The Australian Director’s Guild (ADG) has announced its program for Director’s Cut, Australia’s only screen director focussed conference, to be held in-person in Sydney and live-streamed on August 20th.

The conference program will also tour to Western Sydney and then nationally over the next 12 months.

The ADG previously announced that leading Australian director, Cate Shortland (Black Widow, Lore, Somersault, The Kettering Incident, Deadline Gallipoli) will be the ADG’s guest for First-Hand, an in-depth conversation about Cate’s career in Australia and overseas. 

With the theme of ‘Cutting Through the Noise’, the program announced includes a landmark panel Director at the Centre, featuring Daina Reid and Bus Stop Films’ Genevieve Clay-Smith, exploring the role of the director in helming a coherent vision of the screenplay in a world of showrunners and creative collaboration.

Additional sessions include:

Mind the Gap – Jumping to Paid Work, partnered with AFTRS, joined by directors Murli Dhir, Tin Pang and Lucy Gaffy who’ve all made the jump to paid work and discussing the many pathways to get there;

Rights, Representation & Residuals, Lawyer Greg Duffy joins agent Jennifer Naughton and ASDACS’ Debra Jackson on this business-focussed panel and Q&A session which will provide practical real-world insight into effective representation and key contract terms including director’s rates, authorship & moral rights, retransmission rights and streamer residuals.

Point of Impact, featuring Ben Lawrence and Catherine Scott, which looks at how impact campaigns can benefit scripted productions, not just factual

Cultural Safety on Set, with Ana Tiwary and Katrina Irawati Graham, the two will take a deep look at the ground-breaking cultural safety document Katrina and Sara Richardson (Endemol Shine) created while working on the STAN ‘Bali’ TV series to ensure cultural safety on set.

Home’N’Away, featuring Monica Zanetti, Matt Moore and Shawn Seet who will discuss the juggling act between a career at home and pursuing international opportunities; and

Innovative Pathways, with Netflix’s Penny Smallacombe and director Stef Smith guiding delegates through strategies to ensure directors’ work is valued and seen.

Director’s Cut will be held at SUNSTUDIOS in Alexandria.

Included in the ticket prices will be a webinar, to be held later in the year, which is a collaboration with Screen Well. The webinar will look at the ways in which a director can assist with the wellbeing of their crew/cast and how to manage work/life balance. 

Tickets are $150 to attend in person and $75 for the live stream (+ GST).  

Tickets available here: https://adgdirectorscut.eventbrite.com.au

View the program here: Program link: https://adg.org.au/directorscut

Tickets are currently available to ADG members and associate members (with screen industry colleagues who are not members invited to express their interest in attending by emailing rsvp@adg.org.au)