SBS orders docs on death, disability

Firestarter: The Story of Bangarra will chronicle the success of Australia’s Bangarra Dance Theatre

Australian pubcaster SBS has commissioned documentaries on family-owned funeral homes in Sydney and a counsellor who helps young people with intellectual disabilities find love.

Meanwhile fellow pubcaster the ABC has ordered a three-part documentary on the Australian Royal Commission into the legacy of abuse at Roman Catholic schools and other institutions.

These are among 14 factual projects which received a total of A$2.7m (US$1.9m) in Screen Australia funding through its documentary producer and commissioned programmes.

Germany’s Studio Hamburg Enterprises will coproduce Cryptopia: Bitcoin, Blockchain and the Future of the Internet, with Torsten Hoffmann and Michael Watchulonis. The follow-up to the same creative team’s 2015 film Bitcoin: The End of Money as We Know It will explore whether the technology underlying Bitcoin can prevent financial meltdowns and keep private information safe.

Mint Pictures and Tangerine Pictures will coproduce Secret Life of Death, which follows two young women at funeral homes, one who works with the living, the other who works with the dead.

Producer Dominique Pile and writer-director Liz Allen are making Young, Dateable and Disabled (working title), which looks at relationship counsellor Liz Dore’s mission to find romantic partners for six young people with intellectual disabilities.

The other SBS commissions are Mint Pictures’ Trade Mission, which traces transgender truck driver Holly Conroy’s efforts to stage a Mardi Gras in a conservative rural town; and Heiress Films’ Business As Usual, which centres on a thriving but often chaotic family-run event business in Western Sydney.

Sarah Ferguson

In Films’ Nial Fulton will produce Revelation, in which journalist Sarah Ferguson will examine the Royal Commission which ended years of silence and resistance from the Catholic Church.

Among the feature documentaries funded, In Films’ Firestarter: The Story of Bangarra will chronicle the success of Australia’s Bangarra Dance Theatre as it celebrates its 30th anniversary after overcoming years of adversity. Icon Films is the Australian/New Zealand distributor.

People Productions’ Heart of the Queen will follow a singer from Tamworth, New South Wales who risks everything in her quest to become a country music great in Nashville.

Project Films’ Martha profiles New York photographer Martha Cooper, whose images are said to have catalysed a global movement, revealing humanity and empowerment in a culture otherwise defined by race, crime and poverty.

Brindle Films’ Uluru & the Magician spotlights Dave Welsman, a Sydney kids’ magician who is determined to reboot his life with a grand illusion to make Uluru (formerly Ayres Rock) in central Australia disappear.

The documentary producer projects also include Matadora Films’ The Bamboo Bridge, which looks at a bridge across the Mekong River which was dismantled in 2017 and replaced by a huge, government-funded concrete bridge that put an end to an architectural masterpiece and triggered rapid changes to the local way of life.

FanForce Films’ Bone to Pick follows a pet owner who switches his rescue dog’s diet from processed to raw food in an effort to cure his chronic illnesses.