AD - 2003

Convenor: Dr Catherine Summerhayes (ANU)

The first AD event offered a combined public documentary festival, film competition for emerging filmmakers (5 in 3 on 1) and a special 3 day international conference, November 26-30 2003.

The AD Conference was opened by the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University, Prof. Ian Chubb and by Dawn Casey, the Director of the National Museum of Australia (NMA) on the 26th November at the NMA. Professor Michael Renov from the University of Southern California gave the opening Keynote Address introducing the themes that will continue to be the focus on the 2003 and future AD symposia. The AD conference ran from Wednesday 26 November until Friday 28 November 2003. The major venue for the conference was the Visions Theatre at the NMA, with the Thursday afternoon sessions at ScreenSound Australia, and an evening session on the Thursday at Old Parliament House.

The AD Film Festival was opened by Dennis O'Rourke on Friday evening 28 November in the Garden of Australian Dreams at the NMA. The Festival then continued over the week-end with a morning session at the National Gallery of Australia, and other day screenings at the NMA. The AD Festival's nightly sessions were at Ronin's Electric Shadows Cinema. It concluded on Sunday 30 November. The AD Festival program included 11 Australian premiers, with question and answer sessions given by 14 filmmakers.

The major overall objective for AD - Art of the Documentary was to promote discussion between documentary filmmakers and scholars about how they make and think about documentary film. We did indeed create a significant forum which addressed the filmic form known as 'documentary film', both for Australian and international filmmakers and scholars. For the first time, theoreticians and practitioners spoke from a common ground of commitment to documentary and contributed to an exciting single-focused forum. We received a lot of very positive feedback on the opportunities which the conference provided. These include the following comments from filmmaker Martha Ansara’s (University Technology Sydney): 'I … met wonderful people and came away from the talks inspired … Congratulations on a thoughtful, well-organised and very special event (1/12/03).'

And in the closing Plenary Session, Michael Renov was heard to reflect on (and celebrate) AD as an event which brought him from the United States of America to Canberra, Australia, where he was able to take part in a video-linked discussion on Sergei Eisenstein with the Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov who was in Italy at the time

AD - Art of the Documentary Film Competition
The sole sponsor was the National Capital Authority. The AD Competition was run from 25th July – 15th August 2003. The AD Competition was a national documentary film competition for new and emerging documentary filmmakers with less than 20 minutes of screen credits.
The competition format was for a documentary under 5 minutes, in 3 week, on 1 topic:
"Bush Capital: people, parrots and ‘pollies’ …?".

The judging panel included Mr Bob Connolly, Prof.David MacDougall, Dr.Debra Beattie, Jennifer Collins (ABC), Dr.Catherine Summerhayes and Mr.Andrew Pike. The prizewinners were announced at the AD Conference Dinner at Old Parliament House on the evening of Thursday 27th November 2003:
First Prize: "Unfinished Business", Penny Jope et al (Sydney)
Second Prize: "Chicken Salt", Michael Punch (Canberra)
Third Prize: "Aisle 7", Katie Hayne (Canberra)
Christopher Eley’s film "The Burley Griffin Future" was given a Special Commendation for Experimental Documentary