Mental Wellbeing for Doco Filmmakers | Online Event

A special event to support the wellbeing of Australia’s documentary filmmakers.

Documentary filmmakers right now are amongst the most isolated, underpaid and vulnerable members of the screen sector as it grapples with the fallout of COVID-19. Most do not benefit from organisational structures that trigger financial subsidy and most work in small teams outside of workplace support structures. This is on top of the usual challenges that may involve dealing with vicarious trauma, public responses to stories, exploitation by broadcasters who demand increased rights for diminishing license fees and the challenges that come with ‘impact’ work.

To coincide with the documentary The Show Must Go On (dir. Ben Steel, 73 mins) Film Art Media presents a special online event about mental wellbeing for documentary filmmakers in partnership with the Documentary Australia Foundation and supported by Screen Australia.

This event includes a panel moderated by producer Sue Maslin AO and features Ben Steel (writer/director) along with Clara Williams Roldan (Documentary Australia Foundation), Pauline Clague (documentary producer) and Julie Crabtree (creative psychologist). The panel will discuss mental health challenges experienced by documentary filmmakers , what action the broader industry can take, as well as provide tools and resources to support filmmakers.