the guy in the local cafe say, after I was shortlisted for Tropfest, 'Don't you think it's just because of your parents?'" Brown says. "You have things like that all the time, that make you question and think, 'I really hope not.' This is what I want to do, this my passion. I don't want to be constantly second-guessing myself."

Brown, like Otto, has good reason to find such jibes irksome. In addition to making last month's Tropfest final (her second in three years), and some impressive acting turns, her latest directing effort, the short Am I Okay?, has been selected for this year's St Kilda Film Festival. And although her work is grouped under her parents' New Town Films company, Brown's mother is quick to dismiss the notion of a "family firm" in development. Rachel Ward is adamant, in fact, that her daughter has done it all off her own bat.

In their genes … (left to right) Augusta Miller, Billie Pleffer and Matilda Brown.

"I mean, obviously she's familiar with this world, because of watching us," Ward says, from the Balmain office of New Town Films. "She gets a bit of advice from us occasionally, but it's very much her own trajectory. She was the one who went off to film school, and moved from Sydney to Melbourne. She's been doing all her short films. She's the one who's led the charge. She's not a Mini-Me, by any means. It simply doesn't work like that."

Brown's work has also screened at a festival showcasing the work of female filmmakers, called World of Women's Cinema (WOW). This year's event kicked off last week in Sydney's Circular Quay. The festival director, Michelle Bleicher, believes this new generation of filmmakers is making a difference, although numbers on women in the industry remain elusive. "There is still very little data available on the numbers of women leaving the industry," she says, "and the reasons why. There are still issues of scales of pay as well. Any increase in numbers is welcome. Certainly, we have some very interesting voices emerging."

Similarly, director Gillian Armstrong believes not enough has changed since her landmark debut My Brilliant Career, 33 years ago. "Are there as many young women attending film schools? I had once thought that the problem came from the source, that young women weren't applying because they were still deterred by what seemed to be the technical side of filmmaking," Armstrong says. "But I don't think this is true any more."

She adds: "A few years ago I spoke with the head of NYU Film in New York and they said there were as many young women graduates and that quite often they won student of the year – but the problem was they weren't getting the breaks. It was harder to get their foot in the door, to get that first project up. Why? Because the studios – and independent producers – believe that the most successful films appeal to young men. And the studios are run by men."

Despite this, Armstrong's daughter, Billie Pleffer, only last month won two prizes at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival for her debut short film, Bino. Unlike Gracie Otto and Matilda Brown, though, she "secretly" sent herself to film school in Melbourne, fearful of the shadow the family legacy would cast on her chances as a filmmaker. She even claims to have kept it under wraps in Berlin.

"There are so many expectations people have," the 26-year-old says. "Like people thinking that I'm somehow getting a free ride. That's why I prefer to go out anonymous. Nobody knew at Berlin, and nobody knew at film school, either. If they had, they would have judged me in some way."

Perhaps, in time, that will change ("I'm still only starting out, I want to find out myself," she adds.) But she's not alone in being wary of industry chatter, nor in finding it daunting to scale the lofty heights of the family heritage.

Augusta Miller has similarly battled self-doubt. She, too, opted to move – this time, to LA – just weeks ago, in January, to focus on carving her own path. (Her father is producer-director George Miller, her mother theatre actor Sandy Gore.) She, too, has large shoes to fill: a daunting prospect, she says, that it's almost pointless to consider.

"It's been a challenge to admit I wanted to be in the industry at all," the 25-year-old writer-producer says. "I didn't have any rose-coloured glasses. It wasn't glamorised for me as a kid. My dad gave me some great advice: you just have to be able to create your own work, that's the most important thing. Then you're not waiting for the phone to ring. You're in charge of your own self-expression."

She adds: "There are so many children with parents in the industry, they're all finding their way. It's about carving your own path through life, of trying not to be intimidated by it. Because most of the time, the pressure is what you put on yourself. Certainly, Dad has never felt like I should compete, or that it wasn't even worth trying to compete with his success. That's not what it's about."

The NIDA graduate – who "cut dialogue and edited music" on both of her father's Happy Feet films – is currently working on a documentary ("about farming"), has co-written a script with childhood friend Gracie Otto, and believes a dynastic scenario is inevitable in the Australian film industry. "A lot of us are of a similar age, and some of us are bound to want to be in the business in some form or other," she says. "I've gone to LA to try to work out what exactly I should focus on. Whatever that may be, I want to do my parents' legacies proud. I have to."

 

---



THREE TO WATCH IN 2012

Alexandra Schepisi
Daughter of legendary filmmaker Fred Schepisi, the Melbourne-based actor, who gave an AACTA-nominated performance in her father's The Eye of the Storm, also directs. Her second short film, Lois, starring Jacki Weaver, is currently in post-production.

Alice Englert
The actor daughter of Oscar-winning director Jane Campion is now shooting the Sally Potter film Bomb with Elle Fanning in London. She has three other films in the pipeline, including Beautiful Creatures – the first adaptation of Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl's Caster Chronicles books.

Leila George
The Australian-born, English-raised daughter of actor Greta Scaachi and Law & Order star Vincent D'Onofrio heads to New York in May to try her hand at acting, having studied filmmaking in Sydney in 2011. Mum and Dad are, she says, "really excited".

LBF screens at the Australian Film Festival in Sydney on March 14 (australianfilmfestival.com.au); the WOW Film Festival runs in Sydney until March 16 (wift.org/wow).

Lead-in image: Photography by Damian Bennett. Hair and make-up by Charlie Kielty. Styling by Jolyon Mason. Gracie wears Magdalena Velevska dress, Pink LouLou necklace. Shot on location at The Compound, Sydney.