The Last Shift

My short noir thriller "The Last Shift" is screening at the Angry Film Festival in Melbourne. Starring Darren Sabadina, Anni Finsterer and Steve Rodgers, the film takes you on a tense ride through the streets of Sydney and explores the dark side of being a taxi driver. An antidote to my upbeat doco series, "Taxi School", I wanted to make a provocative thriller with a sinister twist.

Kulka - The Life and Times of Indigenous Activist Gordon Briscoe

"Kulka" is a 50 minute bio doc that celebrates the life and times of Dr Gordon Briscoe, a campaigner for basic human rights for Indigenous Australians, an activist, motivator, thinker, researcher, author, teacher and mentor. It is the inspirational story of an institutionalized Aborigine, interned in an ‘alien’ camp during the second World War with very little education, who struggled against the odds to achieve dignity and respect for himself and his people. His work as co-founder of the Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern in the 1970’s led him to initiate the National Trachoma and Eye Health Program conducted by the late Professor Fred Hollows - a program which opened the eyes of the world to the poverty and disease underlying the health problems of Indigenous Australians. As a Land Rights activist and the first Indigenous Australian to stand for federal parliament, Gordon travelled throughout the Northern Territory talking to communities about their rights as traditional owners. The intensely personal story of Gordon Briscoe’s journey as a boy once labeled a ‘ward of the state’ to a man who reclaimed his traditional family and cultural identity, is a powerful one that resonates with the ongoing struggle for self-determination facing Indigenous Australians today.

Broadcast on NITV on Foxtel
Written and Directed by Claire Haywood
Produced by Kingston Anderson
Co-Produced by Gordon and Norma Briscoe

DVD available from Ronin Films
www.roninfilms.com.au

Production stills from SBS documentary series Taxi School

Taxi School - a window into a multicultural world

Like so many television ideas, the idea for an observational documentary about a taxi school started as a conversation between friends. An artist friend had fallen on hard times. He wanted to continue to produce his own work and he needed a way to finance it so he enrolled in taxi school.
- I've lived in Sydney all my life, he said, I know this city inside out, it'll be a snap.
Six weeks later he found himself walking head down out of the Ministry of Transport office in Parramatta, having failed his first attempt at The Sydney Knowledge Test. It was back to taxi school for him.
He regaled me with stories of the classes. He was the only anglo in a room that bore a strong resemblance to a United Nations gathering. But instead of a map of the world, the room full of men pored over that bible of taxi training, The Street Directory.
- Wellington Street, Bondi to the Sydney Theatre Company, Millers Point. You have two minutes to find it. Go!, barks the trainer.
Thirty heads dive into thirty directories. Fingers of every shape, size and colour riffle through maps, turning pages in fast motion, tracing out the journey on pages and in their heads. An elated cry goes up.
-I've got it! The voice is heavily-accented. Its the round-faced Bangladeshi whose smile is permanent. His pride is palpable.
My Sydney-born friend feels slightly miffed that he has been pipped at the post by a guy who has lived in the country's biggest city for less than three months.
This is taxi school.
Motivation is high.
Street knowledge is the currency.
There are ticking clocks at every turn.
The quest for every trainee driver is to make money as quickly as possible. The fastest way into the work force in any major city is behind the wheel of a taxi.
The Sydney Knowledge Test is based on the infamously challenging London Knowledge Test, except that the Sydney metropolitan area is three times as large and the network of waterways makes falling off bridges and driving into harbourside cul de sacs a major hazard of map reading class.
The school is a family business and the patriarch at the helm is the man they call 'Mr Andrew', a Welsh immigrant with a wicked sense of humour who prides himself on turning out the best taxi drivers in Sydney. In Andrew's world 'Navman' is a dirty word. Andrew doesn't care where his students come from or how long they have been in the country, the taxi drivers he turns out are ambassadors for Australia and their street knowledge resides in their heads, not on the dashboard in a box. For Andrew, every airport pick-up is a unique opportunity for a cross-cultural exchange for his is the finishing school of taxi schools. He teaches cultural etiquette, sexual politics and how to avoid being mugged.
By the end of the conversation with my friend I am hooked. I want to know more about this urban subculture that we take for granted every time we get into a cab. I want to know the stories behind the eyes in the mirror that we see but know so little about, as we travel around this great cultural melting pot of a city. I set out with a microphone and a notebook to find out. That was two years ago.

The result is a four part series co-produced in 2009 by Screen Australia, Screen New South Wales, SBS Television and Wonderland Productions.

TAXI SCHOOL is distributed by SBS International.

Go to
http://www.wonderlandproductions.com.au