Allanah Zitserman

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Allanah Zitserman on the red carpet at CinefestOz 2018

Allanah Zitserman is an Australian scriptwriter and film producer, founder of the Dungog Film Festival, and the director of Lumila Films.[1][2]

Education[]

Zitserman graduated from University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) in 1998 with a Bachelor of Business and Communications.[citation needed]

Career[]

Zitserman started the themed club Barbarella in the late 1990s when she was 18, only for it to become one of Sydney's popular nightspots at the time.[citation needed] At 21 she set up Screen Artists, a film development and production company with business and personal partner Stavros Kazantzidis.[citation needed]

After graduating, she took a production job on Strange Planet (1999) starring Naomi Watts.[citation needed] A year later, she produced and penned her debut feature film Russian Doll starring Hugo Weaving, which earned her an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Original Screenplay.[3] She wrote and produced Horseplay (2003) and event-managed international functions at Marrakech and Cannes Film Festivals.[4]

Zitserman then worked in script development for a few years in London,[citation needed] before returning to Australia in 2005, committing her time to both script development and spearheading Dungog Film Festival.[5]

She was awarded the Australian Film Commission's Writer's Fellowship in 2006.[6] In 2007 Zitserman became one of the only two women to own a distribution company in Australia, the Australian Film Syndicate (AFS).[7]

From 2008 until 2012, Zitserman created the script development program "In The Raw", which saw many of its projects produced including Last Cab to Darwin, Sleeping Beauty, Strangerland (starring Nicole Kidman) and Little Death. During this time, she also founded a film distribution company that championed local independent films.[citation needed]

In 2017 Zitserman started production on the feature film, Ladies in Black,[8] directed by Bruce Beresford.[9][10] The film was released worldwide through Sony Pictures, starting in Australia on 20 September 2018.[11] It has been critically acclaimed by Garry Maddox as a "love letter to Sydney".[12]

Filmography[]

References[]

  1. ^ "About". L U M I L A. Retrieved 3 September 2021.
  2. ^ "From Cannes to Dungog". jewishnews.net.au. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  3. ^ "2000 AFI Best Original Screenplay - Russian Doll". You Tube.
  4. ^ [1]
  5. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 4 March 2011. Retrieved 28 March 2011.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  6. ^ "The Australian Film Commission" (PDF). afcarchive.screenaustralia.gov.au. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  7. ^ "The Australian Film Syndicate's Allanah Zitserman on The Combination's axing". abc.net.au. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  8. ^ Windsor, Harry (21 March 2017). "Bruce Beresford to shoot 'Ladies in Black' in Sydney". Retrieved 10 December 2017.
  9. ^ "Bruce Beresford to direct Ladies in Black".
  10. ^ https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/sa/media-centre/news/2017/10-04-ladies-in-black-cast-announced
  11. ^ "Bruce Beresford's 'Ladies in Black' holds a mirror to multicultural Australia". IF Magazine. 18 April 2018. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
  12. ^ "Ladies in Black, a love letter to Sydney". 6 September 2018.
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