Screentime preps actors, miners docs

Australian prodco Screentime has secured Screen Australia funding for two documentaries, Taking on The Chocolate Frog and The Flying Miners.

SBS’s arts and entertainment pay TV channel Studio commissioned Chocolate Frog (3×60’), which follows a bunch of amateurs as they undergo training to become film and TV actors.

ABC-TV ordered Miners (3×60’), which examines the workers who fly hundreds of kilometres every two weeks to toil in mines in the Australian Outback.

Banijay International, whose parent owns a majority stake in Screentime, has international rights to both projects.

Screen Australia announced an investment of A$3.2m (US$2.9m) in 10 documentaries, generating almost A$10m worth of production.

Among the other recipients, Southern Star Entertainment will produce Crash Test Mummies and Daddies (6×30’), a snapshot of contemporary Australian parenting for ABC2. Endemol Worldwide Distribution is the sales agent.

The ABC and BBC4 commissioned Wizards of Oz (2×60′), which will follow British author/journalist Howard Jacobson as he explains how Barry Humphries, Robert Hughes, Germaine Greer and Clive James left Australia in the 1960s to become cultural icons in London and New York, from Mint Pictures and Serendipity Productions. TCB Media handles international sales.

The ABC also ordered 88 (1×60’), which chronicles how more than 30,000 Aboriginal people converged in Sydney for a march that changed the nation in 1988, repped by Flame Distribution; The Waler: Australia’s Great War Horse (1×60’), the story of the 135,000 Australian horses that went to the First World War; Outback Choir, a portrait of growing up in regional Australia and the difference belonging to a choir can make; and Life at 9 (2×60’), which continues the stories of 10 Australian children who are part of the largest-ever longitudinal scientific study on child development.

Foxtel commissioned Who We Are 3 (1×60’), which explores contemporary indigenous Australia through the eyes of six young Australians.