Truth-Telling & Documentary

Rachel Perkins’ Australian Aboriginal heritage (Arrernte/Kalkadoon) has informed her entire filmmaking career. She founded Australia’s premier Indigenous production company Blackfella Films in 1992 and has contributed extensively to the development of Indigenous filmmakers in Australia and, more broadly, to the Australian film and television industry. 

Rachel has directed four feature films: Jasper Jones (nominated for Best Film at the 2017 AACTA Awards), as well as Radiance, One Night the Moon (which received 5 Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards), and the musical Bran Nue Dae which screened at the Sundance, Berlin and Toronto Film Festivals, and achieved a box office of $7.5 million in Australia. Rachel’s films have screened at over 75 film festivals worldwide. Rachel is currently directing and writing First Wars for SBS, a major historical documentary series about the nation’s frontier conflicts. Her other documentary work includes the series Blood Brothers, on which she was one of the writers, directors and producers as well as Spirit to Spirit, an international co-venture of Indigenous partners from New Zealand, Scandinavia, Canada and Australia.

A proud Worimi woman, Genevieve has more than twenty years experience creating dynamic content for exhibitions, online, film and television, and multimedia. She was the Lead Curator on the internationally-award winning First Peoples, a permanent exhibition at the Melbourne Museum, and has developed a range of projects with community engagement at their heart, including the one-hour documentary for SBS Television, Lani's Story (2013), as well as a place-based augmented reality experience celebrating Sydney Aboriginal women, Barangaroo Ngangamay (2016). Her work has garnered awards and recognition, including Best Documentary from the United Nations of Australia Media Peace Awards.

Genevieve holds a prominent leadership role in the arts and cultural sector, contributing to the development of key organisations while attaching importance to mentoring emerging First Peoples creatives. Emerging from her career at Koorie Heritage Trust Inc., where she established Oral History and Stolen Generations programs, Genevieve is today regarded as a leading practitioner of community engagement and decolonising practice in Australia - Genevieve not only weaves best practice, grounded in cultural protocols, into content creation, she also passionately advocates and educates these skills and approaches across Australian university, institutional and community spaces as a public intellectual, speaker, and teacher.

Josh Trevorrow is of Ngarrindjeri descent and his father was a survivor of the Stolen Generation. He is a passionate storyteller and advocate for more First Nations characters on screen, across all genres. He is the recipient of the 2021 Documentary Australia Centralised Indigenous Fellowship, for his project Kondoli- Ngarrindjeri whale project – which aims to unearth the hidden stories of the Ngarrindjeri peoples’ pivotal role in the American, British and European whaling trade which took place on their country and waters, now known as Victor Harbor and Encounter Bay in South Australia, from the early 1800s onwards. In respectful collaboration with Elders, this documentary will have a focus on nature, celebrating truth and reconciliation, and explore the costs of these relationships and the spiritual compromises for people who have always seen the Kondoli (whale) as a Ngatji (totem).

Josh has been part of the Centralised Web Series Development workshop and the Centralised Bunya Talent Incubator at the SAFC’s Adelaide Studios. Josh recently completed a paid attachment in the Electrics Department of South Australia’s biggest ever screen production, Mortal Kombat. He is currently developing a number of solo and collaborative projects, and together with his wife - screenwriter, producer and emerging director Katharine McPhee - is developing a collective slate of work within their co-founded bespoke production company, Untold Productions.