Our Alumni are one of the Griffith Film School's greatest assets. They are making significant contributions to film, animation and games design both nationally and internationally and we encourage you to stay connected via Griffith University Alumni.
Visit the Arts, Education and Law Alumni site, Griffith University Alumni Facebook page and join Griffith University, Arts, Education and Law Alumni on LinkedIn for further information and updates about our alumni activities, profiles and news.
Visit the Griffith Film School News Site for more GFS Alumni News.
For further alumnus of the year information, including winners across the other Arts, Education and Law elements of the University, visit the AEL Alumni Awards site.
2012 Griffith Film School Alumnus of the Year
Ms Angie Fielder
Angie Fielder is a producer and co-founder of production company Aquarius Films. Her films have won numerous awards and screened in high profile film festivals all over the world.Angie’s feature film Wish You Were Here, starring Joel Edgerton, Felicity Price and Teresa Palmer, opened the Sundance Film Festival in 2012 in the prestigious World Dramatic Cinema competition. The film received rave reviews in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, and 5 stars from Empire Magazine.
Projects Angie is currently producing through Aquarius Films include Kieran Darcy-Smith’s second feature film Memorial Day with US producer Ted Hope (21 Grams, Happiness), David Barker’s feature film debut The Second Coming, TV comedy/drama Sleepless written by Alice Bell, an untitled feature film collaboration with Brendan Fletcher (Mad Bastards), ARIA award-winning folk-pop musician Sarah Blasko and Archibald-winning portrait artist Del Kathryn Barton, Strawberry Fields – another feature film with Kieran Darcy-Smith, and romantic comedy The Post Office written by Emma Vuletic and Justine Flynn.
Angie has produced and production managed over 15 hours of television for a variety of networks including SBS, Discovery Channel, the Nine Network and Aurora. She has worked for the British Film Institute and the Sydney Film Festival, and holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts in Film and Television Production from Griffith University.
Find out more.
2012 Griffith Film School Alumnus of the Year
Mr Peter Hegedus (Griffith Film School)
Mr Peter Hegedus has been making documentaries professionally since 1999. He has a Doctorate in Visual Arts from Griffith and has mentored numerous students and up and coming filmmakers. His films have won many awards from around the world and been broadcast on both international and national TV stations.
His drive as a filmmaker is about contributing to positive change in the world, and his company Soul Vision Films was established for the very purpose of producing documentaries that can make a difference in some way. Find out more about Peter's latest work on the Soul Vision Films website.
Peter completed his degree and postgraduate studies in Film and Television at Griffith Film School and began making Grandfathers and Revolutions, a story about his grandfather who called in the Soviet troops to quash the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. At 24 he began his first feature length documentary as an international co-production. Inheritance, a Fisherman’s Story is based around the ecological disaster which occurred in Hungary in 2000. The film was shortlisted for the 2004 Academy Awards and won an additional five awards around the world.
One of his recent documentaries, My America, was six years in the making and looks at Peter’s personal struggle and transition from unpacking his childhood fantasy about America and beginning to see the world’s only superpower in a more realistic light. In the process he travels the world asking people what their dreams are. While only completed in March 2011, the film has already had positive feedback from several film festivals worldwide.
My America and Hegedus' latest documentary, The Trouble With St Mary's were both screened at the Brisbane International Film Festival in 2011 and have attracted national and international interest.
Read more about the films and others screen at BIFF in the ArtsHub article, BIFF Celebrates QLD Filmmakers.
We take this opportunity to congratulate and recognise a small selection of some more notable GFS Alumni:
Peter and Michael Spierig (GFS) - Filmmakers
Twin brothers Peter and Michael Spierig graduated from the Queensland College of Art in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Television and a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design respectively. In early 2000, they wrote and directed their first highly regarded feature film, Undead. Self-funded and made locally, the zombie film quickly gained a cult-following and screened at 17 major international film festivals before being released in the US and Canada by Lionsgate, who developed a close relationship with Peter and Michael, and backed their second production, Daybreakers.
Filmed in Queensland, Australia, Daybreakers has an international cast including Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill and was released worldwide in January 2010. To date, the film has taken over $50 million dollars at the international box office.
