Alice Bell is an Australian screenwriter and director. [1] She has written for Australian TV dramas, including The Beautiful Lie, The Slap, Spirited , Rush and Puberty Blues. Most recently, Alice Bell collaborated with Nicole Kidman and Lulu Wang as writer and Executive Producer on Amazon Prime Video's Expats which was shot in Hong Kong over the pandemic, starring Nicole Kidman, Sarayu Blue, Ji-young Yoo, Brian Tee, Jack Huston and Ruby Ruiz. [2] She has directed music videos for artists including Silverchair, Toni Collette and the Finish, Jimmy Barnes, Little Birdy, and Missy Higgins. In 2007, she won the ARIA Award for Best Video, with co-director Paul Goldman, for Silverchair's "Straight Lines".
Bell grew up in the harbourside suburb of Balmain, Sydney. [3] After a series of "terrible" jobs, [4] including a stint as a dental nurse and role at an electroplating factory, she chose to forego formal training and began working in the film industry as production assistant. She made her way up to the role of production manager at Leah Churchill-Brown's company The Doll Collective. [5]
In 2006, at age 27, Bell's first feature film, Suburban Mayhem , was invited to screen at the Cannes Film Festival. [6] The film had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival before receiving an international release. The screenplay won Bell the AWGIE Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2012, but the film was a critical failure. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a "rotten" rating of 20%, based on 5 reviews, with an average rating of 4/10. [7] Bell had obsessively researched true crime to develop the story, and had attended murder trials to gain insight into crime within families. [2] She completed the script in her early twenties.
Bell was one of the original writers on Channel Ten's police rescue drama Rush, with her first episode airing on 18 November 2008. She wrote episodes for series one to three.
In 2009, she completed a five-month intensive writers' workshop at the Binger Filmlab in Amsterdam. This led her to produce the screenplay Gin and Tonic, [8] which as of 2015 was in its final stages of development.
Bell wrote the "Connie" episode of ABC's the award-winning series The Slap , an adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas' novel of the same name. The series' writing was called "quotidian and naturalistic" by The New York Times . [9] Bell, along with her co-writers, won the 2012 AWGIE Award for Television Mini-Series (Adaptation). Bell received an AWGIE nomination the same year for Best Screenplay in a Television Series for her episode of Spirited, 'If You See Her Say Hello'. In 2013, she was nominated for an AACTA Award with co-writer Tony McNamara for episode five of the Ten Network's Puberty Blues. The show won the AACTA Award for Best Television Drama Series the same year.
Bell is the co-creator, script producer and co-writer of 2015's "The Beautiful Lie" which airs on ABC. She wrote four of the drama's six episodes. [10]
Bell lives in Sydney with her husband - actor, writer and director Leon Ford – together they have two daughters. [11] In April 2017, Alice had a baby boy named Willem, brother to Francesca and Emilie.
Leah Maree Purcell is an Aboriginal Australian stage and film actress, playwright, film director, and novelist. She made her film debut in 1999, appearing in Paul Fenech's Somewhere in the Darkness, which led to roles in films, such as Lantana (2001), Somersault (2004), The Proposition (2005) and Jindabyne (2006).
Eleven: A Music Company is an Australian record label and management company known for its small but successful roster, currently including Birds of Tokyo, Cold Chisel, Dustin Tebbutt, Gotye, Midnight Oil, Missy Higgins, Paul Mac, Peter Garrett, The Presets, and Silverchair. The company was founded on 11 November 2000 by artist manager, John Watson.
Ian Meadows is an Australian actor, playwright and writer.
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Osamah Sami is an Australian stage and screen actor, writer, and stand-up comedian, born in Iran of Iraqi origin. He is known for his book Good Muslim Boy, and the film Ali's Wedding.
Lowdown is an Australian television comedy series set in the world of celebrity journalism. Created by Amanda Brotchie and Adam Zwar, it stars Zwar, Paul Denny, Beth Buchanan, Dailan Evans, Kim Gyngell and is narrated by Geoffrey Rush. The ABC series premiered on 21 April 2010 and is produced by Nicole Minchin and directed by Amanda Brotchie.
Rake is an Australian television program, produced by Essential Media and Entertainment, that first aired on the ABC TV in 2010. It stars Richard Roxburgh as the rakish Cleaver Greene, a brilliant but self-destructive Sydney barrister, defending a usually guilty client. The fifth and final series went into production in October 2017 and premiered on 19 August 2018.
The Slap is an Australian television drama series. It was first broadcast on ABC1 from 6 October to 24 November 2011. The series is based on The Slap, a 2008 novel by Australian author Christos Tsiolkas, which explores what happens when a man slaps a child, who is not related to him, at a suburban barbecue.
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Please Like Me is an Australian comedy-drama television series created by and starring Josh Thomas. Thomas also serves as a writer for most episodes. The series premiered on 28 February 2013 on ABC2 in Australia and is on occasion available on Netflix in certain regions. The show explores realistic issues with humorous tones; executive producer Todd Abbott had pitched the show as a drama rather than a sitcom. The show aired later on the United States network Pivot, which then helped to develop the show from its second season onwards. Four seasons of the show have been broadcast, and creator Thomas has stated that he has no plans to make any further episodes. The show has attracted praise from critics and has garnered numerous nominations, winning a number of awards.
Andrew John Knight is an Australian TV writer and producer of film and television, known for his work on Rake, Jack Irish, Hacksaw Ridge, Ali's Wedding and The Water Diviner.
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Jacquelin Perske is an Australian screenwriter and producer who is best known as co-creator of the television series, Love My Way and for her screenplay for The Cry.
Beck Cole is an Australian filmmaker of the Warramungu and Luritja nations. She is known for her work on numerous TV series, including First Australians, Grace Beside Me, Black Comedy and Wentworth, as well as documentaries and short films. She is based in Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory.
Love Me is an Australian drama series and the first original production of streaming service Binge. Set in Melbourne, Victoria, Love Me is a story about love, loss and relationship complexity for the father, daughter and son of a contemporary, middle-class Australian family. Triggered by the death of the disabled mother, cared for by the father at home for some years, the three stumble in their lives, eventually finding themselves and each other.
Kristen Dunphy is an Australian television screenwriter and producer. She is best known as creator, co-writer and co-executive producer of Wakefield, which screened on ABC TV in 2021.
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Aquarius Films is an independent Australian film and TV production company based in Sydney, founded in 2008 by producers Angie Fielder and Polly Staniford. TV credits include Love Me, The Unusual Suspects, The Other Guy and Savage River Film credits include Academy Award and Golden Globe nominated Lion starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman, produced by Aquarius in association with See-Saw Films and the psychological thriller Berlin Syndrome starring Teresa Palmer and Directed by Cate Shortland which premiered at Sundance Film Festival, Dirt Music, directed by Gregor Jordan and starring Garrett Hedlund, Kelly Macdonald and David Wenham and Wish You Were Here, starring Joel Edgerton and Teresa Palmer, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival and won two Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Awards, including Best Screenplay, and five Film Critics Circle Awards, including Best Film.
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is an Australian drama miniseries created by Sarah Lambert and based on the novel by Holly Ringland. All seven episodes were directed by Glendyn Ivin, and were released by Amazon Studios from 4 August to 1 September 2023.