The previous film project Screenwest and Carers’ WA worked on, ‘Different Lens’. Photo Credit: Different Lens Crew with Storyteller, Curtis Hatton – photography by Dave Walters. Supplied by Rhythm Content and Screenwest.
Screenwest and Carers WA are teaming up again to create a film project led by crew and storytellers who are living with a disability.
The film project: “Filming Our Future: ‘Our Choice, Our Voice, Our Way’” will showcase how sports and physical activity can create inclusion and a sense of community.
This will be done through 15 short form screen projects by storytellers with disabilities that will showcase what a future of inclusion and accessibility should look like for themselves, their peers and the WA community.
Diversity and Inclusion Manager at Screenwest, Jonathon Messer, who also lives with a disability, explains why this film project centres around physical activity:
“A lot of disabled people aren’t able to include themselves in leisure and sporting activities and feel socially connected…by creating stories that will have an impact to a wider audience, we’re actually saying these groups of people exist and they can be included and they have a voice.”
Screenwest and Carers WA will start by giving $92,000 in funding to a WA Production Company and Producer to help bring these stories to life.
They will then hire 4 paid Inclusion Mentees, who live with a disability, to be the roles of Writer/Director, Director of Photography, Sound Recordist and Editor. These roles will be assisted by the production companies’ mentors.
Carers WA Business Development and Disability Services Manager Paul Rogers, says that part of the funding is so that people with a disability can get experience in the film industry to help them get a film industry career in the future.
Screenwest have worked with Carers WA previously to produce the ‘Different Lens Initiative’ which gave 12 screen skills paid opportunities to emerging storytellers in the film industry that identified as disability-diverse. Messer says this was such a success that the two organisations decided to partner again for this project.
So when can we see these films? Rogers says he thinks filming should be done approximately around August-September with a release date around approximately November.
