Peter Lindsay Weir is an Australian retired film director. He is known for directing films crossing various genres over forty years with films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Gallipoli (1981), Witness (1985), Dead Poets Society (1989), Fearless (1993), The Truman Show (1998), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), and The Way Back (2010). He has received six Academy Award nominations, ultimately being awarded the Academy Honorary Award in 2022 for his lifetime achievement career.
The cinema of Australia had its beginnings with the 1906 production of The Story of the Kelly Gang, arguably the world's first feature film. Since then, Australian crews have produced many films, a number of which have received international recognition. Many actors and filmmakers with international reputations started their careers in Australian films, and many of these have established lucrative careers in larger film-producing centres such as the United States.
The University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts (SCA) houses seven academic divisions: Film & Television Production; Cinema & Media Studies; John C. Hench Division of Animation + Digital Arts; John Wells Division of Writing for Screen & Television; Interactive Media & Games; Media Arts + Practice; Peter Stark Producing Program.
Robert James Ellis was an Australian writer, journalist, filmmaker, and political commentator. He was a student at the University of Sydney at the same time as other notable Australians including Clive James, Germaine Greer, Les Murray, John Bell, Robert Hughes and Mungo McCallum. He lived in Sydney with the author and screenwriter Anne Brooksbank; they had three children.
James Laurenson is a New Zealand stage and screen actor.
The Aunty Jack Show was a Logie Award-winning Australian television comedy series that ran from 1972 to 1973. Produced by and broadcast on ABC-TV, the series attained an instant cult status that persists to the present day.
Peter Vaughan was an English character actor known for many supporting roles in British film and television productions. He also acted extensively on the stage.
Grahame John Bond AM is an Australian actor, writer, director, musician and composer, known primarily for his role as Aunty Jack.
The Guinea Pig is a 1948 British film directed and produced by the Boulting brothers, known as The Outsider in the United States. The film is adapted from the 1946 play of the same name by Warren Chetham-Strode.
St John's College, or the College of St John the Evangelist, is a residential college within the University of Sydney.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is a 1975 Australian mystery film produced by Hal and Jim McElroy, directed by Peter Weir, and starring Rachel Roberts, Dominic Guard, Helen Morse, Vivean Gray and Jacki Weaver. It was adapted by Cliff Green from the 1967 novel of the same name by Joan Lindsay.
Wendy June Saddington, also known as Gandharvika Dasi, was an Australian blues, soul and jazz singer, and was in the bands Chain, Copperwine and the Wendy Saddington Band. She wrote for teen pop newspaper Go-Set from September 1969 to September 1970 as an agony aunt in her weekly "Takes Care of Business" column, and as a feature writer. Saddington had Top 30 chart success with her 1972 solo single "Looking Through a Window", which was written and produced by Billy Thorpe and Warren Morgan of the Aztecs. After adopting Krishna Consciousness in the 1970s she took the name Gandharvika Dasi. In March 2013 she was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, and died on 21 June, aged 63.
The Plumber is a 1979 Australian psychological thriller film about a psychotic plumber who terrorizes a grad student. Written and directed by Peter Weir, The Plumber was originally made and broadcast as a television film in Australia in 1979 but was subsequently released to theatres in several countries beginning with the United States in 1981. The film was made shortly after Weir's critically acclaimed Picnic at Hanging Rock became one of the first Australian films to appeal to an international audience. The film stars Judy Morris, Ivar Kants, and Robert Coleby, all of them being most notable at the time as actors in Australian soap operas.
Ross Napier was one of Australia's leading radio and TV writers from the 1950s to 1990s, as well as an accomplished novelist. Born in Sydney in 1929, he began writing short stories for magazines while still in high school, selling his first script at 17. Shortly after, he became a staff writer for Grace Gibson Radio Productions, and during the 1950s and 1960s his radio serials were broadcast Australia-wide and internationally. This firmly established Napier as one of Australia's leading drama writers. Whilst at Gibson's he met Ann Fuller, who he married in 1953.
3 to Go is an Australian portmanteau film consisting of three stories, each presenting a young Australian at a moment of decision about their future. The film was first shown on commercial television in March 1971 and episodes screened individually in cinemas as supporting shorts. One of the stories, Michael, written and directed by Peter Weir, went on to receive an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts award.
Russell John Kiefel was an Australian stage, film and television actor. After graduating from the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Kiefel started his screen acting career with a role in the 1977 feature film The Singer and the Dancer. He followed this with roles in Breaker Morant (1980), Twelfth Night (1986), Call Me Mr. Brown (1990) and television film The Leaving of Liverpool (1992). Kiefel appeared in several television dramas, including Home and Away, Fireflies and Stingers. He starred in an episode of Twisted Tales in 1998. Among his various guest appearances were episodes of Wildside, Blue Heelers and Something in the Air. In 2008, Kiefel played Lloyd Ross in Infamous Victory: Ben Chifley's Battle for Coal. He joined the cast of Neighbours in the recurring role of Russell Brennan in 2015.
