Press

After a decade of pioneering inclusive filmmaking in Australia, I’ve been overwhelmed to encapsulate my inclusive filmmaking process and inclusive filmmaking value system in the Inclusive Toolkit. The toolkit is a free resource designed to help the film industry become more disability confident in hiring people with disability both in front and behind the camera. Our method of inclusive filmmaking has been backed by research and ten years of practice.

SBS visited the set of SEE ME, a new inclusive film from Bus Stop Films. It coincided with the launch of the Inclusive Toolkit. SBS interviewed the film’s star and story originator – Audrey O’Connor and the film’s director, Genevieve Clay-Smith on the importance of inclusion in film and tv.

Genevieve has been nominated for an Australian Director’s Guild Award for best direction in a documentary series. She has been nominated for her direction of episode 1 of season 1 of Perspective Shift, her first long form television credit. Genevieve developed the series for the Attitude Foundation.

A Blue Mountain’s filmmaker’s short film Goundhog Night, will screen at the Sydney Film Festival, streaming online from June 10.

We catch up with the diversity champion and founder of Bus Stop Films and Taste Creative. Growing up Genevieve always knew she wanted to be a storyteller. While studying at the University of Technology Sydney she was given the opportunity to make a documentary for Down Syndrome NSW, a move which ultimately changed the course of her career. Genevieve realised the serious lack of representation of people with disabilities in media and was inspired to create the short film ‘Be My Brother,’ which won Tropfest in 2009.

Finalists in this year’s The Australian Financial Review 100 Women of Influence Awards are champions of reinvention and possess broad skillsets they can adapt to different roles in their quest to influence change in business and society.