- Read the full Spierig brothers story on the GFS Featured Alumni page.
- Further information about the films, Undead and Daybreakers.
- Visit Michael and Peter's production house, Blacklab International Pty Ltd.
Emma Jensen
Gold Circle Films has bought the original screenplay Sex on the First Date from rookie writers Sall Grover and Emma Jensen. Grover and Jensen are Australian writing partners living in L.A. Emma is a Griffith Film School graduate so we couldn't be happier to hear of her most recent success.
The duo recently spun their adventures into a forthcoming novel called The L.A. Team, which Working Title optioned for a TV series late last year. Sex on the First Date unfolds in a When Harry Met Sally… fashion as it explores the longstanding question of whether a solid relationship can result from sex on the first date. The production company paid six figures for the script.
Tony O'Loughlan
Tony is a cinematographer with experience in features, TV drama, commercials (food, fashion, branding), documentary, music videos and corporate films. He specialises in motion control and visual effects photography.
Recent projects Tony has been involved with include Sea patrol (Season 5), Undertow, K9 Series (26 half hour episodes), Acolytes, Superman Returns, Bloody Footy, The Parlour, Anacondas, Peter Pan, Scooby Doo and Ghostship.
Between 2002 and 2005, Tony was the Director/DOP in house with Taxi Films (Brisbane) working in TVC's and continues to work with directors making corporate TVC's and music videos between drama commitments.
Anthony Mullins - Screenwriter and Director
Anthony is a BAFTA and AWGIE award winning screen writer and director.
The projects Anthony has written and directed have won numerous international awards including a Primetime Emmy award, an International Digital Emmy award, two BAFTAs and three Australian Writers Guild awards.
He has been the creative director and lead writer on several award-winning interactive projects for major film and television productions including Lost, Spooks, Primeval, Flash Forward and Salt. Clients include ABC (US), Sony Pictures, ITV, BBC and National Geographic.
His short films and documentaries have competed in some of the world's most prestigious film festivals including Cannes Film Festival, Aspen Shortsfest, Karlo Vary Film Festival and SXSW.
Anthony is currently the Creative Director of Hoodlum, a leading multi-platform studio based in Brisbane, Australia.
Specialties:
Screenwriting, Directing, Drama, Documentary and Interactive .
- Visit the Hoodlum website
- Visit the interactive Slide website
- Read about the Slide series on TV Tonight
Marek Kochout - Animator at Dreamworks Animation
Queensland College of Art animation graduate, Marek Kochout was a traditional animator at Disney in Australia, before moving to America to pursue a job as an effects animator.
He is currently working as a 3D character animator at Dreamworks Animation in California and was a supervising animator on the latest Kung Fu Panda animated film.
- For the full interview with Marek in The Herald Sun or visit the QCA news site. Images sourced from the original article.
Alice Addison - Screenwriter
In 2006, The Silence, a two-part mini-series co-written by Alice, was produced by Jan Chapman for ABC TV. A feature-length cutdown screened at the Toronto Film Festival that year and at other international film festivals including Seattle, Miami and Singapore in 2007. Other writing credits include episodes in both series of the Logie award-winning ABC kids’ TV drama My Place, as well as the Chapman Pictures mini-series RAN, made for SBS TV and shot entirely on location in the Torres Straits in 2004.
Her adaptation of Julia Leigh’s novel The Hunter, featuring Willem Dafoe, premiered in September 2011 at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released in cinemas in October 2011. The film was recently nominated for 14 AACTA awards, including that for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Alice won two Australian Writers’ Guild AWGIE nominations in 2011 for her screenplay, The Hunter, and for an episode My Place. The film script for The Hunter also won a Queensland Premier’s Literary Award.
- Watch an interview with Alice from the Toronto Film Festival Premiere of The Hunter on the QCA News site.
- View the trailer for The Hunter on the QCA news site.
Alumni Recognition Award
In 2010 GFS awarded the inaugural Alumni Recognition Award to the most outstanding Griffith Film School graduate (prior to 2006 Queensland College of Art Film and Television/Animation).
In 2011 we have awarded this honour again.
View our profile of GFS Alumni Recognition Award recipient, Peter Hegedus who completed both his undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Film and Television at Griffith Film School.