Bill Bennett | |
---|---|
Born | 1953 (age 71–72) London, England |
Occupation(s) | Film director Film producer Screenwriter |
Years active | 1983–present |
Bill Bennett (born 1953) is an Australian film director, producer and screenwriter.
Bennett was born in London to Australian parents and brought up in Brisbane. He studied journalism and got a cadetship with the ABC in 1972, where he was given the nickname "milkfingers" as a result of an on-air mishap. [1] He spent two years working in Adelaide on This Day Tonight then went to work for Mike Willesee in Sydney. He then worked on The Big Country and The Australians before moving into feature filmmaking with A Street to Die (1985). [2]
He dropped out of Medicine at the University of Queensland in 1972 and joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as a journalist. During a ten-year career as a journalist he won Australia's top TV award, the Logie Awards (Australia's Emmy) for Television Reporter of the Year, and then later for Most Outstanding Documentary. This led him to feature films.
Bennett has directed 17 feature films since 1983. His first film, A Street to Die, won the Crystal Globe for Best Film at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. His second film Backlash was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. [3] Three years later his film Malpractice would be screened in the same section at the 1989 festival. [4] His Outback film noir Kiss or Kill won 5 Australian Film Institute Awards, including two for Bill - Best Picture and Best Director. Bill has had three international film retrospectives, in the US, Germany and India.
His two theatrical feature documentaries, PGS - Intuition is your Personal Guidance System and Facing Fear are the first two films in a proposed series called the My Journey series. Later films proposed are on Hope, Purpose, Love and Death.
In mid 2024, distributors Maslow Entertainment will be releasing Bill's latest film, The Way, My Way, based on his best selling Camino memoir of the same title.
Bill Bennett is also an author, with Penguin Random House recently publishing his YA supernatural thriller trilogy, Palace of Fires.
Kiss of the Spider Woman is a 1985 drama film, based on the 1976 novel of the same title by Argentine writer Manuel Puig. It is directed by Argentine-Brazilian filmmaker Héctor Babenco from a screenplay by Leonard Schrader, and stars William Hurt, Raul Julia, and Sônia Braga.
Roman Kroitor was a Canadian filmmaker who was known as a pioneer of Cinéma vérité, as the co-founder of IMAX, and as the creator of the Sandde hand-drawn stereoscopic 3D animation system. He was also the original inspiration for The Force. His prodigious output garnered numerous awards, including two BAFTA Awards, three Cannes Film Festival awards, and two Oscar nominations.
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Colin Archibald Low was a Canadian animation and documentary filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was known as a pioneer, one of Canada's most important filmmakers, and was regularly referred to as "the gentleman genius". His numerous honors include five BAFTA awards, eight Cannes Film Festival awards, and six Academy Award nominations.
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Backlash is a 1986 Australian film directed by Bill Bennett.
Warwick Thornton is an Australian film director, screenwriter, and cinematographer. His debut feature film Samson and Delilah won the Caméra d'Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and the award for Best Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. He also won the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Film in 2017 for Sweet Country.
Malpractice is a 1989 Australian drama film directed by Bill Bennett. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival.
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Sophie Hyde is an Australian film director, writer, and producer based in Adelaide, South Australia. She is co-founder of Closer Productions and known for her award-winning debut fiction film, 52 Tuesdays (2013) and the comedy drama Animals (2019). She has also made several documentaries, including Life in Movement (2011), a documentary about dancer and choreographer Tanja Liedtke, and television series, such as The Hunting (2019). Her latest film, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2022. Her upcoming film Jimpa stars Olivia Colman and John Lithgow.
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Jennifer Cluff is an Australian actor and film producer, married to Bill Bennett, with whom she often collaborates.