GILLIAN ARMSTRONG, Director

GILLIAN ARMSTRONG’S international reputation was established with her first feature film, My Brilliant Career (1978), the official Australian entry at Cannes Film Festival, which in addition to winning eleven Australian Film Institute Awards, won the British Critics Award for Best First Feature, and the Academy Award for Best Costume Design, was nominated as Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globe Awards, and garnered a nomination for Best Actress at the British Academy Awards for Judy Davis.

Armstrong’s quartet of documentaries examining the lives of three women from girlhood to motherhood won prizes and international recognition, with the last in the cycle, Not Fourteen Again, being selected for The Berlin Film Festival Panorama Section, and winning Best Documentary at the Australian Film Institute Awards.

Gillian Armstrong directed Cate Blanchett in her first major feature film, Oscar and Lucinda, co–starring Ralph Fiennes, adapted from the Booker prize winning novel by Peter Carey.

Other directing credits include Little Women, which was nominated for three Academy Awards, and The Last Days of Chez Nous, which was nominated for eleven Australian Film Institute Awards and won three Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards.

Armstrong’s feature High Tide, starring Judy Davis, was nominated for seven AFI Awards, winning two, and won several international awards including Best Film and Best Supporting Actress at the Houston Film Festival, Grand Prix Festival International de Creteil for Best Film, and the US National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress for Judy Davis.

Other feature film credits include Mrs Soffel, starring Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson (1984) and Starstruck (1982) starring Jo Kennedy and Ross O’Donovan.

In 1998 Gillian Armstrong was given the Women in Hollywood Icon Award in recognition of her contribution to the film industry, having already twice been awarded the Dorothy Arzner Award for Directing in 1993 and 1995.

SARAH CURTIS, Producer

SARAH CURTIS has worked in the world of film and television for the past eighteen years. Having begun her career with Granada Television, she became a script editor in the BBC’s drama department at Pebble Mill in 1984. Sarah subsequently worked for Richard Brooke and Kenith Trodd in the BBC’s main drama department in London. Until her departure in 1989, she worked on such award–winning productions as Tumbledown and After Pilkington.

As a producer, Curtis has been responsible for three television films: The Yellow Wallpaper with Dorothy Tutin and Stephen Dillane; Newshounds, starring Adrian Edmonson and Alison Steadman, which won the 1990 BAFTA Award for Best Single Film; and Tell Me That You Love Me with Sean Bean, James Wilby and Judith Scott.

Since joining Parallax in 1992, Curtis has produced and executive produced four films: Bad Behaviour, directed by Les Blair, which won the 1993 Evening Standard Peter Sellers Award for Best Comedy; The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, Christopher Monger’s gentle Ealing–style comedy, which starred Hugh Grant, Tara Fitzgerald, Ian McNiece and Colm Meaney; Bliss, directed by Les Blair and starring Douglas Hodge; and Jump the Gun, also directed by Les Blair and winner of six M–NET Awards.

In 1997, Curtis produced one of the most popular films of the year, Mrs. Brown, an Ecosse Films production for BBC Films, directed by John Madden with Dame Judi Dench, Billy Connolly and Antony Sher, and nominated for two Oscars. Following the success of Mrs. Brown, Curtis produced The Governess, directed by Sandra Goldbacher and starring Minnie Driver and Tom Wilkinson, and Mansfield Park for Miramax HAL, starring Frances O’Connor and Jonny Lee Miller.

DOUGLAS RAE (Producer)

DOUGLAS RAE began his professional career as a trainee reporter with the Scottish Daily Express in Edinburgh. At 17, he was appointed the country’s youngest editor at the Kirriemuir Herald in Angus.

After two years with the Scottish Daily Mail, where he wrote on cinema and covered the Edinburgh Festival, Douglas joined Scottish Television as a presenter and reporter. While there, he presented the hugely popular children’s program Magpie for five years for Thames Television, and every year presented Scottish Television’s coverage of the Edinburgh Festival and the Film Festival.

Following a course at The National Film School, he became a producer and director and in 1988 formed Ecosse Films to produce documentaries and arts programs.

He produced and directed The Great Moghuls in India with Bamber Gascoigne and Harry Enfield’s Guide to Opera for Channel Four. His production of Ralph Steadman’s opera, “Plague and the Moonflower” won the 1994 Best Arts Programme in the Indies Awards. Douglas won the BAFTA Scotland award for Best Arts programme for his direction of The Bigger Picture starring Billy Connolly for BBC Scotland.

Since 1997, Douglas has executive produced Mrs. Brown, which, amongst a number of other awards and nominations, received a BAFTA nomination for producer of the year award; two series of The Ambassador for BBC 1; two series of An Unsuitable Job for a Woman for ITV; three series of the hugely successful BBC 1 drama, Monarch of the Glen; and a pilot, McCready & Daughter for BBC 1, starring Lorcan Cranitch and Patsy Palmer. Rae was named Scottish Filmmaker of the Year by Scottish Screen in 1997 and is on the board of the BAFTA Film Committee.

Rae is currently working on a number of projects, including The Water Horse, to be shot in Scotland, Henry and Anne, a feature film written by Jeremy Brock for Film Four about the story of the infamous marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and Charlie, a feature film written by Ronan Bennett (Lucky Break ) on the 1745 campaign by Bonnie Prince Charlie to take over the throne.