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Filmmaker Darlene Johnson, a Dunghutti woman from Belbrook on NSW’s mid-north coast, began her career as a writer/director with TWO BOB MERMAID, a story inspired by her Aboriginal mother's experiences under 1950s assimilation policies. The film was shortlisted for the Baby Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival, making it the first Indigenous Australian film to screen there. It also won Best Australian Short Film at the Australian Film Critics Circle and Best Short Film at the Asia Pacific Film Festival.
Darlene then focused on documentaries, writing and directing STOLEN GENERATIONS, which received nominations for an International EMMY Award and an AFI Award. Her subsequent works include STRANGER IN MY SKIN; FOLLOWING THE RABBIT-PROOF FENCE, a documentary on Phillip Noyce's Rabbit Proof Fence; GULPILIL - ONE RED BLOOD (Logie Award-nominated); and CROCODILE DREAMING, featuring Aboriginal actors David Gulpilil and Tom E. Lewis, which earned nominations for a Deadly Award and an IF Award. Her poetic film RIVER OF NO RETURN, exploring life in a remote Indigenous community in the Northern Territory, opened the imagineNATIVE Film Festival in Toronto, the largest Indigenous film festival worldwide.
Darlene directed and produced documentaries for ABC TV’s MESSAGE STICK series and created the independent documentary THE REDFERN STORY, broadcast on ABC and nominated for the Documentary Australia Foundation Award for Best Documentary at the Sydney Film Festival. THE REDFERN STORY also received nominations for a Walkley Award and an Australian Directors Guild award for Best Direction in a Documentary, and won an Atom Award for Best Documentary on Social and Political Issues. Her AACTA-nominated short film BLUEY premiered at the 2015 Sydney Film Festival, winning the Event Cinema Award for Best Screenplay and earning 13 awards at various Australian and international festivals, including Best Direction in a Short Film from the Australian Directors Guild. In 2018, Darlene became the inaugural recipient of the Shadow Directorship, an Australian Directors Guild and Screen Australia Gender Matters Initiative. She directed episodes of HOME AND AWAY, THE HEIGHTS for Matchbox Pictures, NEIGHBOURS, and BORN TO SPY for Aquarius Films.
In 2019, Darlene was awarded the inaugural Australian International Screen Scholarship in New York City by the International Screen Forum and the American Australian Association. She participated in the Screen NSW & Australians in Film Charlie’s Talent Escalator Lab, featuring a virtual development intensive and a networking trip to Los Angeles. Supported by a special grant from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association—the first Indigenous Australian to receive such funding—she was mentored by Jenny Halper from Maven Pictures. Darlene recently earned her third Australian Directors Guild Award nomination for directing work on THE HEIGHTS.
In 2021, Darlene served as Indigenous Advisor for the ABC animated children’s series SPACE NOVA and is a writer on IRREVERENT, produced by NBC Universal, Matchbox Pictures, and Netflix. She currently has several original TV and feature film projects in development.
12 గెలుస్తుంది మరియు 7 నామినేషన్లు
